Not Another Lion

It was a heartbreaking incident to see Kenya Wildlife Officers (KWS) attack a 13 years old male lion, Mohawk, in an attempt to save the Nairobi residents from the assault. Just recently another lion, named Lemek, was speared.  According to KWS, Kenya is losing averagely 100 of its 2,000 lions annually to increasing human activities, climate change, and disease. In 2002, Kenya had 2,749 lions that dropped to 2,280 in 2004. Today Kenya only has around 2,000 lions. Despite the having a special place in Kenyans' conservation efforts, lion population is on a steady disturbing decline. If the trend continues, Kenya has utmost 20 years before all of her lions are wiped out according to the according to Laurence Frank, the project director of Living with Lions. In Kenya, lion is a the symbol for national strength and is among the Big Five
Out of the threats that the lion faces, Kenya can at least control the intrusive human activities such as developments within game parks. Even though climate change have induced drought that has compelled the lions to move to closer to waterholes adjacent to the highly increasing human settlements, the human activities are still the main issue. The new road and rail construction through the Nairobi National Park have just raised the alarm on the way such projects are likely to threaten the whole wildlife in the park. The two straying lions that were recently killed are just an indication of how such human encroachment activities have interfered with the day to day lives of these animals. Such construction works linked to the noise and blasting have affected animal behavior and forced more big cats to run away in search of quieter hunting grounds.
The movement of lions across Nairobi is just an indication of how human is interfering with the natural environment. Lions may be the first to be affected, but what about other animals around the park such as giraffes, antelopes, and warthogs that are less likely to attack humans. Assuming that lions do not attack humans, and then we would have not even realized the immediate impact the human activities around the park has. The two lions acted like the village pointsman who screams whenever there is an encroaching threat. The attacks made by the two lions were just the lions mode of communication to us, humans, that we are indeed disturbing their ecosystem. But how did we react? We speared one and shot another. The king of the jungle took the first role communicating to us that the ecosystem within the Nairobi National Park is being threatened, and this places both plants and animals, big and small at risk. These ecosystems are big and complicated and the moment we start to pull the strings the results start to unravel. Having being listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the African lion is not yet threatened with extinction but are vulnerable are may soon become so. It is listed in Appendix II of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
These events are an indication of how the wildlife is always so much under pressure. Time has come for us to descend to what works and get past the ideologies that don’t work before the whole lot is lost. We need to create public awareness and long time national policy on lion conservation and management. We need good planning and proper environmental impact assessments if we are to develop sustainably. Being a home to approximately 35 lions, the Nairobi National Park should not lose another lion.