People living on the edge of Kenya’s oldest national park have killed nine lions in the past two months in retaliation for the loss of livestock, Enviroment Minister Newton Kulundu said on Thursday.
The five cubs, three females and an adult male had gone hunting outside Nairobi National Park — 8 kilometres from downtown Nairobi – to hunt for zebra and antelope that normaly venture outside the park after the rainy season to find shorter grass, Kalundu told reporters.
”The lions’ claws were removed. The heads were chopped off. They were skinned and their hearts and livers removed,” Kulundu said.
The lion body parts, skin and mane are usually turned into trophies and the innards eaten.
Ministry official Rachel Arunga said those who killed the lions are said to have been dressed like Maasai warriors.
The area covered by the 120-square-kilometre park is traditional Maasai land.
The minister said an unspecified number of people were being questioned by the police in connection with the killings but no arrests have been made.
The hunting of game has been banned in Kenya since the late 1970s.
Herbivores like the zebra and antelope, which are the lions’ preferred prey, normally move outside the park between March and July when the grass inside is too high for grazing. The southern boundary of the park has not been fenced to avoid cutting off the traditional migratory path.
The lions follow the zebra and antelope, but as human population in the area south of the park increases, the lions find the goats, sheep, cattle and donkeys kept by the Maasai easier prey.
Three lions were killed last year, and six in 2001, Kulundu said.
He said the Kenya Wildlife Service, together with the private Friends of the Nairobi National Park, will build two fenced areas within the park for the nine remaining lions at a cost of 200 000 shillings ($2 340).
Kulundu said local game ranches will provide carcasses of zebra, eland and wildebeest to fed the lions until the resident zebra and antelope return.
The ministry is studying how to fence the southern boundary as a permanent solution to the problem of lions attacking livestock.
Nairobi National Park was established in 1946 under the British colonial administration and is the only protected wild area in the world with a variety of animals and at least 400 species of birds so close to a major city. – Sapa-AP