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{
    "id": 358151,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/358151/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 84,
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Hon. Deputy Speaker, it is also important for us to realise that by doing this, Kenya will be joining other countries in the world in appreciating the importance of protecting wildlife. If you go to other parts of the world, where countries were careless with their wildlife resource, you will realise that those countries today can only afford to keep their wild animals in zoos. That is what is happening in Europe, the United States of America (USA) and in some parts of Asia. We are lucky in Africa that we still have our wildlife roaming freely in our national parks and game reserves. As long as we have this natural resource, as a country, our tourism sector will continue to have a competitive edge. It is important to appreciate that the cost of maintaining an elephant or a rhino cannot be compared with the cost of raising a dog or a cow. These are animals which take many years to mature. Despite the brutality that is involved in poaching, all that is taken from them are the horns. The rest of the carcasses are left to rot in the wilderness. If we were to quantify this in terms of economic value to the country, we would realise that we are incurring a great loss. As we talk about stiffening penalties on poaching, we must also look at how we can regulate the entire wildlife management sector in this country by fast-tracking the enactment of the Wildlife Bill. Due to lack of a proper regulatory framework in the wildlife sector, we have systems where some private wildlife conservancies are taking advantage of the existing loopholes and fuelling this illegal activity, to a large extent. I just want to raise an issue which I feel is of great concern. The countries that form the market for wildlife trophies, namely, Vietnam, Thailand, China and Taiwan; have extremely stiff penalties for poachers but since Kenya has been found to be a soft belly, the same countries use our sea ports and airports as conduits for transporting wildlife trophies from other countries. Hon. Deputy Speaker, it is not always the case that the ivory that is transported to those countries is from elephants poached in Kenya. Since Kenya has very weak legislations, poachers from African countries with very stiff penalties export wildlife trophies through the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) or the sea port of Mombasa. My worry is that if this trend continues, we will have the kind of sophisticated poaching that is seen in South Africa, where poachers nowadays use night vision equipment, very sophisticated ammunition and helicopters. In my view, that amounts to terrorism. A lot of these national parks and reserves fall within the counties. It is going to be a great source of revenue to these counties. As we continue to dilly-dally with the issue of protecting our wildlife, we are actually being overtaken by time and sooner or later it will actually be a matter of regretting the way Mozambique is currently regretting. As we talk now, Mozambique has no single rhino in their country because of poachers. It will be a sad day in the history of Kenya if we reach a level where our children, grandchildren and great grand children will only be reading about elephants and rhinos like they are reading about the great ogres that they have never seen. All of us have an opportunity to protect and conserve the wildlife for posterity. Hon. Deputy Speaker, I beg to support."
}