Recently I have been wondering what's with the killing of animals in a non-refined manner in our country? Every week a proud Nairalander posts a picture of an animal he killed in his backyard, and this is just "one" out of the many animals killed in backyards daily. Leave animal rights (which I don't think anything as such exist in Nigeria) but lets ask, what is the Ministry of Environment doing about all these occurrence? The conservation foundation?
Are animals supposed to be spotted in people's backyard right in the middle of the city? No, I don't think so. The more reason why areas where such animals are in abundance should be protected, and hunted only by licensed hunters as at when due. For every animal recklessly killed, there is a slight shift in the energy balance. What if you kill the next meal of a leopard that have been close to your back yard for the past few years without you noticing, what does it eat next? Your young child?
Standard procedures being observed, animals that stray from a reserve or out of nowhere into people's backyards are either trapped and proper authorities notified to pick it up, OR the authorities are notified while they capture the animals themselves. These animals are kept in "orphanages" before they are introduced back to their "homes". Yeah, believe it or not this is done in Nigeria, mostly the animals are captured from poachers though.

Well, I am not condemning Nigerians that cherish a feast of bush meat at any time of the day, I am just calling on the Ministry of Environment (which I believe will soon be occupied) to do the needful, to apply judicious constraints where necessary, buffer areas rich in biodiversity and protect and create more game reserves in areas where particular species of animals are in abundance. Doing this no doubt will create opportunities for employment for those employable in this field. Really I don't know what my fellow conservationists feel about this. To the conservationists and concerned citizens out there, what do you say

Animal protection or human protection ?
Am so sorry, you have to start climbing the ladder from the ground to the top nd nt vice versa. (E.g you call fire fighter to help you quench the fire outbreak in your house and you see them after 2-3hrs when the house had turned to ashes ) what do you expect when you call for a python/other wide animal to be evacuated from you compound, do you have to wait 10hours when you have been consumed by the animal while waiting ??

In a situation like this, normally folks do the needful. Nobody wants to die protecting a "dangerous" animal, that's why I laid no blame on citizens who kill whichever that comes there way, rather this is supposed to inform what that should be. Our government is not putting the necessary checks where they should, and the masses are not complaining either.

Most wild animals that normally end up in our backyards are hardly as dangerous as assumed. Even the python as you mentioned, I remember my granny using a branch to take one away from her kitchen into the farm. Problem some people have about reptiles, is knowing that which is harmful to humans and that which is not, so they kill anything that crawls. We have to climb a ladder from the bottom to the top and not otherwise, I agree, we have to control areas that harbor this animals so that they don't end up in our backyards. People have to be rightly educated, before they can understand what to and what not to harm. Some of these animals after being killed are left to rot, polluting our environment. Some persons when they have eaten these animals and realize how delish they are, they go into the forest/bushes to find the animals ancestors, relatives and descendants and wipe them out in order to fill their pots. Who now plays the role this animals have been playing in that particular ecosystem?