MOURNING
02-01-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
Kenya loses its country's first great conservationist, British-born Kenyan Richard Leakey. Paleontologist of international fame, who with his wife and colleague discovered the remains of Turkana Boy, on of the oldest hominid on earth, at the border of Kenya with Somalia, Leakey died after a brief illness at the age of 78 years.
He will go down in history, among the many battles for the protection of animals and nature in Kenya, for having founded the Kenya Wildlife Service, transforming the protection of the savannah in an organized system with a paramilitary corps dedicated to fighting poaching, under the government of President and friend Daniel Arap Moi. Leakey was also for years the director of the National Museums of Kenya, which he led and organized with knowledge and intelligence. In recent years he was engaged in the project of a "Museum of Humanity" in the middle of the Rift Valley, whose design he entrusted to the well-known architect and designer Daniel Libeskind.
Leakey's life and his stubbornness, which also led him to suffer an attack that limited his walking and caused him physical problems for more than thirty years, was told in his autobiography "Nature in Danger", published in Italy, which we have reviewed here: https://www.malindikenya.net/it/articoli/parole/libri-sul-kenya/la-natura-in-pericolo---richard-leakey.html
It was President Uhuru Kenyatta who was the first to announce the passing of Leakey, an edgy character, often over the top but undoubtedly a scholar, researcher and passionate about Kenya and its treasures so much so that he is considered one of the most important men in the recent history of this country.
"On behalf of the people of Kenya, my family and on my own behalf, I send heartfelt condolences and sympathies to the family, friends and associates of Dr. Richard Leakey during this difficult period of mourning," Kenyatta wrote on his social profiles.
"My struggle to save Africa's natural treasures".
This is the eloquent subtitle of an autobiography written with four hands with the journalist Virginia Morell.
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