Lion numbers are dropping alarmingly, and better than any other great African savannah animal lion are a true indicator of the health of the African wild.

Unlike elephant or rhino – which are being poached at alarming rates even as their wild population increases – lion are the top of a complex pyramid of life and while masters of their position are beholding to the foundations.

Many important studies have suggested unusual reasons for the decline over the last several decades, but it now seems clear that the reason is quite simple: the wild is contracting.

Of the big cats, only the solitary leopard seems capable of adapting to a world increasingly dominated by man. The others – and especially the lion – seem unable to establish any relationship with a world increasingly dominated by homo sapiens except to war with him.

And the greatest battles are those legendary pitched posses of Maasai warriors in Old Testament regalia: Maasai don’t kill any animals for fun or food. They kill in retaliation, as if a lesson can be learned.

When a lion threatens their goats or cattle Maasai go on a war path, and some of the most spectacular stories out of Maasailand are of the greatest and most noble of the lion hunts. In the old days headmen were often determined by those who successfully killed a lion.

And remember, this isn’t with a gun. It’s with a spear and a knife.

Maasai and lion have coexisted for centuries because they use the same habitat. The grazing necessary for Maasai stock is the same that all sorts of antelope on the plains need. When there was enough for all, everyone was fat and sassy. There were enough antelope for the lion that much preferred them to a smaller goat or a larger and lanky cow.

Maasai cattle were bred not for meat but for milk. The cost/benefit ratio of a lion bringing down a Maasai cow compared to a wildebeest was no contest. The wildebeest could be killed more quickly (cats kill by strangulation, and this takes enormous time with a cow) and the dinner table had lots more meat for the effort.

But times changed. And note, too, that traditional Maasai are declining just as rapidly if not more so than the wild animals in their homelands. And maybe for the same reasons:

Shopping malls, highways, schools and hospitals, modern farms.

It takes no kopjes scientist to know where this is going.

So arise the Lion Guardians! This high profile NGO in East Africa was formed by dedicated conservationists “to promote and sustain coexistence between people & wildlife through ecological monitoring and local capacity building.”

IE: Pay Maasai morani to protect rather than kill lions.

It’s noble, yes. And anything that can give paid work to young traditional Maasai who are themselves increasingly threatened, is good. Especially in the West Kilimanjaro area adjacent Amboseli National Park.

This area is a microcosm of lion difficulties everywhere. Amboseli is one of the most important and well-known big game parks in the world famous especially for its elephant. Elephant are being threatened today by increased poaching, but their numbers are still increasing in places like Amboseli, because … well, elephant get their way.

But Amboseli is surrounded by an increasingly developed agriculture, particularly just to its south in Tanzania. The highlands of Kilimanjaro are perfect for wheat and other cash crop farming.

The towns of Arusha to the west and Moshi to the east are expanding rapidly. The roads are being paved.

All of this – not just farming – needs water. This is draining the existing aquifers and Amboseli is becoming drier and drier. This is a death sentence for much game like buffalo and wildebeest. The increased elephant population results in deforestation, and combined with the loss of aquifer power the reduction of forests is terrible for impala, duiker and a chorus of tiny things like voles and mice that animals like hyaena and jackal need to survive.

So you see … or don’t, so to speak, as time passes. No traditional food, Mr. Lion heads south to where Maasai live with their goats and cattle.

Lion Guardians believes in conserving the wild and in promoting tourism. It’s a two-pronged argument that often sticks it to itself. Tourism is one thing. Conservation is another.

There’s no doubt that tourism suffers as there are fewer lions to see in the wild. But tourism is already suffering drastically, mainly from the political situation in Kenya linked directly to the violently unsettled situation in Somalia. We hope this is temporary.

Whether temporary or not, conservation is another matter.

I grow quite sad thinking the day may come when there won’t be lions in the wild as I’ve seen all my life. But it’s hard to argue to save the lion with the same powerful scientific arguments for saving the Amazon rain forest. We know almost everything possible about lions and the African savannah. There are of course mysteries yet to be revealed … but not many.

The forest provides my oxygen. The veld powers my imagination – no small thing – but not exactly biological.

And what we know mostly is that Maasai recruited to protect lions are getting mauled, and in the end, not saving any more lions and not convincing their young teen Maasai not to go to the city and become certified public accountants.

That’s life.

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 or tourism? Resource development or tourism? A relaxing Sunday walk in the park, or tourism?

And as a result the greater question of biological diversity gets subsumed in this more immediate question.

Last week officials from the Kenyan Wildlife Service held town meetings in southern Kenya to admonish citizens not to try to move ton plus buffalos themselves, while in the west of the country exploding populations of wild dogs have begun to attack farmers’ sheep.

With nearly 15% Kenya’s land wilderness reserves that protect wild animals, it’s hard to find any human area short of the megalopolis of Nairobi that isn’t effected.

But it isn’t just Africa, of course. It’s worldwide. From India to Indiana. From elephants to wolves to beavers. And what’s worse is that the conflict is becoming tinier and tinier!

Two years ago Amanda H. Gilleland of the University of South Florida (USF) completed a meticulous study documenting a growing intolerance for wildlife by the citizens of southern Florida. But not just to cougars and alligators, but to armadillos, possums, racoons, squirrels and … even frogs!

More poisoning, more illegal shooting, more often cruel and unnecessary “eradication.”

Man against Beast.

What’s going on?

Two simple things: (1) increasing wildlife populations which have been unexpectedly even more increased by (2) global warming.

Obviously global warming threatens a few species like the polar bear, but for the vast majority of the planet’s mammalian biomass it’s actually a boon to survival. Wild animals adapt to changing weather much better than people do and warm is better than cold.

When elks move north from Isle Royale because it’s getting too hot for their food source, wolves are then left without a meal. So with the first warm breeze, wolves move towards their next easiest dinner: the nearby sheep farms of northern Wisconsin.

When excessive drought and flooding caused by global warming in the equatorial regions threatens the grass dinners of the African buffalo, the massive herds simply move into people’s backyards and irrigated farms.

And all of this is happening after decades of successful work to conserve wolves and buffalos, boosting their populations even without the help from Chinese factories.

It isn’t as if scientist haven’t been trying to do something. But conference after conference from my point of view seems to slam into the brick wall of the simple fact “there is too much.” There are more people. There are more animals. There are too many.

The host for the black bear/human conflict conference held this year in Missoula characterized his responsibility to sum up the gathering’s scientific findings as “the guy with the broom at the end of the parade, sweeping up the horse apples.”

“Bear managers in North America are victims of their own success,” he concluded.

It’s incredibly ironic that successful big game management, which the Kenya Wildlife Service inscribes as Kenya’s “posterity,” is a main source of the problem. Wild dog is the best example.

Nearly extirpated throughout Kenya ten years ago, a large scale project to vaccinate pet dogs that lived on the outskirts of wilderness areas essentially controlled distemper that had been migrating from those pets into the wild population. Now pets and wild dogs are distemper free, but sheep farmers have become quite ill tempered.

Of course a huge part of the problem would be easily solved if we solved global warming. (Oh, and by the way, that solution would create a few other benefits to humankind as well.)

But even if a sudden, miraculous consensus was found in the world to deal with global warming, it would take a lot longer to accomplish than some sheep farmers in Kiambu or Wausau are willing to tolerate.

Besides, it’s only half the problem. The other half of the problem is that animal populations are growing. In some cases like elephants it’s fair to say they’re exploding, and in almost all cases so are the human populations sitting next to them. “There is just so much flour you can put into a loaf of bread,” my grandmother used to say.

But not resolving the issue to at least some extent will create the defacto solution implicit in the USF study:

Wild animals won’t be considered nice, anymore.

Africa may have presented us with the solution, although it’s expensive.

First accomplished in Namibia with Etosha National Park in 1973, the 500-mile 9-foot reenforced double electrified fence with moat, successfully divided big game from ranchers, and over the last 40 years both ranching and tourism have prospered.

And more recently in Kenya, the Aberdare National Park is now fenced in. The 250-mile long fence included 100,000 posts hand driven into the ground. But it cost what amounts to the average annual wage of one million Kenyans.

There’s no alternative, folks. Some places like Tanzania’s Serengeti and Botswana’s Okavango Delta may remain mostly unfenced for another generation or two, but the day is coming. If we don’t stop the war of Man Against Beast, we know who will win.

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 playing or petting or observing, I can’t help but see “Morgan” in human terms.

But I won’t buy a cemetery plot for him. I won’t subscribe to PetMeds while monitoring his blood sugar and I’m even adverse to putting gooey tick repellent on him. He isn’t human. He’s a pet.

Throughout my career in Africa I’ve encountered numerous researchers who cross the rational limit of thinking of animals as humans. The most flagrant examples are those ascribed to elephants: how they return to where close relatives have died, how they sacrifice their own well-being for another individual.

Balderdash. These are human behaviors that while I concede we can never scientifically measure in an animal with the clarity that I suppose, I trust my intuition on this one. I even question whether pain as we humans understand it is anywhere similar to what animals experience.

Critics will contend I’m setting up situations that allow for animal cruelty, but that, too, is balderdash. I have a hard time understanding why people swat flies with such vengeance or unload aerosols into gardens or are amused at young boys firing beebee guns at the nearest squirrel. I have serious questions about the morality of hunting animals for sport.

But to think of an animal as a child, or parent, or human friend, is to diminish the radiance of our own place in the biology of the world. It’s a terrible shortcut for trying to understand the complexities of life and does significantly more injustice to that life form than accepting it for what it is.

And it’s so absolutely clear to me whether it’s an old man, doting spinstress, recluse or young career-minded couple that has traded procreation for a more balanced 401K – all of whom embrace their dog with the ridiculousness of human attractions — are doing so entirely, utterly and selfishly to assuage their own inadequacies, and at the horrible expense of the meaning of that dog, the beauty of its form in the biomass in which we also participate.

There are so many negatives to anthropormorphizing animals, but one overriding one is that whatever faux emotion is created in the human master, it probably decreases that person’s empathy to humans in need. It likely distracts the master from the misery of his servants.

And, then, ultimately the price is paid, in an inevitable and ultimate way.

Last month a famous relationship between a hippo and a man came to an end when the hippo killed the man.

The jolly guy, a stellar citizen and former military officer, was a farmer who adopted an estranged baby hippo. (As I once adopted an estranged baby baboon.) He raised it with tender loving care. (As I raised mine.) But when baby turned adult, when the full sense of the creature came to the fore, he couldn’t give way. He claimed again and again, to over a quarter million viewers on YouTube, that everything was just fine.

“Humphrey’s like a son to me,” Marius Els told his local South African newspaper. “He’s just like a human.”

Marius Els, 41, had no son, no viable human relationship with a child. Why doesn’t matter, but nor should he have tried to create that relationship as a shortcut with an animal. The hippo bit him multiple times, then pulled him into the river and drowned him on November 14.

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 not in itself a good indication of relative safety. And that statistic, a dozen annually, is actually a very good one representing a safety level far higher, for example, than bear killings in our own national parks in America.

But the event last week is unusual. It does not fit the normal pattern of someone doing something wrong, and that is usually why wild animal killings occur, whether here or in Africa.

The man killed was an experienced guide doing everything correctly close to residential areas of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. His actions, in fact, were heroic. He placed himself between the tourist he was walking with and the elephant. The tourist remains unnamed but is alive and unhurt.

The account of the incident was not published until this past weekend, and that in itself is curious, although it is hard to extrapolate anything meaningful from that given the situation in Zimbabwe, today.

But taking the account at face value, the head guide at a popular safari lodge at the falls was with a single tourist watching animals at the lodge’s water hole. Many lodges are either built near water holes or cultivate them so that guests can watch animals while relaxing at the lodge.

This particular lodge had built a hide, or small enclosed structure, that allowed guests to get much closer to the water hole. Less common, it’s not necessarily unsafe. According to the single press report duplicated throughout the media, the guide and tourist had finished watching a single, aggressive bull elephant chase other elephants from the hole, when they began their walk back to the lodge.

The report calls the guide extremely experienced, and it is clear from the report that he gave his life for the tourist. It was reported that he fired his gun at the attacking elephant, but was not successful stopping it.

The tourist apparently wishes to remain anonymous, and both the lodge and tour company that owns the lodge, African Albida, will not elaborate further on the single press release issued last week.

I have been in several dicey situations with elephant, and lately I’ve become very cautious continent-wide. Nonetheless, the situation in Zimbabwe is unique, and I think this incident is more evidence that it is simply not safe to travel there.

The wildlife in Zimbabwe is under extraordinary stress, significantly more than in other African countries. This is caused by a combination of the country’s economic and political crises.

It’s been reported for some time that Zimbabwean soldiers, themselves rarely paid, are hunting elephant inside national parks. The normal protection that a national park affords animals normally translates into these animals understanding more or less the boundaries between hunting and non-hunting reserves.

They become more approachable within the non-hunting reserves and many spend their entire lives there, becoming used to vehicles and people. The densities of all animals are significantly higher within a national non-hunting park than outside one.

But once those boundaries are lost – as they have been in Zimbabwe – animals will revert to their best natures, their instincts for survival. It is altogether natural for a big bull elephant in musth to charge anything he can see.

Several years ago unscrupulous mostly hunting safari companies began to find ways themselves to place their clients in areas with higher densities of elephant.

A huge scandal developed in 2009 when an American company then calling it self “Cape to Cairo Safaris” actually advertised on its website that it had permission to shoot up to fifty elephants inside Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe’s largest and most famous national park.

The company has since removed any mention of the offer from its website.

Whenever wild animals are harassed like this, they can no longer be considered “safe to watch” using the practices that have become common with a half century of safari tourism.

My own opinion goes further in the case of elephants, today. The elephant population – even within good national parks like Kenya and Tanzania – is too large, and this in itself leads to greater stress among the elephants.

I don’t believe anywhere in Africa is any longer safe to walk close to elephants, armed or not. And I insist that in the camps and lodges located among elephants, that they keep them away with careful practices like the use of air guns and electric fences.

But in Zimbabwe it’s a much different story, altogether. Right now, there are no safeguards against the dangers of elephants, there. The only way to be safe wildlife viewing in Zimbabwe is not go there.

Of of the four top worst buggiest places I’ve ever been in, none are in eastern or southern Africa where I spend much of my life. And that’s important, because so many people who are contemplating a safari ask me first and foremost, “What are the bugs like?”

What bugs?! Compared to the four buggiest places I’ve ever been in, my safaris are like being in an air-conditioned hospital.

FOURTH BUGGIEST PLACE ON EARTH:
North of the Brooks Range in Alaska in June. Searching for the great caribou herds, we found black flies. These pesky critters swarm all over the place, and because there’s little wind, it’s like walking through a suspension of underwater gunk.

But we use head nets, and it’s cool enough to cover the rest of your body, and it isn’t constant. There are patches here, and then down river a bit none at all. But when they bite, they seem to insert their entire being into your bicep or drill through the cheek to your upper molar.

THIRD BUGGIEST PLACE ON EARTH:
Lobe River in the Cameroon. I was there one August but apparently the time of year doesn’t matter. This is African jungle at its finest (worst?). This is where you go to find lowland gorillas. Mother Nature here is august and oppressive.

Traveling on long-boats through 105-degree heat, you can’t wait until it rains, and when it rains it’s a deluge and usually the sun still manages to beat the river and jungle like the rays from some alien space ship. And swimming in this torrential sun heated rainstorm are tse-tse like you just can’t imagine.

Tse-tse are called in loose translation by the local Lobe River pygmies “Devil’s Butterflies.” I understand the devil part, but I guess it’s the streaming blood that drips down your limbs from where they bite in the 100% humidity that leads to the notion of butter.

SECOND BUGGIEST PLACE ON EARTH:
Sepik River in Papua-New Guinea in May. Again, season doesn’t seem to matter. The people who live here try to stay up as high as possible with the belief that river mosquitoes can’t fly high, and there is some truth to this. So homes are built on stilts. The higher, the better.

The mosquitoes are so bad that despite the over 100-degree temperatures and humidity so high that what you see through your sunglasses and head net seems like an underwater experience. Good guides point you in correct directions.

The bugs are so relentless that not only do you wear head nets, but literally wrap yourself in zipped up plastic ponchos and jeans strapped at the ankles by tightly fitting boots. The heat and humidity is suffocating, but the unbelievable and incessant buzzing of the mosquito is fair warning that any attempt at aeration is a certain death. It’s like a million miniature saw mills waiting for you to unzip just a little bit.

BUGGIEST PLACE ON EARTH:
Yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, I was in the buggiest place on earth. It’s my responsibility to walk the dog in the evening. And early Saturday morning I helped the local expert do the USGS bird survey for northwestern Illinois.

Yes, northwestern Illinois in June. Black flies, known also as turkey gnats or buffalo gnats. Of the four buggiest places on earth, these are the bugs have adorned my face, neck, arms and fingers with long lasting welts.

And this is not just an old man developing new allergies. I have been in probably the dozen buggiest places on earth, and this is, hands down, the buggiest.

The entire midsection of the United States is swarming.

My home town bugs are tiny, humped-back flies (ergo, “Buffalo” gnats) and some people call them turkey gnats but they’re one of more than 255 kinds of horrible bugs in the black fly family.

They are blood suckers “with a hankering for exposed skin on the face, neck and ears that … buzz into your eardrums and mouth, crawl under your sunglasses … looking for just the right spot to bite,” writes Mark Bennett of the Terre Haute, Indiana The Tribune-Star.

Outdoor crews whether landscaping or fixing power lines are in retreat this year.

According to Bennett, the buggers leave “a welt, which swells and itches for days and days.”

Dr. Colleen O’Keefe, a veterinarian with the Illinois Department of Agriculture, told reporters this week that the gnat swarms are now so thick they kill chickens by blocking the birds’ nostrils and asphyxiating them, and if that doesn’t work, by sucking the blood from the birds, and if that doesn’t work, by producing fatal allergic reactions.

Why such an infestation? One good reason seems to be that we’ve cleaned up our rivers. These progressive insects only like to breed in pure, pretty fast moving water. Our battle against pollution is compounded by higher and faster running rivers each spring in this era of Global Warming.

There have been many reports in my home near the Mississippi River of bluebird fledglings dying from repeated bites. Several years ago in southern Indiana and Mississippi there were reports of thousands of farm animals killed.

Right now, today, it is literally impossible to walk outdoors without being swarmed by them.

But I’m told as it gets hotter and hotter, they will go away. That’s hard to imagine, as it’s already 95 today. But apparently as the clean water temperatures in which they breed reach a certain level, they die out…

…until next year.

People use vanilla extract, Absorbine Junior and Victoria Secret skin oils as repellents. I use a head net. The only certain way to avoid them is to go on an African safari.

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 and power-sharing Morgan Tsvangirai is getting more attention as he jaunts around the world. And for these two reasons Zimbabwe watchers say things are getting better, in particular, safer and more welcoming for tourists.

They are DEAD wrong.

Zimbabwe’s modern story is one of the most remarkable in the world. In a few short months the dictator Robert Mugabe will tie Africa’s previously second-longest serving African dictator, Mobuto Sese Seko, who was in power for 32 years.

(As far as I know there will be no colorful fetes.)

Number One is Omar Bongo, president of Gabon, who held control for 42 years, a record few believe aging Mugabe can reach alive.

In all three cases, the leader ruined the country while amassing unimaginable personal wealth.

Zimbabwe, though, is remarkable because the other two were installed by foreign powers’ secret maneuvering. I think it’s quite fair to say that France is directly responsible for the bad situation in Gabon, and that the U.S. and Belgium are directly responsible for the bad situation in The Congo.

In Zimbabwe, Zimbabweans are directly responsible for the bad situation in Zimbabwe.

And that’s probably why nothing is going to happen to make things better, even after Mugabe dies.

On the political front, Tsvangirai is a huge disappointment. It seems clear to me that this masochistic egotist had little more than a Mercedes Benz in mind when he let himself be beaten to a pulp numerous times before being invited to join the government.

Like a piece of tough meat, the Mugabe regime has tenderized him. He’s useless. Useless, that is, to the people of Zimbabwe. He’s become prime rib for the regime, who hauls him out on a plate each time they’re criticized from abroad.

So the country has continued to go down the tube.

Yes, there may be less street violence, a result of Tsvangirai’s unending marination. The economy like virtually every economy in the developing world is on the up, but nowhere near at the pace of its neighbors or near a teeny weeny fraction of its potential.

So fuel for vehicles needed to transfer tourists from place to place is still scarce, and new white faces are more often presumed the feared leaving than visitors arriving.

But here’s the worst indicator:

A lot of animals are killing a lot of tourists.

A week ago Saturday five lions brutally killed a tourist near the country’s main national park, Mana Pools. Last month a man was trampled to death by an elephant in Matusadona national park. A veteran conservationist on anti-poaching control in the same place was gored to death by a buffalo a few days earlier.

And even outside the national parks, a resident biking near Kariba was tusked by an elephant.

Animal attacks aren’t unknown, of course, in Africa, but these recent incidents are not normal.

“We appeal to everyone to exercise extreme caution. Animals have become extremely unpredictable,” said Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force head Johnny Rodrigues. Rodrigues explains that uncontrolled hunting – even in the national parks and often by Mugabe regime sportsmen – has “traumatized” the animals.

Every safari traveler needs to exercise caution inside a national park, but unlike Geoff Blythe who was tusked near his home in Kariba, certainly this is not a regular need outside a wilderness.

And the “extreme” caution that Rodrigues advises is simply below the threshold of a vacation’s safety.

So forget about any plans to visit Zimbabwe.

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 to bring down a deer, one of its staple foods.

The cougar population in California has been stable and healthy over the last decade, and there are growing calls to allow sports hunting, although Proposition 117 (passed in 1990) designated cougar as a “specially protected species.”

Not too successfully so Tuesday night.

The 911 call went out at 2:23a. Police called emergency California Fish & Wildlife officials, but they were hours away. The three police chased the cat through numerous backyards finally cornering it.

When asked why a wild cougar would find itself so far from a reserve, police admitted that the animal might have been a “pet.”

Alert. Alert. All 90-pound labs, rots, mastiffs, Shetlands, large boas and all Danes, stay inside your house! I’ve been working on my cat, Hillary, but she’s headed in that direction, too.

The public reaction has been mostly negative, based on the comments left on the San Francisco Chronicle story as well as several local blogs. Much of the criticism is exaggerated, although I personally think the police reaction was unnecessary.

The determination that the cat posed a “real and present danger” is hard to support. There are fewer than a dozen attacks by cougars every year, continent-wide. And the claim that professional wildlife officials were too far away to help… well, do the police know of that little institution known as the University of California – Berkeley? Not sure, but I think they do some zoology there.

Compare this to a much more dire situation in East Africa, where real lions, 4 to 5 times as big, are becoming an increasing concern to growing urban populations. Where up to ten people per year are now killed by them in East Africa.

Predator/human conflicts are not considered an American problem. Thank goodness, because this is certainly not the right solution.

An easy distraction.

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 in the Mara, the increasing media emphasis in Kenya on wild animal attacks can be explained for two reasons: (1) the boundaries between people and wild animals are growing smaller and more stressful, and (2) because the story makes good politics.

It reminds me very much of the regular conservative attacks on vermin at home, particularly wolves. Generally when the rains are good and the stock is healthy we hear very little about wolf attacks. But the moment there’s a drought or anthrax, wolves start eating babies.

“The marauding reptiles of River Tana are killing villagers, particularly women,“ reported Mark Agutu, a reporter for Kenya’s Daily Nation, this weekend.

The Tana River just came out of an extended drought, and there are now floods and mudslides, and farmers have suffered terribly. An important, somewhat contentious, national referendum is occurring in a few months. Muslim and Christians are in the throes of trying to deal with being near an Al-Qaeda Somalia not far from them.

There’s a lot to bother a farmer on Tana River, and one of the easiest ways to distract him from demanding action from his social and political leaders, is to sound the crocodile attack alarm.

This hysteria is not good for Kenya. Most importantly, elephant attacks are on the increase, and they are often much more destructive than lions or crocodiles, and addressing the issue won’t be easy. Expanding this fact to all predators isn’t simply specious but could really delay the need to figure out what to do with elephants.

East Africa’s wild animals are the most numerous and dramatic on earth, and there’s no question that modern society there has a serious problem figuring out what to do with the conflict caused when the wilderness meets the city.

But brazen suggestions that the animals have risen like vampires against peace-loving villagers is not going to get us anywhere.

Maasai cow laced with poison kills entire lion pride.

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 the alleged killer, a Maasai herder, who admitted the poisoning and showed wildlife officials the powder he used. He explained that the lion had been killing his cattle.

Lion have been killing Maasai stock for aeons. And in the old days Maasai morani would spear the lion to death and that usually did the trick. Today, pesticides have replaced spears. In this case, pending chemical analysis, wildlife officials believe the poison was carbofuran – widely available in Kenya because it’s used in the cut-flower industry.

Unlike spearing the marauding lion, pesticides laid out for the intruder end up killing the whole pride, and that’s what seems to have happened in this case. In the old days, the speared (usually) male lion traumatized the pride enough that they left the area. Now, there are no lions left to leave.

Killing wildlife in Lemek is a violation of two laws: a federal law against killing lions (that allowed federal officials, the KWS, to become involved) and a business contract with tourist camps in the area.

So the alleged culprit was arrested and arraigned, but later released. Not on bail, but because “a local politician intervened on his behalf,” according to Wildlife Direct.

Don’t get too angry.

Wildlife/human conflicts are on the rise throughout Africa and I don’t believe they are being properly handled. In Kenya a number of initiatives are underway, including KWS programs to educate herders and farmers on the importance of wildlife; in Tanzania more aggressive actions are being funded by organizations like AWF to actually fence portions of farms against intruders as large as elephant.

But as human populations develop and their needs become greater, and particularly during an economic downturn and following a drought, these initiatives can actually exacerbate not solve the problem.

Lemek is an excellent example. This is too far away from the real wilderness of the Maasai Mara, an extension of a “private reserve” because of presumed tourist interests. Many of Africa’s best camps are in private reserves, but I think these private reserves have become too far out.

This is really an area that should be left to stock grazing, and what the Kenyan government and wildlife officials should realize is that trying to expand it for tourism is a bad idea. It should be developed for agriculture.

Lions should not be protected in this area. They should be confined to areas further towards and actually inside the reserve, and if motivated to move out into these areas, they should be picked up or shot by wildlife officials before such messy and uncontrollable acts of poisoning grow widespread.

Protecting them in areas like these just increases the problem.

Must we choose between elephants and less traffic congestion?

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 into turmoil, even though that might not immediately threaten elephants.

I find myself slowly moving into the southern African camp after a life-time of supporting the East Africans. I have little doubt that relaxing the ban on ivory sales will increase poaching, and that will unequivocally negatively impact tourism in East Africa.

But I’ve seen more and more the destruction that elephants are doing, and the pitiful response of NGOs and governments alike to assist with the human sacrifice. More and more, CITES is looking like a Rich Man’s Treaty.

Yes, CITES protects Kenyan tourism. But what does that mean? Is it protecting revenue to develop the country and sustain its environment, or is it more just giving us rich westerners a better vacation?

The withdrawal from CITES was proposed by Botswana. The 15 nations in the trading and tourism organization Botswana is petitioning would be directed to urge their governments to take official action to withdraw, which will take a long time. But if that ultimately happened, CITES would be thrown into turmoil.

I doubt anything except hot air will come out of the convocation, but it makes us realize once again that just protecting elephant without protecting people begs fairness. Elephant protectors argue that the healthier environment and proper management of these jumbo forms of wildlife actually contributes to economic stability. Politicians, farmers and the poor feel significantly otherwise.

With as much coincidence and political adroitness as the Goldman Sachs hearing before a successful Democratic vote to move forward bank regulation in the U.S. Congress, Botswana and Zambian media last week were incessant in reporting about a family of elephant near Sesheke destroying crops and threatening farmers and villagers.

Sesheke is in the triangular border of Namibia, Botswana and Zambia just outside the famous Chobe National Park, which earns more tourism revenue for Botswana than any of its other protected wildernesses. Botswana argues that the human suffering in the area is simply not worth the tourism revenue, or that the tourism revenue won’t suffer that much if elephants are protected less, or both.

Botswana claims that it could earn up to $7 million annually by selling ivory that was simply harvested from naturally dead animals if it withdraws from CITES. Meanwhile, it spends $1 million annually just to manage the stockpile of collected ivory it can’t sell. These are significant amounts for a poor country.

But alas, the southern Africans aren’t doing their cause much justice this time around. The whole meeting grew farcical yesterday when it elected the Zimbabwean Ministry for Tourism its chairman. There hasn’t been any significant tourism in Zimbabwe for years, and nearly everything Zimbabwe does these days destroys tourism and its own development!

So the serious intellectual argument dissolves in farce. My wrenched little conscience starts laughing hysterically.

Ultimately, I just feel that the Africans have the preeminent position in determining not just the morality but the economy of this contentious debate, and I’m ready to give them the benefit of the doubt.

But if they make their spokesman and point man someone from a country with as destitute morality and economy as Zimbabwe, how on earth can I embrace their arguments?