Only 216 acres?

Hyperbole is not a sound basis for public discourse. Just so you don't think I am unnecessarily unfeeling, I don't care for cruelty, whether it is man against an or man against animal. The reason we subscribe, even with a great deal of hypocrisy, to moral codes to do good and avoid doing bad is so that we are kind to all living beings, whether they "were created in the Image of God" or were created to be our source of food, transport or sport. But at no point does kindness become "the land belongs to animals."

A human being, when it is born, is a helpless weak animal and any number of things could bring its sniveling life to a quick end. Disease, predators, weather, even its parents - all this can cut short the life of a human being at the moment of birth. It cannot communicate except in the most rudimentary manner possible: screaming. It can't walk. It can't use even its nascent instincts to survive - again, except in the most rudimentary form. But because mankind has evolved - a prefrontal cortex, a complex use of symbols and sounds for communication, and a knack for converting nature and things of nature to weapons. It is those weapons that guarantee that we shall always prevail against the beasts of the wild.

The relationship between Kenyans, their government and Kenya's wildlife was always a testy one. Land, quite frequently, had been expropriated from local communities, impoverishing many of their members, and set aside as parks or reserves to which the landless local communities were not welcome and who's benefits were reserve for those who had "invested" in tourism facilities in these parks and reserves. It is no small irony that many of the "investors" were formerly settler communities who had championed the expropriation of the land in the first place. To continue in their perfidy of keeping the "native" population poor, weak and as far away from them as possible, the laws "protecting" wildlife are the most draconian, second only to those on treason.

Now a curious argument is being made, an argument that takes advantage of an apparent disgust with the perfidy that pervades the Standard Gauge Railway project. It is argued that the two hundred and sixteen acres "hived off" from the Nairobi National Park to make way for the railway, and "environmentalists" are livid with the decision. Nairobi National Park is unique for bring in such close proximity to the Central Business District, unheard of in any other country. Twenty years ago when the population of Nairobi, especially that of Kibera, was half of what it is today, that sounded like a good idea. Today, Nairobi is bursting at the seams with over four million residents. A park-in-the-city is an arrogant indulgence.

If it takes the railway project to persuade the government that it is time the wildlife were confined to Amboseli and Tsavo, then so be it. The priority, as mean as it sounds, has always been foreigners. First it was settlers. Then it was their heirs. Now it is investors. The people who have a true claim to that land keep swelling the ranks of the residents of Kibera, the several Mukurus, Korogocho, Mathare Valley, Pipeline, Kangemi, Kawangware, Dandora, Kayole...it is a long list. No tears are being shed for them the way they are being shed for elephants. That is not amoral, but immoral.