Three people are nursing serious injuries at Nanyuki Teaching and Referral Hospital (NTRH) after they were attacked by a lion in the Kimugandura area of Laikipia East Sub County.
The stray lion that was not immediately established from which conservancy it had come from, further killed a sheep and left another injured before residents killed it.
Confirming the incident, Kenya Wildlife Service Laikipia Senior Warden Rose Malenya said the Tuesday incident was unfortunate and encouraged residents to alert authorities once they spot any stray wild animals roaming their locations to avoid attacks.
“For lions, you can’t really predict their time because they attack very stealthily, and again, they are not as big as elephants, where you can spot them and drive them away. We always encourage communities, through their chiefs, to call us when they see wild animals in their vicinity,” said Malenya.
Ms. Malenya said that in Laikipia, wild animals roam freely, with some confined to the conservancies; however, they are keen to prevent human-wildlife conflicts.
“Laikipia is land where wildlife roams; there are some in conservancies and others outside protected areas. So we can’t authoritatively say this lion came from a conservancy,” pointed out Ms. Malenya.
Last month, another trader was seriously injured by a lone elephant in Doldol Market, which had strayed from nearby conservancies after breaking through an electric fence.
According to data on human-wildlife conflict in Laikipia County from KWS, over 130 cases have been reported since 2016.
Speaking in Laikipia recently, State Department for Wildlife Principal Secretary Silvia Museiya said that the government had released about Sh5.7 billion to compensate victims of human-wildlife conflicts countrywide.
To address human-wildlife conflict in Laikipia, Ms. Museiya said that the government had further allocated funds to drill boreholes for easy accessibility of water by wildlife and reduce competition for that precious commodity between humans and wildlife.
Ms. Museiya added that ranchers in the area were expected to fence their private lands, aimed at ensuring wild animals do not invade residents’ farms and destroy properties.
By Muturi Mwangi
