Hundreds of cattle belonging to Samburu and Pokot herders who invaded ranches in Laikipia have started to die of starvation.
Laikipia North MP Mathew Lempurkel who styles himself in his election campaign as Nkauwo ee Nkishu -- Shield of the Cattle -- alleges the KDF have killed thousands of invaders' cattle.
The truth is rather different. Witnesses confirm police have shot scores of cattle in gunfights with bandits hiding among their herds.
But majority of the cattle the MP boasts he is shielding are dying due to the lack of pasture and water after herders rampaged through private lands, devastating 500,000 acres of previously well managed pasture.
The invaders, from Baringo, Samburu and Isiolo, had already destroyed 14 million acres of grazing in their home counties.
Instead of selling off excess livestock, or opting to rehabilitate pasture in their vast homelands, they opted to squeeze 200,000 cattle, sheep and goats into better managed Laikipia farms, overrunning smallholders and ranches alike.
This strategy of invasion, incited by local politicians, wrecked the web of grazing agreements ranchers had already made with pastoralists to help sustain them through the dry months.
The invasions brought havoc to the ranches in a campaign of violence which looks like a political land grab rather than an innocent search for grass, especially as the invaders made lives for themselves much worse due to their criminality.
They have looted or vandalised water borehole machinery, cut water pipes, burned tractors and bowsers used to transport water - and set fire to many thousands of acres of pasture.
The farm owners, meanwhile, have had to watch their own cattle starve - to the extent that the invaders' animals were for a long time fatter - while also being targeted by armed livestock rustlers who raided animals daily.
The landowners responded by selling their cattle, or buying in fodder, or transporting them to rented pasture in the Rift Valley.
Meanwhile the invaders' herds trampled the ranches to dust, until the dams ran dry. All the grass is finished and the herders are resorting to cutting down ancient olive trees to feed their animals leaves. Diseases like Foot and Mouth have ripped through the herds.
From the air this week, pilots observed the invaded ranches littered with multitudes of carcasses - sheep, goats and cattle.
Herders are trekking in all directions now in search of anything to survive on, and long lines of skeleton thin cows can be seen on all the roads in northern Laikipia.
Some herders lamented that if only they had stuck to the grazing agreements negotiated with ranchers - rather than invading, burning tourism lodges and murdering farm staff and smallholders - they might have fared better than they are now as their animals face mass death.
In the longer term, livestock experts say this catastrophe underlines the need to rehabilitate pastoralist counties destroyed by overgrazing, to improve marketing, veterinary standards.
Most of all, there is the urgent need to get Samburu and Pokot children into school, so that they have alternative options in life, other than just a future as a cattle herder.
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