Kenya on right path with intelligence-based wildlife conservation

As Kenya prepares to torch the largest Ivory and rhino horn stockpile on Saturday, WildAid Director Peter Knights believes the country’s focus on intelligence-based conservation is appropriate in dealing with kingpins of poaching.

In an interview with Capital FM News, Knight acknowledged that Kenya has an appropriate legislation system in place to deal with wildlife crimes hence the need to depend on intelligence to find market controllers of rhino horns and elephant ivory.

“If we catch the big guys we can really deal with them. But catching them is a little bit difficult and we are moving more to intelligence-based operations rather than patrolling,” he said as the country prepared to set ablaze 105 tonnes of ivory and 1.35 tonnes of rhino horn.

Knights echoed Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) Director General Kitili Mbathi who on Tuesday explained elaborate measures undertaken by the organisation to equip its officers with modern equipment and skills of acting on intelligence reports to deal with poachers and those protecting them.

This, Knight explained, was the best way to weaken the market wildlife products instead of concentrating only on poachers.