At last, after years of insistence by conservation and (other) animal protection associations, the Kenyan government has decided that it is time to eliminate the so-called ‘domestic’ crows (Housecrows) that have been infesting the Kenyan coastline for some time, bringing not only noise nuisance and disease, but also frightening other bird species, moreover indigenous unlike them, and eating their eggs, thus limiting their reproduction and encouraging their extinction.
In short, that the presence of this type of crow in Kenya does not even have a positive aspect, and that it should therefore be considered legitimate to eliminate them, has never found opposition, not even from animal lovers or ornithologists, precisely because of their devastating and damaging nature, first and foremost for the biological balance.
After a campaign to reactivate the use of a special poison that does not harm the environment and does not kill other bird species, which saw Watamu's ‘A Rocha’ association and the Malindi Museum Society at the forefront, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) ruled last Friday that the crows are ‘invasive non-native birds that for decades ’have been displacing local bird species from their natural habitats, but have also caused considerable inconvenience to tourists, especially in the coastal hotel sector.

At a public meeting, the KWS emphasised the urgency of reactivating the crow eradication programme. More than 20 years ago, when the crows had reached significant numbers on the coast, particularly in Malindi and Mombasa, an eradication plan had been triggered. Poisons were used, but the devastating birds were also caught in ‘creative’ ways.
The writer witnessed crow hunting with traps consisting of cage-boxes with putrid meat inside, which closed after four or five birds at a time and were connected with car exhaust pipes. The unemployed youths of Malindi were paid 20 shillings per crow and 5 shillings per egg and killed them with slingshots and blowpipes, destroying their nests.
The population of the nefarious bird had definitely dwindled and no Alfred Hitchcock movie scenario had occurred, as some with great and cinematic imagination had predicted.
Slowly, however, the leathery crows reproduced and took advantage of the growth of coastal urban areas and their unsustainability, such as the increase in rubbish production and the difficulties in disposing of it, with the emergence of so many open-air dumps.
Now, years later, the problem is recurring and has indeed become unsustainable, so much so that the government has declared that the goal is, by the end of 2024, to eliminate at least 1 million of them.

It remains to be seen whether, as A Rocha, whose manager Colin Jackson has been campaigning for this for some time, the famous poison ‘Starlicide’ will be put back on the market, which, after having helped to eliminate thousands until 2005, had been withdrawn from the market for obscure reasons.
‘Starlicide has worked well in other countries in the eradication of invasive birds,’ Jackson explained at the beginning of his battle to bring it back to the Kenyan market. ‘The poison is only designed to eradicate invasive birds and there are no secondary deaths afterwards. It is an expensive poison, but we have made a funding proposal to eradicate the birds'.
Certainly, without thinking of relying too much on institutions for the implementation phase, the coastal tourism actors should be the first to participate in the importation of starlicide.
As always, we will follow the story hopefully.