(TAN): Wildebeest migration, East Africa’s biggest tourist draw and one of Unesco’s Wonders of the World, is going largely unnoticed this year because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
At Kenya’s famous Maasai Mara National Reserve, travel restrictions kept tourists away and only some guides and park wardens were there to watch the spectacular sight of thousands of wildebeest antelopes make their odyssey in search of new grazing pastures.
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“We are alone,” AP quoted tour guide Milton Siloma, who has worked in the region for three decades as saying. “We are supposed to have thousands and thousands of tourists around watching this phenomenon (wildebeest migration).”
An Al Jazeera reporter, who stayed in Maasai Mara for three days, saw less than 10 tour vans during that time. Her tour guide said that in normal times, there would be hundreds of tourist vans around.
The lack of tourists has hit the local economy, which depends on tourism, hard. People living in the periphery on the forests are going hungry and some have even begun hunting animals illegally for food. Several people have been arrested.
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An AP report quoted Maasai Mara National Reserve Chief Warden James Sindiyo as saying, “They kill just because they are desperate to get meat.”
The authorities fear the current situation could give an opportunity for poachers to take advantage of the situation and kill Maasai Mara’s elephants or endangered rhinos.
The authorities fear the current situation could give an opportunity for poachers to take advantage of the situation and kill Maasai Mara’s elephants or endangered rhinos.
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