Living with lions: Encounters with wild animals on the rise near Nairobi National Park

For many visitors to Kenya’s capital Nairobi, the chance at seeing lions in the city’s world-famous National Park is a major draw. But as residential settlements spring up around the park’s southern border, lions are increasingly wandering into people’s yards, preying on livestock, pets – and sometimes humans.

When AP journalist Khaled Kazziha first visited the wild savannas just south of the Nairobi National Park, this peaceful wilderness seemed like the perfect antidote to the hostile environments that he regularly reported from as a journalist, and he decided that this was where he wanted to live.

Little did he know that there would be conflict in this natural idyll too.

As more and more people move into this area, encounters between humans and predators are becoming more frequent.

On neighbourhood WhatsApp groups, residents share CCTV footage of lions scaling their walls and making off with family pets, and warn each other when big cats come close.

It’s a conservation headache for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), which is tasked with managing and protecting the endangered species, while keeping humans who share space with wildlife safe. KWS estimates that only “just over 2,000” lions remain in Kenya.

Earlier this year, 14-year-old Peace Mwende was killed by a lioness less than a kilometer from Kazziha’s home, in spite of KWS’s efforts to manage the park’s lion population.

For Kazziha, it was a stark reminder of his family’s own encounters with lions since he moved into the neighborhood.

Risks

His dreams of keeping a small herd of livestock came to an abrupt end when a lioness broke into the barn and killed almost everything in it, staying to eat as much as she could until a team from the Kenya Wildlife Service problem animal management unit could be deployed.

Ranger Joseph Ekwanga and his unit patrolled the area until past daybreak, tracking the lioness and then driving a buffalo back into the park that had been walking on a road that typically becomes quite busy with people during the day.

“Buffalo is dangerous for people walking along here,” Ekwanga explains. “Very dangerous, compared to the lions.”

It was also around this time that Simon Kipkirui disappeared.

He had decided, against the advice of friends, to walk home at night from Tuala, a small settlement south of the Nairobi National Park.

Kipkirui had lived on Kazziha’s compound since Kazziha’s family moved into the area and when he wasn’t back the next morning, Kazziha was worried and called his family.

Two days of searching passed before his brother, Daniel Rono, found a bag of maize flour lying in a patch of wilderness near Tuala.

“I moved forward a bit, taking a couple of steps, and then I saw what was left of Simon,” remembers Rono. “I saw his head first. I was in shock. I called out his name, ‘Simon!’ And then I saw his arm. When I tried to take hold of his arm, I saw a gumboot further away. His leg was still in it. I left his leg lying there, and went to pick up his phone. I was just picking up his phone when the lion woke up and made a loud growling sound. Scared, I backed off.”

Simon had been missing for so long by the time he was found that it is not known how he died, or whether the lion that was with him by the time he was found was also responsible for his death.

Lions who kill humans – the notorious man-eaters – are shot to avoid recurrence, and KWS claim to have shot the lioness that killed Peace Mwende the same night of that attack.

With more humans living closer to their habitat, increased awareness on how to avoid lion attacks is needed.

There are government plans to create a migratory corridor between Nairobi and conservancies to the south, which will make it easier for predators in this area to survive in the wild, hunting wild prey.

With the right management, it is hoped that the remarkable wilderness that makes Nairobi such a unique capital city will persist for many future generations.