A baboon eating maize in a farm// Photo Courtesy.
The residents of Akingli A village in North Kisumu location, Kisumu West Sub county are sending their desperate appeal to the Kenya Wildlife Service to move with speed and rescue them from marauding baboons that are destroying their crops.
Narrating the sorrowful incident to The Nyanza Review on Friday December 20, 2024, the irate residents led by their spokesman Mr Nicanor Odongo said that they have incurred huge losses amounting to thousands of shillings as a result of the damage caused by marauding baboons and monkeys.
Odongo said that despite persistent appeal to the Kenya Wildlife Service through the local administration for intervention over the wanton destruction of their crops by the wild animals, they have turned a deaf ear to their appeals, a move he said has caused more harm than good to the local community whose key activity is agriculture which is their only source of livelihood.
“We have ended up incurring huge losses amounting to thousands of cash due to the damages caused by baboons and monkeys, but the KWS has refused to come to our help despite several appeals,” said the resident.
Margaret Guya, also a victim on her part told established that she had taken a loan to the tune of sh30,000 from Akingli CBO of which she is a member and pumped the whole amount in sorghum farming in her one acre parcel of land, but she ended up harvesting nothing after baboons and monkeys destroyed all the crops.
The victim at the same time said that in order to repay the loan, she has been forced to hawk bananas and other fruits in Kisumu daily.
She added that she had wholly depended on agriculture and loan from the CBO to pay fees for her late brother’s children, one a university student in Bondo and another one in a college in Nairobi.
“I am desperately appealing to our President William Ruto to instruct and if possible order the Kenya Wildlife Service to come to the area as a matter of urgency and remove these marauding wild animals which have driven us into abject poverty,” said the desperate victim.
Another victim who spoke on condition of anonymity threatened to take the law into his own hands and kill the baboons and monkeys through poisoning should the relevant authority fail to take the necessary action to address the matter.
“The only option left is to kill the wild animals that have subjected us to abject poverty because the KWS has refused to help us,” said the resident.
