National Geographic

and often experience a torturous death.“We want to give them a second chance,” saysFrancis Gakuya, head of veterinary services atKWS, which is responsible for the welfare of allwildlife in Kenya. But many lion experts believethat in such situations, it would have been morehumane to kill the troublesome lions on the spot.Meanwhile, contrary to the warden’s the-ory about disrupted prides, the remainingmale continued to prey on livestock. This timeherdsmen— possibly not local—didn’t seekoutside help. They poisoned the male and theother female by lacing a goat or cow carcass withchemicals that killed the lions after they fed onthe dead animal. By the time KWS heard about itand sent a veterinarian to investigate, the lions’bodies had rotted.The vet also found the remains of vultures anda hyena, probably only a fraction of the animalsthat had died after feeding on the contaminatedlivestock carcass—the extended “crime scene”that’s common in wildlife poisonings. Unfortu-nately the vet didn’t take samples for testing,even though certain poisons can stay in a bodyfor a long time. So the only people who knowwhat substance killed the lions are those leastlikely to talk about it.IN KENYA AND ACROSS AFRICA, poison is usedto kill small creatures for food (the impact onhuman health is unclear), poach elephants andrhinos for their tusks and horns, and acquireanimal parts for traditional medicine. Anothervexing use of poison results from encountersbetween people and wild animals—when a lionor hyena kills livestock, for example, or an ele-phant destroys property—and it usually involvesa pesticide, because pesticides are cheap, readilyavailable, and deadly.“Poisoning is a big problem,” Gakuya acknowl-edges. And judging from the Osewan episode,it’s a problem that continues to elude solution.Retaliatory poisoning can happen anywhere any-time, but the evidence of it is often anecdotal andalmost always incomplete. Even so, nearly every-one monitoring Kenya’s wildlife— biologists,KWS staff, and conservation groups—agreesthat poisoning is likely to increase becausehuman-wildlife conflicts are increasing.Kenya’s protected areas are under siege,including all the premier reserves and parks inthe south: Masai Mara, Amboseli, Tsavo West,and Tsavo East. Rapid development—fromhighways, railroads, power plants, and powerlines to heavy industry, high-tech centers, andgrowing cities—is encroaching. Kenya’s popu-lation, already overwhelming local resources,is expected to nearly double to more than 80million by 2050, and open country is being con-verted into farms, blocking animal movements.As a result, lands adjacent to parks—thelarge, collectively owned tracts known as groupranches, as well as other community lands—arebecoming inhospitable to wildlife. For elephantsand other large animals that need those areas formigration between parks, for seasonal dispersalto find food and water, and for giving birth, theonslaught is catastrophic.Kenya has arrived at a crossroads. “We’reno longer preserving our nation as a haven forwildlife,” Thomsett says, referring to Kenya’saccelerating economic growth. “We’re tryingto become the Dubai of Africa.” That may seemextreme, but it’s hard to argue with the facts.The lion is Kenya’s signature wild animal, butfewer than 2,000 remain in the entire country,down from an estimated 20,000 five decadesago, and the species has vanished from about86 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC