Poaching is bad. So is poverty. Or death.

If we went by the reporting in Kenya's print media, then Kenya is on its way to hell in a handbasket. The public wage bill has become "unsustainable" and this too while the National Treasury relies on one set of numbers to paint a rosy picture for foreign investors. The crime wave is unremitting, and this too while Inspector-General Kimaiyo's boys keep on shooting armed criminals dead on a daily basis. Our national highways have become death traps, and this while the Engineer Michale Kamau insists that drink-driving-related deaths have reduced by twenty-five per cent. The state of English language learning is in the toilet and this while Kenyans continue to win accolades overseas for their writing. Meanwhile starvation stalks the largely-ignored Northern Kenya. Now, Dr Paula Kahumbu, the boss of Wildlife Direct, a wildlife conservation outfit, wants the President to pile on more on his plate and tackle the "murder" of elephants and rhinos by poachers in Kenya's parks, reserves and conservancies.

In the last week, at least ten rhinos have been killed, either in the national parks or the privately-owned-and-operated conservancies. In Dr Kahumbu's estimation, and those who are standing by her scaremongering, this constitutes the greatest threat to Kenya's heritage. those in the anti-poaching industry use words like "slaughter" and "murder" and sentimentalise the "majesty" of elephants and rhinos. They logically acknowledge that national parks, game reserves and wildlife conservancies are located among debilitating poverty and human privation but argue for the "equitable" sharing of the benefits accruing from the conservation of wildlife. What is striking though, when one listens to Dr Kahumbu and her colleagues, is that the pain they feel for elephants and rhinos that have been killed is genuine; the empathy they express for the poor Kenyans living around wildlife zones seems manufactured, ersatz.

This is the heart of the debate and it is why they are unlikely to find the President of Kenya becoming the standard-bearer of the animals-first movement that Dr Kahumbu and her colleagues seem to be spearheading. The challenges that the peoples of Kenya face will not be resolved if the Government of Kenya devotes even more money and manpower to the protection and conservation of wild animals or the arrest, prosecution and incarceration of poachers. The animals-first movement scored a big win with the enactment of the new Wildlife Conservation and Management Act earlier this year; one of its penalties is a minimum of twenty million shillings for being in possession of wildlife trophies. But by making animals the focus of the law, and not the people who must live with these dangerous and frequently unpredictable animals, they missed the point by a wide mile.

One of the signature pointless events of the past week too has been the National Dialogue on the Public Wage Bill. The argument is that if the government continues to spend ever larger sums of money on its recurrent expenditure, it will not have the resources to build the infrastructure that will live the twenty-five million Kenyans living below the poverty line. Therefore, before the government allocates additional resources to protect elephants and rhinos, it must be persuaded that the outcome of the additional resources will be a significant contribution to the alleviation of poverty among those twenty-five million Kenyans. Dr Kahumbu and her colleagues have failed to do that. And their cavalier and heartless dismissal of the pain and destruction that elephants and rhinos wreak when they go on the rampage will not win hearts and minds among the starving twenty-five million.

Wild animals are big tourist attraction in Africa, and in Kenya in particular. The tourism industry is sustained by the Big Five and other wildlife. But the tourism industry is also responsible for untold suffering among the poor. The employment standards, even among the five-star "safari camps" in the game parks and national reserves are appalling: poor pay, poor labour relations, long working hours, poor medical coverage and an uncertain tenure are just some of the obvious one. When you add in the European pederasts who go after the children of those working in these camps, the benefits of elephants and rhinos begin to pale in significance. The subtle racism perpetuated by conservancies is the dirty little secret that remains unmentioned.

Calling for the President of Kenya to identify himself with a cabal that has contributed little to resolving the big ticket troubles of his government is asking for too much. In this, this blogger stands four-square with the President. If the anti-poaching industry wants the President's buy in, they must demonstrate how doubling the four billion shillings allocated to the Kenya Wildlife Service or doubling its paramilitary forces to six thousand will reduce the poverty of the Maa peoples living around the Mara, the Akamba and the Taita living around the Tsavo or the Agikuyu living around the Aberdares. If they can't, they are best advised to carry on as before by shaking down "donor" partners for more guilt-laced cash and wringing their hand piteously at anti-poaching workshops and seminars held in global destinations.