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Giant and DwarfKenyan paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey 117 touched on this themein his book Wildlife Wars. 118 In 1989 Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi appointed him headof the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department in Kenya in a surprising move.Poaching was rampant in the country at the time as was unregulated ivory trade, whichinvolved wildlife conservation officials, ministries and many of the political elite in thecountry at the time.It would have been unthinkable for Leakey to refuse the public appointment fromthe President, but he did understand the difficult task of constructing a completely newKenya Wildlife Services (KWS) agency. Of course, the simple matter of creating the agencywouldn’t be sufficient to repress poaching and ivory trading. It was necessary to trainand equip modern units of rangers capable of defeating the poachers in bloody combat.Leakey in the end, thanks to his extraordinary resiliency and headstrong nature, was ableto achieve this goal but his efforts to battle corruption met with strong counter-punchesfrom his opponents, including unsupported claims that the KWS preferred members of theKukuyu tribe (Leakey’s ancestors had been missionaries to the tribe) and that he was raisinga private army. These claims were, however, ineffective but did manage to create anatmosphere of paranoia and a lack of confidence in President Arap Moi towards Mr. Leakey.In countries where there is no threat or fears of an armed coup, this idea of overthrowinga government by state conservation staff would be restricted to clients locked up in psychiatricfacilities, but in Kenya, this was a serious matter taken up by the highest political leaders.And it didn’t even involve the army! Leakey later would nearly die in a plane crash whenthe aircraft’s motor was damaged by saboteurs. No one ever investigated the incident todetermine who had tried to get rid of him.117 Richard Leakey is the son of world-famous paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, whose discoveriesof Australopithecus and other hominids in the Olduvai Gorge, in the Laetoli in Tanzania andRusinga Island near the Kenyan shores of Lake Victoria were key in the determination that East Africawas indeed the cradle of modern humanity. Richard himself continued in his family’s work and madeimportant contributions to the development of our species and its ancestors with important fossildiscoveries near the Omo River in Ethiopia and in the area around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.118 Války v divočině: Můj boj za záchranu přírodního bohatství Afriky, Prague: BB Art, 2003. The original namefor this book co-authored with Virginia Morell is Wildlife Wars: My Battle to Save Kenya Elephants andwas first published in 2001. The book is an excellent insight into the lives of Kenyans from those in thehighest circles of power to the lowest, most insignificant tribes and everyday people. The no-holdsbarredaccount highlights the inner workings and brutality of Kenyan politics, the rampant corruptionin the country, complex relationships between individual ethic groups and of course between black andwhite Kenyans. It is also an authentic effort by honourable Kenyans to elevate their country and numerousaspects of their beautiful country. For me, as a former worker for the World Bank, it was, naturally,extremely interesting to read Leaky’s personal experiences related to this global institution. You won’tbe able to set the book down if you are at all interested in conservation and perspectives on the majesticfauna of Africa.138