Residents of Ololongin and Kirindon in Transmara West, Narok county, have asked Kenya Wildlife Service officials to take action against wild animals harassing them.
They said the animals often wander from the vast Maasai Mara National Park and conservancies to raid their homes when night falls.
Speaking at a baraza convened by Transmara KWS boss Phillip Cherop and deputy county commissioner Hesborn Khayesi, the residents said they had lost livestock and farm produce worth millions of shillings.
In the meeting held at Kimerok Primary school, residents lamented the slow pace of response by the wardens in coming to their aid when animals raided the farms.
A resident, Julius Kayuni, said he spends his nights in chasing away hippos that sneak from the Mara and Ngebei rivers into his maize farms instead of spending them indoors with his family.
“Here it’s a delicate balance between survival and tending to your wives and children,” he told the Star.
The residents also lamented the long wait for compensation from the government. Two separate families that lost a woman to a hippo attack and a teenager to a crocodile are yet to receive compensation money two years after the incidents.
Following the concerns, Cherop and Khayesi said the residents will be provided with solar lamps and ballistics to use in scaring away the animals as a short term measure as they initiate long term plans to address the problem.
Cherop said fencing will be long a term measure and that compensations were underway and will be sorted soon
Ole Suntu Kimongo, a resident at Ololongin area said he lost his five goats and two sheep to a heard of hyenas Tuesday last week in a night of rampage.
“We were sleeping and barely heard the animals creep in as it was raining then. It was only when I went to check on them at four in the morning that I was greeted by the sorry sight of a carcass in the pen,” he told the Star.
His neighbour, Dominic Konjela, said he lost two acres of his blossoming maize to unrelenting zebras and gazelles from the wild Mara.
“Look, there is nothing left to feed my family. Our livestock is in constant danger. We cannot kill the wild animals because the government is earning from,” he said.
Koidungu Samuel, on his part, said the constant raids by the wild animals had been stretching their patience thin over the years and it is time action was taken.
A sack of maize in markets in the area, he said, now retails at Sh4000 owing to the continued destruction of crops by the elephants and gazelles.
The farmer said efforts to plant other crops like pumpkins and potatoes have been met by failure due to bands of hungry wild animals.
They want the government to create a buffer between them and the animals.
“Since we have reined in our morans from killing the animals what stops you from controlling the movement of their animals? Let them reciprocate the gesture we are showing them,” Samson Mugenya, a village elder from Kirindon, said.
(Edited by O. Owino)
