KWS to fence Nairobi National Park after Southern by-pass construction

The Kenya Wildlife Services Director Kitili Mbathi has announced plans to fence off the Nairobi National Park to stop wild animals from straying from the park once the construction of the southern by-pass road is completed.

Mbathi says construction works at the southern by-pass road has greatly contributed to the interference of the Nairobi National Park fence leading to the straying of the wild animals.

Speaking at the KWS headquarters, Mbathi defended the shooting of the lion nicknamed “Mohawk” on Wednesday at Isinya, Kajiado County saying the king of the jungle went wild after being agitated by locals.

Mbathi says the rangers shot the lion before veterinarians arrived with tranquillizers, to save lives after the lion attacked one person.

Earlier on, a highly placed source within KWS and who spoke on condition of anonymity, blamed the ongoing constructions for lions straying from the park saying that the construction cannot go on with the electric fence on and has to be switched off during the construction process, something he says makes it easy for the lions to stray from the park.

Confirmed that, KWS Director General Kitili Mbathi said the ongoing construction has contributed to the cases of lions straying, but denies that the electric fence around the park is switched off intentionally.

“There has been a bit of infrastructural construction on the Western side of the Park. First, it was the Southern Bypass and now the Standard Gauge Railway,” said Mbathi.

He added that construction workers sometimes hit the fence accidentally and break the current making it easy for lions to escape from the park.

The number of lions escaping from the Park has increased in the last two months with KWS gunning down one of the wild cats in Isinya, Kajiado Wednesday after it turned violent and attacked a boda boda rider, just days after a similar incident along Nairobi’s Mombasa Road.

Yesterday Kenyans irritated by the killing of the endangered feline, took to social media to protest the killing using the hash tag #JusticeForMohawk.

This was after Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) on Wednesday killed one of  Nairobi National Park’s most famous lions after it strayed into Isinya town, attacking a boda boda rider.