I read a bioghraphy of a big game guide out of Zimbabwe who did guided hunts before they outlawed hunting there. I think he immigrated to the US and wrote for the NRA. The book said that after they outlawed hunting, they couldn't afford to pay for the rangers and others to keep poachers out. They had gangs with AK47's coming in and slaughtering elephants and other animals for the horns, tusks, etc. The book said they were coming out of Samolia.
I think you meant Kenya and not Zimbabwe. Kenya is right next door to Somalia, and Zimbabwe is several international borders away. In fact, Zimbabwe had a very vigorous wildlife conservation program for a long time - they were splitting the safari dollar profits with local villages, which decided how to distribute the money themselves; some gave cash payments to each family, some built schools, and one built a grist mill and started milling grain for surrounding villages. This way the locals saw VALUE in the wildlife -
a renewable natural resource! - and came to realize that poachers were stealing THEIR property. So poaching was fairly well controlled for a long time.
Of course, Mugabe eventually ran off the rails and started seizing land for his cronies, so I'm not sure what the situation is in Zimbabwe today.
I know Kenya outlawed hunting because the safari companies were getting in the way of the poachers and reporting instances of poaching, which was an embarrassment to some Kenyan government officials . . . which of course were getting paid off by the poaching operations they weren't actually running. (It was generally accepted that these corrupt officials included members of old Jomo Kenyatta's own family.)
Oh - was the biography you're thinking of by any chance Finn Aagard's?
