Kenya’s Rare Species of Zebras Under Serious Threat

New from Kenya revealed that there are about 5 Zebras from the West gate conservancy in Kenya which are wandering about in the Naibelibeli plains of the West gate wildlife area meanwhile there are a dozen of camels which were bathed in afternoon sunlight and feed on thorn trees. These Zebras have got saucer-shaped ears and barcode-tight stripes of the black-and-white animals and were kept away from the usual ones but their numbers have currently reduced tremendously and this is attributed to the increase in the number of people who hunt them down and cause illnesses to them that kill them for example they were about in 2,500 but are now remaining 15,000.

This is because currently there are people who are occupying all the land that were they used to graze from and are therefore push out of existence and yet they can be very important for the tourism industry so said Peter Lalampaa, a Samburu tribes man who is the senior manager at the Grevy’s Zebra Trust during his visit to the West Gate. He added that they conservation area is also affected by the upcoming schools and the pastoralists activities for cattle grazing.

This area was pretty large and used stretch into Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea but currently, it occupies the arid region of the northern Kenya and a small pocket of Ethiopia.  Lalampaa’s group together with the Kenya Wildlife Service mentioned that there is a herd of about 500 Grevy’s zebra that are wandering around the area which needed to be taken back into the park to protect them from any kind of harm that the people around may cause them once they become a threat to them and also to get their skins like the case was before 1977.  The commonest type is that ones are those from the plains with a population of about 660,000 basing on the records of the research done 10 years ago and is common in South Sudan and Ethiopia down into South Africa.

The Gravy’s zebra are pretty different from the plains as they can not go without water for five days. The Kenyan wildlife officials in 2006hadthem all vaccinated for anthrax vaccination of the zebras and then had one of them donated to French president Jules Gravy in the late 19th century. Kenya already forbidden the sale of game meat in 2004 in any effort to stop poaching and hopefully that will help to protect them.