A male black rhino has been killed at Paradise plains in Musiara Conservancy near the world-famous Maasai Mara Game Reserve in Narok County yesterday.
Narok County Commissioner Farah Kassim said the poachers killed the rhino at 2am and made away with the rhino horn, leaving behind the animal’s carcass.
Speaking to the media yesterday after he held County Environment Committee meeting held in Narok, Farah said security personnel were on the ground tracking down the poachers
Another rhino was killed in the area last month by people believed to be from a neighbouring country. Farah said most of the killings were being executed with the use of guns and poisoned arrows and spears.
“The poachers have devised new methods of killing wildlife and they have resorted to using poisoned arrows in order to avoid being deducted by the KWS rangers,”said Farah
He asked the chiefs and their assistants to help in giving information that will help curb the vice.
This comes as Conservationists have raised red flag over the survival of elephants and other endangered species in the world famous Maasai Mara Game Reserve and the conservancies around it after Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) reported that 10 jumbos had been killed by poachers in the area in the last five months.
Siana Wildlife Trust chairman Sammy Nkoitoi said that the 1980s poaching which saw a decline in elephant and rhino population in the park was returning slowly.
Nkoitoi said that poaching for elephant tusks in the Mara-Serengeti region in the recent past across the border was on the increase and said that there was need to take quick and decisive measures to curb the poaching that is geared towards reducing the animal population.
He said there were over 2, 000 elephants in the larger Mara, adding poachers have devised new methods of killing them while noting that they have resorted to using poisoned arrows in order to avoid being deducted by the KWS rangers.
The elephant tusks and the rhino horns are said to be on high demand in some Asian countries where they are said to be used to make various ornaments and are said to also be of medicinal value.
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