Colonel Mervyn Hugh Cowie was born in Nairobi in 1909 and lived in a hut at a farm in Kiambu, north-west of Nairobi. In later years an incident happened to teach him that man and beast can live in harmony. One day, while passing a lioness in what is today the Nairobi National Park, he came off his motorbike. The bike pinned him to the ground as the lioness lay watching him and he was unable to move, with blood oozing from a cut in his leg.
The curious lioness walked towards him, pinned under a lump of metal, and stopped just a few feet away. The lioness sat down and they stared at each other for some minutes while young Mervyn prayed that the smell of petrol was greater than the smell of his own blood.
Eventually the lioness got up and walked off. Because of this incident he realised that man and beast need not spend their time killing each other, and he said: "But first, man must learn to suppress his desire to kill, and beasts must be afforded a place to live." He tirelessly pursued the colonial government to set aside National Parks in Kenya, starting with the Nairobi National Park.
Towards the end of 1945, the government established national parks and appointed trustees. Cowie was appointed executive director. In December 1946, the Nairobi Park was established, then later Tsavo National Park, Aberdare and Mt Kenya Parks, Amboseli and many others, including the Serengeti in Tanzania and several parks in Uganda.
We hope that conservation efforts will continue to help keep Kenya’s God given natural heritage intact for future generations, especially Kenya’s first natural love – the Nairobi National Park.
I believe, if he'd been alive today Mervyn Cowie would have made sure that an alternative route was taken for the proposed Standard Gauge Railway to bypass the Nairobi National Park.
Nairobi National Park
is open daily from 6am to 7pm.
For more information see
www.kws.org or www.nairobigreenline.com.