KENYA: Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) moves to restock once-famous Meru National Park

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) is currently moving over 4000 animals into the Meru National Park made famous by the novel 'Born Free' by wildlife conservationist Joy Adamson. The park suffered from heavy poaching and neglect during the 80s, but an economic boom and rise in tourist arrivals has sparked efforts to rehabilitate the park. Since Thursday (July 26), the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) have begun moving about 4,500 animals from parks around the country to restock the Meru National Park. KWS hopes to translocate about 50 Hartebeest, 1000 Zebras, 1426 Impalas and 50 Beisa Oryx. Meru National Park is 348 kilometres away from Kenya's capital city, Nairobi and covers an area of 870 square kilometres. Once the home of wildlife conservationists, Joy and George Adamson, Meru national park shot to international fame when Joy Adamson wrote "Born Free", a novel about a bringing up a lioness called Elsa in the park. The book was later turned into a film. But years of poaching, banditry and neglect turned the park into a lonely wilderness visited by few tourists. The Kenya Wildlife Service hopes to bring Meru back to its former glory alongside its world-famous Maasai Mara. "What we are doing today is to move several species of animals and the destination is Meru national park. We branded Meru National Park this month and one of the items in the programme in branding Meru National Park is to restock it. As you know this was one of the parks which was overrun by bandits in the 80s and we are trying to make it the premium park in Kenya so we have to move wildlife to make it more, to have that touristic appeal," said Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) Director, Dr. Julius Kipng'etich. Meru once had about 3,000 elephants roaming its lands. "We are going to do major restocking of other areas and in fact within the next couple of months we are planning still to move elephants from Shimba to Tsavo conservation area and again that is to restore animals where they were eliminated through poaching and also beefing up populations in a manner that they are viable," observed Patrick Omondi, the KWS Head of Species and Management Conservation. The translocation exercise will cost almost 9 million Kenyan shillings (133,000 US dollars) which comes from international organisations and the Kenyan government. Kenyan tourist arrivals during the first quarter of 2007 rose by thirteen per cent compared with the previous year. Tourism earnings rose by about 25.5 percent to 34 billion shillings (506 million US dollars) in the first half of 2007. Kenya's economy grew by an estimated 6.3 percent in the first quarter of 2007, up from 4.1 percent in the same period a year ago. The unprecedented growth has largely been attributed to agriculture and tourism.

ITN Source | August 4, 2007

Tags:. .rose. .patrick. .born. .square. .growth