By Silver Bugingo
Government of Rwanda has committed to the construction of a 120-kilometer electric fence to run the boundary of the park at a cost of US$2.7 million. This aims at protecting humans resident around the park area from attacks by wild animals. A fenced Akagera park has high value investment potential and it enables restocking the park with nearly extinct lions and rhinos…
Disturbing stories of crop vandalism and human injuries caused by an invasion by a herd of about 70 elephants had recently dominated the media.Elephants invaded over hundred families of Kayonza district, Eastern province destroying more than 80 hectares of crops. Intervention of a noisy military helicopter scared the beasts away.
In quick response to the elephant attacks, the legislature has deliberated on a new law that obliges the state to compensate persons attacked by wild animals from any gazzetted national park.
However, incidences of vulnerable citizens in the Eastern province dying at the wildlife attacks are more than two decades old. Many people who are well acquainted with the Rwandan dynamics can confirm that historically hundreds of people resident in the park peripheries have been killed and/or injured by wild animals.
Other statistics indicate that of the 110 elephants, about half are outside the park roaming in the army training area and at occasions; they go into the villages, raiding crops and sometimes injuring residents.
records indicate that the attacks started as far back as late 1990s. Last year alone, sixteen people were seriously injured, mainly by buffalos and hippos while five people got killed. Property destroyed in form of agricultural fields and buildings and other propertyis valued at billions.
Talking about the implications of the uncontrolled wildlife dangers yesterday, a Gatsibo district resident who is here on a visit narrated of a lady who was gored by a buffalo just next to the park and she in hospital now; this happens, it’s a weekly occurrence, and the statistics make for quite horrific reading.
In fact, this will remind many readers of a horrible tale in a novel titled: “Through it All: The Choice is Rejoice” by Mr. Live Wesige. The author tells of how his parents miraculously survived loin’s attack while still in his mother’s womb, to an impossible birth that doctors in Belgium said would surely kill him but he was really born and survived just at the will of God.
The well-to-do couple had in 1983 driven and paid a visit to relatives in Karangazi survived an accident involving a collision with motor-taxi, husband on the driving wheel was rushed to a Clinique nearby. The helpless pregnant woman remained at the scene and was attacked by lioness that seriously injured her but didn’t kill her.
To cut a long story short, wildlife in the national park has been causing human deaths even during the late Juvenal Habyarimana’s regime. His regime had denied hundreds of refugees their inviolable right to citizenship saying “the country was densely populated” and that “the national park was as valuable to the country like a heart to a human body”, yet it wasn’t protected with the necessary electric fence.
Wandering wildlife does not only pose a threat to the property and livelihoods of people living nearby. Reliable sources will tell you that there used to be close to 300 lions in the park and they’ve all been wiped out.
In 2005,when a lion killed livestock, the owners would poison its carcasses. The lions would keep coming back to the carcasses, ingest the poison and you’d get a couple of them dying indiscriminately.
The new fence has the potential to curb disease transmission between wildlife and livestock. Absence of a fence had prevented investment,in outside hotels and other investments near the park.
Effective fencing of the park will enable reintroduction of lions and rhinos to make the site a “big five” reserve, Havemann says. A lot of tourists come to the country to see the mountain gorillas and we’d like to keep those valuable input in the country rather than going to Kenya or Tanzania to see the big five.
Enacting a compensation law to victims is not the utmost solution. Damaged property may be valued in monetary terms and compensated but human life in invaluable.
Leave a Reply