Jon Lee Anderson on the shooting of the wildlife conservationist Kuki Gallmann in Kenya and the growing trend of violence against environmental activists.
The shooting, by armed raiders, of the wildlife conservationist Kuki Gallmann on April 23rd is the latest in a series of attacks against environmental activists in Kenya and neighboring African countries. Gallmann, who is seventy-three years old and the author of the best-selling book “ I Dreamed of Africa, ” the basis for the Hollywood movie of the same title, was shot twice in the stomach. She survived the attack, and is recovering in a hospital in Nairobi.
Others have been less fortunate. The wildlife conservationist Joy Adamson, the lion conservationist and author of “ Born Free, ” was murdered at her bush camp in Kenya, in 1980, by a former employee. Nine years later, George Adamson, her widower, was murdered by poachers in a Kenyan national park. Dian Fossey, the mountain-gorilla expert and author of “ Gorillas in the Mist, ” was murdered at her wilderness camp in Rwanda, in 1985. As in many of these crimes, the specific motive remains unclear, but the pattern of danger is not. More recently, in 2006, Joan Root, a well-known wildlife filmmaker, was gunned down at her home in Lake Naivasha, where she had waged a controversial campaign to curb commercial farming and fishing interests.
Gallmann, who was born in Italy, moved to Kenya in 1972 and fell in love with the country; she stayed on, and eventually become a Kenyan citizen. She is the owner of a ninety-eight-thousand-acre tract of land that she turned into a wildlife conservancy. Gallmann’s land is located in Laikipia, a stunning area of temperate Rift Valley highlands that borders Kenya’s dry northern plains, which are the traditional rangelands of pastoralist tribesmen, including the Samburu and Pokot people. An East African drought has severely affected the rangelands, and cattle herders, who nowadays are armed with AK-47s, have in recent months been aggressively pushing into Laikipia’s mosaic of privately owned wildlife conservancies, ranches, and safari lodges with their livestock. In response, the Kenyan Army has made several attempts to dislodge the herders from Laikipia’s privately owned lands, including Gallmann’s, and have gone so far as to shoot their cattle. In retaliation, the herders have become raiders, torching buildings, poaching wildlife, and sometimes killing people. In March, they killed a British Kenyan who was inspecting the remains of his safari lodge, which they had burned down. Several policemen have also been killed. One of Gallmann’s own safari lodges was burned down, on March 29th, and, in the incident, the raiders also shot at her daughter, Sveva, who escaped unharmed. The attack that wounded Gallmann took place as she was returning from a visit to her burned-out lodge, accompanied by armed guards. Pokot raiders apparently fired on her vehicle from a nearby hill.
As ever, tribal politics and duelling economic interests are involved. A Kenyan M. P. from northern Laikipia was recently arrested and charged with inciting the herdsmen to attack the area’s conservancies and lodges, which attract well-heeled Western tourists; he has denied the charges. The Kenyan government’s key constituency is ethnic Kikuyu, and in the north it also has the loyalty of the ethnic Turkana people, while the Samburu and Pokot are aligned with the opposition.
