In Kenya and Tanzania, there is no peace for owls either.
In addition to the poaching, which mainly involves elephants for their precious ivory tusks and which has recently been baffled by the resumption of hunting on the border between the two countries, about which the Tanzanian authorities often turn a blind eye, and the killing of other animals for their meat or for the stupidity of trophies, are also joined by criminals trading in owl eggs who, by stealing the eggs laid, are contributing to the extinction of the raptor species in Africa or at least to their migration elsewhere. Scholars at the Global Owl Project have long reported the problem.
The Kenya Wildlife Service believes that the trade in owl eggs, which is also expanding on a large scale on the coast between Kilifi and Watamu, has links to organised crime that would sell them in the Middle East and even to witchcraft.
Environmentalists fear that illegal traders are responsible for the extinction of bird species in Naivasha, Nyahururu, Kajiado, the Laikipia Plains and Meru National Park, as well as more recently in the Arabuko-Sokoke forest.
It must be said that on the slopes of Mount Kenya, since the last century, the owl was considered an omen of misfortune by many tribes, and was therefore hunted and killed for it.
But other beliefs, especially from Rwanda and Uganda and Tanzania, as well as from the western part of the Kenyan Rift Valley, lead to the belief that owl eggs are used for special healing rituals, by sorcerers of white magic. Especially it is believed that they can cure tumours and serious childhood illnesses.
Already a few years ago, Kws had feared that the eggs were worth about 20 thousand shillings each, but today for a pair of eggs (owls lay at intervals of two or three days and the eggs do not hatch at the same time, so it is not easy to find more than two premature ones at the same time) one could pay as much as 100 thousand shillings today. In short, owl eggs per kilo can cost more than twice the price of a rhino horn and about 80 times the price of ivory.
The problem in Kenya, as well as in neighbouring Tanzania, is that laws against the violation of wildlife species other than the most famous animals of the savannah are hardly ever enforced and there are no penalties, besides the obvious problem of corruption.

(Photo by Paolo Torchio)