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Kenya’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife has published a new Bill that legalises the killing of “excess” wildlife — besides allowing individuals to sell animals on their ranches.

The Wildlife (Conservation and Management) Bill, 2009, set to be tabled before the cabinet soon, splits the role of managing the country’s wildlife between the Kenya Wildlife Service, a Wildlife Department and the Kenya Wildlife Authority.

It also provides for the establishment of two funds — a Wildlife Conservation Trust Fund and a Kenya Wildlife Service Endowment Fund — to cater for the maintenance of national parks and to finance security operations as well as funding KWS.

The Bill proposes that the Wildlife Authority be similar to the Wildlife Division of Tanzania, which is said to subsist on revenues earned from issuing permits for different forms of wildlife use.

To raise its own income, the Wildlife Division of Tanzania has been increasing hunting quotas arbitrarily and sometimes in disregard of the state of wildlife population in the country.

Although it retains the ban on sport hunting, the Bill provides for culling and “cropping” or killing of excess wildlife for their products and trophies.

“Subject to the rules and regulations made under this section, the Minister may grant cropping to be undertaken in game farming and ranching operations,” it states.

It assigns the Wildlife Authority the role of keeping records of trophies obtained from cropping and culling operations and gives the relevant minister powers to “authorise local processing and sale of wildlife trophies from the cropping activities.”

It also allows individuals to sell wild animals, which they host in their farms.

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“In 2006, the wildlife policy underwent a national consultative review process spearheaded by the then Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife” said Elizabeth Wamba, head of communication at the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Ms Wamba said that before the 2007 Bill was drafted, the ministry had constituted a national Steering Committee, which held sessions across the country before submitting its report to a Technical Committee that then drafted not just the Bill but also a wildlife policy.

Now, IFAW is taking issue with the fact that a “caucus” of big wildlife bodies and top ranchers have attempted to overturn the entire process.

“Any attempts at changing these documents can only be construed as hijacking the process from the people of Kenya,” said Ms Wamba.

It is only fair that any new proposals undergo a similar all inclusive consultative process before they are adopted in the draft policy and Bill,” she said.

“Furthermore,” she added, “some of the members of the technical caucus and its partners made presentations directly to the Steering Committee both in writing and verbally during the two national symposia that were held when the review process was being conducted.”

The same sentiments were expressed by a group of 20 community groups and NGOs, which have formed the Kenya Coalition for Wildlife Conservation and Management.

The group had written to Mr Wekesa on January 21, complaining of the changes.

“The coalition deems it curious and out of order for the group calling itself the Technical Caucus of Conservation Organisations in Kenya, the Kenya Tourism Federation and the Kenya Private Sector Alliance to go behind the back of the majority stakeholders and lobby the ministry to review the Bill,” says the letter.

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