By GAKUU MATHENGE 

Rangers load a sedated rhino into a crate for transportation from the Lewa Downs conservancy to a natural habitat in Mukogodo Division of Laikipia District.

With the dexterity of a skilled artisan, Laikipia rancher and conservationist Ian Craig drilled a hole into a sedated rhino's horn. He then mixed several concoctions from a giant green canvas bag and poured the mixture into the hole. 

A minute digital transmitter was then fixed into the horn and sealed with masking tape. Once activated, the transmitter would emit radio signals all the time, which would show on a computer monitor the movement and location of the rhino once released into its new home in the wilderness.

On this chilly morning in mid-September, two rhinos were being delivered to the Ilng’wesi Maasai group ranch in Mukogodo Division of Laikipia District, about 100 kilometres away from the Lewa Downs Conservancy, where they were bred.

Craig is the owner of the 47,000-acre Lewa conservancy established in 1996 to protect wildlife, particularly the rhino. The conservationist, who was born in Nanyuki, nearly 53 years ago, and raised there, had for a long time been involved in the family's extensive livestock ranching business until he converted his farm into a wildlife conservation area.

Standing behind Craig on this mission were members of the rhino translocation team; each with his own specific duty to ensure that everything went smoothly. They included Dr Isaak Lekolol, a Kenya Wildlife Service veterinarian, whose assignment was to monitor the body temperature and the pulse of the heavily breathing rhino to ensure that all went well.

As the mid-morning sun intensified, the speed, urgency and silence in which everything was being done was palpable, and not a single second was wasted. A ranger would occasionally pour cold water on the rhino to cool the one-and-a-half tonne creature.

Dr Lekolol injected the rhino with an antidote of a morphine-based sedative, and the creature shook back to life. Within seconds, the blindfolded animal struggled to its feet and staggered into a giant wooden crate that was immediately locked and loaded onto a lorry for the long journey to Osar Lemuny (Maasai for the place of rhinos) in the Ilng’wesi group ranch.

All this time media crews were elbowing one another for the best position to capture the action. It was an emotional return of the rhinos to the area for the first time since poachers killed the last one in 1966.

John Kisio, 58, recalls that when he was young, there were many rhinos in the place. Says he: "During our childhood, the rhinos were many, just like cattle."

He and other local people are pleased about the decision to reintroduce rhinos in the locality. On being downloaded, Mariot, the male white rhino, and Hilma, its female partner cautiously and with measured steps sniffed their way out the wooden crates into their new home. The two joined Omni, an orphaned male black rhino, which had arrived earlier. All have been donated to the communal conservancy by the Lewa Downs, which increases the value of tourist visits to their eco-lodge, the Ilng’wesi Bandas Lodge.

A group of villagers, who are members of the Ilng’wesi group ranch, have given up 16,000 hectares of their land for game conservation and tourism. They turned up in large numbers to witness the homecoming of the rhinos, the old folks, with nostalgia, and those below 40, with curiosity, many of them having never seen a rhino in their lifetime, besides, of course, in Maasai folklore.

Poachers slaughtered what the European hunters before them had left behind in northern Kenya. And out went the rhino, a valued animal by the Maasai community.

Mzee Kisio says: "Its fat was used in herbal medicine while its horn was used by spiritual leaders to protect the people and their livestock.

In the 1960s, Shifta brigands from the north arrived with their blazing guns and huge appetites for rhino horns and elephant tusks, decimating wildlife populations.

Osar Lemuny is a low-lying flat plains area on the northern edges of the Mukogodo forest. There is plenty of water flowing in the plains from the natural Oltamam springs in the Yiari valley at the foot of the rugged Olmaroroi hills.

The perennial Ngare Ndare River that snakes its way from the slopes of Mount Kenya through the plains to drain into the mighty Ewaso Nyiro further north, also has over the years provided water to the teeming wildlife in the area.

However, for all its beauty, Osar Lemuny also neighbours more than 100 hectares of the former Livestock Marketing Division's outspan land across the Ngare Ndare River in Isiolo District. Since the collapse of the livestock marketing sector in the early 1980s, the outspan became a no-man’s land and a perennial battle ground for various nomadic groups. They include the Samburu, Boran and Somali, who have bee trying to dominate and control its excellent grazing pastures and water resources.

Since the early 1990s, the acquisition of sophisticted small arms became easier and the situation in most of northern Kenya has been volatile since.

Poaching, banditry, cattle rustling, and endless skirmishes have been the order of the day among the rival ethnic communities. The situation nearly got out of hand three years ago and could have led to shutting down of even world famous destinations like the Shaba Game Reserve in Isiolo District. Isiolo Town itself is yet to recover from the effects of the skirmishes that severely crippled the livestock trade, the mainstay of the town’s economy.

However, the sheer grit and determination of the wildlife conservation groups has pushed the brigands back, reclaiming lost territories and converting them into tourism destinations and money-spinners for investors and the local communities.

"It's through partnership between the people, the Government and well-wishers that we have achieved this," says Craig.

Craig, whose grandfather, Douglas Alec, came to Kenya from South Africa by oxen-pulled cart in 1923, has created an impregnable fortress to protect a herd of black rhinos following conversion of his ranch into the Lewa Downs Wildlife Sanctuary.

The sanctuary, famous for hosting the Safaricom International Marathon, and the little publicised visits by Britain's Prince William, is sealed off with a electric perimeter fence, guarded and patrolled by a 120-man security unit. The guards are armed with not only sniffer dogs and equipped with night vision goggles, Motorola repeater radio sets, but are also buttressed by an air wing unit. 

"However, while protecting the rhino, elephants and other animals realised it is safe inside here and have sought refuge to escape the slaughter outside. Only elephants can never be fully confined, as they need to roam all over, which prompted us to think about who would protect them once outside our boundaries," says Craig.

In partnership with the KWS and conservation donor organisations, Lewa persuaded the neighbouring Ilng’wesi Maasai communal group ranch to donate some land for wildlife conservation. In return for the 16,000 hectares they gave, the group ranch was assisted with Sh8 million to put up an eco lodge - the Ilng’wesi Bandas - for tourism and set up security machinery to protect both the wildlife and the visitors. But both the land and the proceeds from the project remain in the hands of the local community.

James Munyugi, community liaison officer at Lewa, says: One by-product of our conservation efforts is that wildlife has become a basis for restoring security in the volatile northern Kenya. It has never been so good and it is getting better. Communities now appreciate and support the current mechanisms. Even tour operators who nearly deleted us from tourist maps have come back.

Craig says the security measures alone cost Lewa Sh20 million every year. 

A unique and unprecedented partnership between civilians and the Government has evolved in the region and has so far worked well to bolster security.

Private wildlife sanctuaries, both communal and individually owned, ask the Government to recruit and provide weapons to the Kenya Police Reservists (KPR) or homeguards. The police and the KWS train the reservists in firearm handling, wildlife and tourist protection. Then the sanctuaries employ the KPRs but overall supervision remains with the police.

The communal ranch has employed its own KPR unit, bought the repeater radio sets and a patrol vehicle. With increased mobility, communication and general patrol tools, the arrangement has reduced poaching to near zero, considerably reduced cattle rustling but also recovered lots of illegal firearms in the past three years in northern Laikipia, Eastern Samburu and Isiolo South.

"We have not had an incident in two years now and very time they steal a cow, we have recovered and cornered the fellows, says John Pameri, head of security at Lewa. 

Richard Paya, the head of security at the Ilng’wesi group ranch, observes that now that wildlife and tourism can pay for the security of wildlife, it is a big subsidy to the Government’s security budget. The partnership is paying off, he declares.

But the biggest pay-off is that the rhino is now safely back where it belongs, and the tourists are coming back. 

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