Famine in Kenya: Giraffes and Wildlife Hunted

Due to the lockdown in Kenya, millions of people have been left unemployed and hungry. Some are now hunting endangered animals in order to survive the famine.

At the end of March, as the pandemic began to rage across Europe, the Kenyan government effectively sealed the country off from the outside world and imposed a draconian lockdown that prevented travel between different regions. Kenya's lockdown was announced on 25 March, when the country had recorded just seven COVID-19 cases. Nevertheless, the virus has since been confirmed in nearly 4,500 people. For weeks, curfews have been in place in the capital Nairobi, the port city of Mombasa, and the coastal areas popular with tourists, with residents no longer permitted to leave their district even to shop or work.

The tourism sector, which accounts for around 9 percent of Kenya's GDP, was virtually wiped out overnight. Hundreds of safari lodges that would normally generate more than 1,000 US dollars per guest per night laid off staff en masse. At the end of June, the country's Ministry of Tourism announced that more than 80 percent of the country's tourism businesses had placed their employees on unpaid leave.

Unrest broke out in several impoverished neighbourhoods of the Kenyan port city of Mombasa. Hundreds protested against the lockdown regulations in the East African country after two local residents died of starvation.

In parts of Kenya, the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has been so catastrophic that people facing famine have begun killing endangered wildlife for food.

««They really did a damn good job», muttered a ranger as he came upon the mass of bloody bones, organs, and skinned hide. «They even cut the meat from between his ribs.«

In life, just a few hours earlier, the fully grown bull would have weighed around two and a half tonnes and stood nearly 6 metres above the ground. His legs would have been strong enough to kick a lion in the chest. But now there was almost nothing left.

Three or four poachers most likely surrounded the giraffe at night and froze it with torches and a siren horn like a giant rabbit in the headlights. One of them would then have hacked at the tendons behind its knees with a machete to bring the animal down, the ranger said.

A brutal cut beneath the giraffe's throat was where they delivered the final blow.

Around a tonne of meat was cut from the animal – estimated to be worth 1,000 US dollars – and wheeled away on bicycles to be eaten at home and sold on local markets as beef. Even the testicles were cut off and removed, most likely for use in a traditional Chinese remedy for erectile dysfunction, writes theTelegraph.

Bushmeat poaching occurs regardless. In Kenya, however, a marked increase has been recorded since the famine. People are resorting to drastic measures to put food on the table. Similar reports are emerging from Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Kenya reopened its airspace earlier this month in the hope that international tourists would return to witness the great annual migration of millions of wildebeest, zebras and gazelles across the plains of the Masai Mara into Tanzania. Sadly, they have stayed away, despite covid-safe measures being put in place.