Animal Attacks Archive
Maul Special
Posted by jimheck in Amboseli, Animal Attacks, Big Game, Economy, Kilimanjaro, Wildlife Management on December 13, 2012
Pretty story but not very effective: recruit Maasai morani – the legendary warriors that are expert lion killers – to protect lions. Sort of like hiring the ultimate teenage hacker to protect HSBC. Lion numbers are dropping alarmingly, and better than any other great African savannah animal lion are a true indicator of the health [...]
Wild Animals Aren’t Nice Anymore
Posted by jimheck in Aberdare, Animal Attacks, Big Game, Botswana, Kenya, Wildlife Management on November 9, 2012
Pepper spray, moats, blow horns, flashing lights … nothing seems to work. People around the world are getting fed up with wildlife. And it’s becoming frighteningly unclear if the benefits of tourism are greater than the disadvantages that local communities now believe they must bear to support that tourism. And which is more important: agriculture [...]
Animals are Not People
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks, Big Game, Culture on December 6, 2011
Time and again men and women unable to foster human relationships create them with animals whose only ability to resist is to kill them in return. I love animals and always have. I expect someone watching me play with my lab/hound mix would ascribe all sorts of human characteristics to the relationship, and undoubtedly while [...]
Ele Kills Zimbabwe Guide
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks, Zimbabwe on June 20, 2011
Last week a bull elephant killed an employee within a hundred meters of a popular Victoria Falls hotel, further proof that Zimbabwe is not a safe place to travel. There have been about a dozen tourists killed by elephant every year in Africa since tourism began in the 1960s, and reporting a single incident is [...]
Buggiest Place in the Universe!
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks on June 7, 2011
I have been in some of the most uncomfortable, dastardly places on earth. But I just returned from the buggiest place in the universe. Try to guess where this unbelievable, inhumane place is. Of of the four top worst buggiest places I’ve ever been in, none are in eastern or southern Africa where I spend [...]
Don’t Visit Zimbabwe
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks, Politics, Safety on November 5, 2010
Contrary to very strange suggestions I’m reading in the travel press, it’s still too dangerous to safari in Zimbabwe. Tourists are being murdered. And not by political thugs, either. Zimbabwe’s economy is recovering from a hole some of us feared would spew forth the lava from the center of the earth. And the opposition democrat [...]
California Wildlife Management
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks, Wildlife Management on September 2, 2010
Wednesday early morning police (it took three of them) shot (multiple times) and killed a mountain lion found in a residential area of Berkeley, California. A 90-pound mountain lion (also known as a cougar) is roughly the same size as a cheetah, although stronger. The cheetah is built for speed whereas the cougar is built [...]
The Crocodile Attack Alarm
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks, Politics on May 24, 2010
This weekend officials on Kenya’s coast warned of increasing crocodile attacks on local residents. Nonsense. If the reports of increased lion and crocodile attacks in Kenya are true, why are they not true in neighboring Uganda and Tanzania? Do those animals not have visas? Like the incorrectly reported increase in lion attacks made last week [...]
Lions going extinct? Or Maasai?
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks, Big Game, Community Based Tourism, Mara, Safari Lodges on May 21, 2010
Richard Leakey’s excellent wildlife consortium, Wildlife Direct, said today that “Kenya’s lions are on the brink of extinction.” Exaggeration or real warning? Probably both. The organization’s warning followed an incident in late April where three lions were poisoned in Lemek, a private wildlife conservancy north of Kenya’s famed Maasai Mara game reserve. Wildlife officials arrested [...]
Is CITES a Rich Man’s Treaty?
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks, Poaching, Wildlife Management on April 29, 2010
The southern African countries are meeting today in Malawi to decide whether to withdraw from the CITES convention. They almost convinced me to support them, and then, they blew it. The withdrawal from CITES (Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species) by part of the world where half the elephants live would throw the treaty [...]
Elephant Attack
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks, Planning Travel, Safety on January 7, 2010
Yesterday an American woman and her infant were killed by an elephant as they walked out of the Castle Forest Lodge near Mt. Kenya. The name of the woman has not yet been released, but Kenyan authorities said she was the 39-year old wife of a teacher at Nairobi’s International School. The age of the [...]
Hyaena Attack
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks on December 14, 2009
We love animals to death. The reverse is also true. I have a multitude of reasons why we as conservationists and animal lovers must put at the top of our priorities a constant vigilance against anthropomorphizing. If we start to think of the marvelous diversity of life as being just like us, then we lose [...]
Elephant Suit
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks on April 30, 2009
There is no question that it is becoming more dangerous for tourists interacting with elephants. But is the $850,000 award to an injured tourist in Kenya the right response? Last November a Kenyan court awarded Wendy Martin, the wife of a British diplomat at the time serving in Kenya, 65 million Kenyan shillings in compensation [...]