Lupita Nyong’o (Forbes)
Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, popular Afro-pop band Sauti Sol and radio personality Caroline Mutoko Wednesday morning launched an anti-poaching campaign in Kenya.
Dubbed “Hearts and Minds” the campaign uses public service announcements, documentary shorts, billboards and social media to urge support for conservation and reporting of wildlife crime.
This comes at a time when the Kenya Wildlife Service is preparing to hold the world’s largest ever ivory burning to be held this weekend in Nairobi, an exercise to be led by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The campaign, headlined by Kenya-based African Wildlife Foundation and WildAid’s “Poaching Steals From Us All”, has an initial focus on elephants and will later cover other threatened species including lions and rhinos and certain species of birds like the vultures.
“Many of us know about the poaching crisis, but too many assume that someone else, the government or a conservation group, will take care of it”, said Daudi Sumba, vice president of Program Design for AWF.
“If we lose our elephants and other wildlife to this threat, it will not be because we lacked the knowledge or tools to save them, but because we all failed to take ownership of our wildlife heritage. None of us can afford to be bystanders when so much is at stake,” he added.
In a 2015 campaign survey of 2,000 Kenyans, more than 96 percent felt wildlife was important for national identity, heritage and the economy. Only 13 percent said they didn’t care about wildlife, 21 percent said it was a nuisance, and 28 percent said poaching didn’t affect them.
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