By Paula Kahumbu
There is a deep irony in the current debate about Nairobi National Park. For years, the public has fought to keep the park open, wild, and intact, to protect it from roads, buildings, encroachment, and every creeping attempt to turn a living ecosystem into a managed entertainment space. Yet while citizens are asking for a national park, the government appears not to hear. Instead, it is planning what is effectively a very large zoo inside the park itself: taking land away from free-ranging animals in order to build cages for captive ones.
This reveals something troubling. It suggests that decision-makers do not truly believe that people want to see animals in the wild. They seem to think Kenyans and tourists are better served by looking at confined animals behind fences, rather than experiencing rhinos, buffaloes, giraffes, birds, insects, grasses, rivers, and open skies as part of one living system. That is not only a failure of imagination; it is a caged mindset. It reduces nature to display. It reduces children to spectators. It reduces wildlife to exhibits.
There is also a serious economic mistake in this thinking. A zoo or zoo-like facility may appear to promise quick revenue, but animal enclosures are extremely expensive to maintain. Cages must be built, cleaned, repaired, staffed, and secured. Animals must be fed, treated, monitored, and managed every day. Facilities like animal orphanages and enclosure parks often struggle because their operating costs are enormous, and they require thousands of visitors simply to stay afloat.
But wild nature works differently. When animals remain free in healthy ecosystems, nature does much of the work itself. Grass feeds herbivores. Predators regulate populations. Rivers, soils, trees, insects, and birds sustain the web of life. The cost is far lower, the experience is far richer, and the lesson is far more powerful.
Our national parks must be accessible to all Kenyans, not as cages, not as theme parks, not as spectacles, but as living classrooms. Children do not need more bars between themselves and nature. They need open gates, safe access, good guides, and the chance to experience wildlife as it is meant to be: free, alive, and part of a world we all belong to.
Let’s work together to support world class parks.
Paula Kahumbu is a wildlife conservationist and chief executive officer of WildlifeDirect
