KWS Director General Prof. Erustus Kanga, PhD, EBS, represented the Kenya Wildlife Service at the official launch of the Dangote East Africa Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals Special Economic Zone in Mokowe, Lamu County, presided over by His Excellency Dr. William Samoei Ruto, C.G.H., and President of the Republic of Kenya.

The occasion was a signal about the kind of future Kenya intends to build, one in which industry and ecology are not forced into a contest but challenged to find a working rhythm together. A refinery rising on the coast is a statement of economic ambition. Whether that ambition leaves room for elephants, turtles and mangroves is a question of choices made now, long before the first pipe is laid.

Lamu is a living, vibrant landscape. Its mainland holds elephants, buffaloes, topis and reticulated giraffes, while the open plains toward the north shelter the hirola, a critically endangered antelope found nowhere else on earth. Lamu’s seascape carries mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, coral reefs and nesting beaches for marine turtles. These are not peripheral assets. They are the region’s inheritance, and they are under pressure.

Kenya’s largest infrastructure ambitions converge on this county. The Lamu Port and the wider transport corridor linking the coast to South Sudan and Ethiopia, the new special economic zone, expanding road networks and energy installations together represent a transformation of the coastal frontier. Each new road, pipeline or industrial footprint redraws the map for wildlife. Habitats fragment. Migration routes narrow. Noise, light and human settlement push animals into smaller spaces. Marine construction can stir sediment that smothers coral and displace the fish communities that depend on it.

This is not an argument against development. It is a reminder that development without design becomes loss. The two can coexist, but only when conservation is treated as part of the blueprint rather than an afterthought. That means proper environmental impact assessments before ground is broken, protection of wildlife corridors in land-use planning, marine spatial planning that sets aside critical habitats, compliance monitoring that has teeth, and communities who benefit directly from the natural assets around them.

For KWS, this is familiar terrain. The Service is a key conservation partner in Lamu, working to ensure that wildlife and natural habitats are not casualties of progress. Its current five-year blueprint treats conservation as an enabler of growth rather than a brake on it. It commits the Service to partnerships that place wildlife at the heart of national planning, and to proving that an expanding economy and an expanding elephant herd can be measured on the same ledger. That ambition cannot be achieved by rangers alone. It requires industry, investors, county government and local people working from the same map.

As Lamu grows, protecting this natural heritage is a shared responsibility.

You can help strengthen the work of protecting Lamu’s wildlife and wild places, from patrols along the corridor to monitoring of its marine ecosystems. Visit https://kwspay.ecitizen.go.ke/donate to give directly to conservation on the ground.