Participants

Alex Macharia – team leader Francis Chege James Nyumu Nteritu Kapina Vincent Mutua Samwel Lolshirak 4KWS Rangers

Areas Covered

During the course of the month of March the following areas were patrolled by the Mtito de-snaring team: the Mtito area, Rhino area, Ngulia Hills, Tsavo River, Wuyuni, Upper and Lower Kenani, Kenani station, Kanga station and Kyulu station.

31 SNARES COLLECTED 1 ARREST

Findings

With the onset of the dry season, the level of poaching will tend to rise following the trend set over the past few years. Most of the snares collected during the course of the month were medium and small in size, targeting small sized game.

The majority of the snares were collected from Mangerete and Kenai stations. Both areas are poaching hotspots. At Mangerete logging continues to be a problem as people continue to fell trees along the river banks.

Kenani is an area that is poses a great challenge to the Mtito de-snaring team as most of the poachers enter the park through the use of passenger vehicles. They then get dropped at Kenani Station and from there proceed to the park to carry out their poaching activities. Other poachers have been found to use the train as a means of entering the park. Another problem is the lack of a road network with makes it difficult to patrol large areas, thus allowing the poachers to evade arrest.

This month we concentrated our efforts in the Triangle but did not recover any snares. The only activities that we noticed were localized along the highway.

Observable Evidence Footprints were a common occurrence especially along the Mtito River, Kenani and Kanga areas. No animals were rescued. However, the carcass of a leopard that had been ran over by a vehicle was spotted along the Nairobi – Mombasa highway.

We skinned the carcass and the skin was delivered to the park headquarters at Komboyo. We also came across several active hideouts. One of the hideouts had a smoldering fire and leftover food, as the poachers made a hasty retreat to avoid arrest. We were able to arrest a logger at Yumbuni, who was booked at Mtito police station.

Report by Alex Macharia