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Amboseli Research & Conservation Program
Partners in Conservation:
- Amboseli region Maasai communities
- Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation
- Kenya Wildlife Service
- Dr. David Western, lead investigator and conservationist, working through the African Conservation Centre
Background:
David Western’s research and conservation work in the Amboseli region
began in 1967 and led to the establishment of the Amboseli National
Park in 1974.
The novel approach of including the Maasai neighbors in the benefits of
the park as a way of keeping wildlife migrations open was soon adopted
as national policy.
Over the years since, David Western’s Amboseli program has continued to
offer fresh insights into savanna ecosystems and new ways to sustain
wildlife with the support of local communities.
In recent years the pressures on Africa’s wildlife has intensified due
to rising human population, settlement, farming and conflict between
people and wild animals. The pressures threaten migratory herds and
large predators in national parks no less than the bulk of wildlife
residing on the extensive lands between parks.
The challenge is to fully understand these new threats to the savannas
and find ways to reconcile the conflict between people and wildlife
sharing common land.
Results:
The research study looks into the changing nature of the savannas and
the emerging threats to Amboseli and savanna parks as a whole. The
conservation program brings together Maasai landowners, government
agencies and conservation organizations in the search for solutions to
the conflict and ways to keep the savannas viable for wildlife and
resident communities.
African Conservation Fund is facilitating funding and international communications for this project.
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Conserving Wildlife & Improving Livelihoods in the Rift Vally Region of East Africa
Partners in Conservation:
- John Kamanga, director, South Rift Valley Association of Land Owners (SOROLO)
- Shompole Group Ranch (Maasai)
- Olkiramatian Group Ranch (Maasai)
- Samantha Russell, lead ecologist and investigator, working through the African Conservation Centre
- Ford Foundation
- African Conservation Centre
Photo: Katie Iverson & John Gentile
Background:
Most of the trends and changes in the Amboseli ecosystem over the last
three decades (see project #1, Amboseli Research & Conservation
Program) are common to other pastoral areas of eastern Africa.
As a result, wildlife numbers have been in steep decline in most of the
rangelands over the last 30 years due to poaching, poisoning of
predators, land subdivision, and the enclosure of water holes and
pastures.
During the last two decades conservationists with the African Conservation Centre have been devoted to understanding the problems confronting wildlife and people in
the savannas and developing policies, skills and practices to help
local communities benefit from wildlife and conserve it in the process.
African Conservation Centre has built two relatively successful
ecotourism ventures in the adjoining ranches of Shompole and
Olkiramatian. Both ranches have entered into business ventures with
ecotourism operators, built tourist facilities, set aside conservation
areas for wildlife and deployed - or begun to deploy- community wildlife scouts.
These developments have led to a steady rise in tourism, a sharp fall in poaching and notable increases in wildlife.
Shompole has, in the process, gained international recognition as an
ecotourism destination. The skills the community has gained in the
process have raised the capacity of Shompole to engage in tourism,
conservation, and other enterprises.
How can the skills and institutions that helped Shompole and
Olkiramatian undertake such new ventures be expanded to adjacent
ranches and spread to landowner associations throughout eastern Africa?
Results:
ACC, funded by Ford Foundation thru the African Conservation Fund, is
addressing the enormous challenge of expanding lessons learned in
Shompole and Olkiramatian in several ways.
First, by improving and expanding the successful ventures at Shompole and Olkiramatian - including a new Research Station and Resource Centre at Olkiramatian, which will be the hub for all research and conservation in the region. Part of this "Venture Conservation" will be promoting "research tourism" that community groups can benefit from by offering accommodation, facilities, and coordination to visiting researchers and school groups.
Second, by building up the capacity of the South Rift Association of Land Owners, a regional land association connecting 15or more group ranches spanning the diverse landscape of the Rift Valley.
Third, by linking up a series of landowner associations in the Amboseli
and Mara regions with the Rift Valley associations in order to protect
Africa’s richest assemblage of vertebrates.
Finally, by broadening the wildlife associations into land associations
dealing with all aspects of land, livestock and wildlife development.
This entails diversifying pastoral economies, generating quick returns
and developing the skills to manage wildlife and livestock in an
integrated way.
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Establishing a Viable Elephant Population along the Kenya-Tanzania Borderland
Partners in Conservation:
- Landowners across the Rift Valley, in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania
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Ecotourism operators
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Government wildlife agencies
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African Conservation Centre - science team
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Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation
- Private U.S. donors
Background:
Conserving savannah ecosystems often comes down to saving its largest
and most threatened species. None is more important ecologically than
the elephant and few are more threatened by poaching, conflict with
people and land subdivision.
The upshot is that elephants are all too often crowded into small parks where they reduce biological diversity.
How can elephant pressure on small parks be relieved? How can
sufficient space be won back for the wide-ranging elephant to survive?
How can elephants become valuable to landowners rather a threat to
their lives and livelihoods?
Results:
The African Conservation Centre, funded by the Liz Claiborne Art
Ortenberg Foundation through the African Conservation Fund, is
endeavoring to link up the many isolated elephant populations
concentrated in the national parks along the Kenya-Tanzania border
between Tsavo National Park east of the rift valley and Mara-Serengeti
to the west.
The main purpose of the program is to link up isolated non-viable park
herds to form one of the largest free-ranging populations in East
Africa. In the process, the expanded range will reduce the pressure on
habitats and biodiversity in parks and re-establish the diversifying
role elephants play ecologically in the savannas. (Photo: Diane Boyer)
By mapping landownership and landuse patterns across the Rift, ACC is
helping communities steer the herds away from settlements and into
private wildlife sanctuaries set aside for tourism and protected by
community scouts.
The first year of the program soon established that the herds are
beginning to move beyond the confines of national parks and have
connected up across the Rift Valley.
The next phase of the program brings together landowners across the
Rift and international boundary to help protect the expanding herds and
reduce conflict through collaboration with ecotourism operators,
government wildlife agencies, donors and conservation organizations.
African Conservation Fund is facilitating funding and international communications for this project.
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Resolving Human-Wildlife Conflict in a Dry Rangeland: Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project
Partners in Conservation:
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Uaso Ngiro Community
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Dr. Shirley Strum, lead investigator and conservationist
Background:
This program looks at human-wildlife conflict as a growing problem. For
some species and in some areas it may be more serious than the
traditional threats fueling the current biodiversity crisis: habitat
loss, habitat fragmentation, over-exploitation and the impact of exotic
species.
A variety of new and innovative techniques have been developed to deal
with conflict. They range from physical barriers segregating wildlife
from humans to buffer zones around protected areas to community based
conservation in which the costs of conflict are offset by benefits
realized from wildlife.
Conflict between human and nonhuman primates is particularly
challenging because the non-human animals are so smart. Barrier fences
do not work; even electric fences are no deterrent as the animals find
ways around, over and through them. It is unlikely that the conflict
between these primate cousins can be eliminated, but understanding the
details of the conflict should permit better strategies to limit the
damage.
The study animals are groups of olive baboons (Papio anubis) that live
on the Laikipia Plateau in Kenya. These groups have been studied since
1971 and provide an important resource in this project.
In the late 1970s, one of the study groups became raiders of human food
when the land was sold for small-scale agriculture. The project studied
the development of crop-raiding and tested a variety of control
techniques.
However, events dictated that to save the study animals they had to be
moved. In 1984 this was an unprecedented experiment. It offered both a
way to assess the potential of translocation as a primate conservation
and management tool and an opportunity to document how the released
animals adapted to their new circumstances.
The project research has come full circle in the last 25 years. Changes
in land-use stimulated our research into the development of
crop-raiding. Then, despite success in developing methods of control,
the translocation experiment was unavoidable. In a sense, the
translocation was necessitated by conflict. The release site was chosen
so that there was no possibility of agricultural development and
therefore no chance for the recurrence of crop-raiding.
But wherever there are people and nonhuman primates, the
potential for conflict exists. A much less intense raiding happens in
dry rangelands. Our work attempts to reduce this conflict by looking
into what motivate baboons in this area to raid, lessons that should be
relevant elsewhere in Kenya.
Results:
This project studies why baboons become pests in rangelands where the
conflict is centered on young livestock and other human foods that are
available in limited amounts.
The goal is to use the results of the research to devise better
strategies for preventing, limiting and in some ways resolving this
conflict.
The past crop-raiding research provides an important backdrop against
which we can evaluate what is happening now, assuming similar
principles are operating. Understanding exactly what is at stake, from
the animals’ point of view, improves our ability to develop effective
strategies for minimizing conflict.
If the project succeeds, the situation for both people and baboons in
the area will be better. Moreover, formalizing the results into a
management guidebook should make it easier to share our successes and
failures with other communities in similar situations.
African Conservation Fund is facilitating funding for this project.
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Maasai Perspectives on the Future of Community-Based Management of Wildlife and Livestock in Southern Kenya
Partners in Conservation:
- Shiloh Sundstrom, M.S. candidate, Oregon State University
- Landowners across the southern Rift Valley
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African Conservation Centre - science team
- Private U.S. donors
Background:
For millennia in what is now southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, vast populations of wildlife have coexisted with nomadic livestock herders like the Maasai. With the establishment of protected areas and the subdivision of communal lands into cooperatively owned Maasai group ranches by the Kenyan government beginning in 1968, changes to the Kenyan economy and government policies have eroded the pastoral lifestyle of the Maasai. Both wildlife and the Maasai herding lifestyle, a vital component of Maasai culture, are threatened by changes to the landscape and concomitant losses in mobility. Factors driving this change include agricultural development and changes in land tenure. Government policies and the financial rewards of agriculture have increased cultivation in unprotected areas traditionally used for livestock and wildlife grazing.
Land outside of nationally protected areas, including Maasai group ranches in southern Kenya, continues to play a major role in the future of wildlife conservation as 65% of Kenya’s highly mobile wildlife population is found outside of national parks and reserves. It remains necessary to focus wildlife conservation efforts on these areas which include Maasai group ranches in southern Kenya.
Wildlife conservation in these areas is shifting away from top-down protectionist strategies and toward locally-driven, community-based conservation strategies. Specific examples of community-based initiatives promoted as solutions for wildlife and development problems in the semi-arid parts of Africa like southern Kenya include ecotourism development and integrating wildlife conservation with livestock production.
Because Maasai community leaders, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), NGOs like the African Conservation Centre (ACC) and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), and international funding organizations like USAID are all investing effort and resources into land use planning and marketing exercises that incorporate wildlife conservation with livestock herding it is important to understand Maasai perspectives on the future of wildlife and livestock and the potential for such projects in the future.
This study will be focused on Maasai group ranches in or near three major wildlife areas in southern Kenya including the Maasai Mara, Amboseli, and the south Rift Valley. The area is predominantly arid and semi-arid and consists mostly of grasslands, shrublands, and savannah woodlands.
The group ranches that will be included in this study are in various stages of development both in terms of habitat threats and the level of involvement in land use planning and wildlife/livestock integration projects. In many of the group ranches semi-nomadic livestock herding is the dominant land use. Many group ranch members and migrants from other parts of East Africa are also engaging in small-scale agriculture in some of the wetter areas of the group ranches. Some of these group ranches have set aside portions of their land as designated wildlife conservation areas and are engaged in ecotourism development.
Results:
This study will explore Maasai perspectives on the future of open rangelands, wildlife, livestock herding, and the potential for locally-driven coordinated land use management planning and marketing strategies that promote the integration of wildlife and livestock enterprises. This study also aims to understand how Maasai group ranch members across southern Kenya are currently coordinating their livestock herding practices with wildlife conservation and tourism ventures. Local knowledge and ideas from group ranch members are needed for developing and implementing community-based land use management and marketing strategies that promote the integration of livestock and wildlife enterprises. Knowledge gained from this study can shed light on the future of wildlife and Maasai livestock herding in southern Kenya. This information can provide communities, government, and NGOs with valuable information to guide development of future land use planning exercises and community-based conservation projects in southern Kenya
Objectives:
1. To collect local knowledge and ideas from group ranch members about the future of wildlife and livestock herding in southern Kenya and the management of group ranch lands for both wildlife and livestock.
2. To determine group ranch member interest and capacity for developing and implementing community-based land use management and marketing strategies that promote the integration of livestock and wildlife enterprises.
3. To determine group ranch member expectations and concerns about integrated wildlife and livestock management, and community-based wildlife conservation and ecotourism projects.
4. To evaluate how group ranch members are currently taking into account wildlife resources when making livestock management and other land use decisions.
5. To identify barriers preventing the development of land use management plans and marketing strategies that integrates livestock and wildlife enterprises.
6. To identify further research needs for guiding land use planning, conservation strategies, and marketing initiatives in southern Kenya.
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Whistling Thorn Conservation Development Project
Partners in Conservation:
- Whistling Thorn Camp
- Destination Africa Safaris
- Hagai Kissila, project manager and camp owner
- Annie Birch, Aurora Africa
Background:
Whistling Thorn Camp is located on the edge of Tarangire National Park and in the middle of the Kwa Kuchinga Wildlife Corridor - one of the most important links between the wildlife areas of northern Tanzania and southern Kenya. Supporting the poor communities there is vital to ensuring the corridor stays viable for elephants and other wildlife.
At Whistling Thorn Camp, conservation is not about either wildlife or people - it's about combining both, so that while the landscape and its creatures are protected, the people who live there also benefit, and are part of the conservation effort. Too often conservation means just wildlife, and when local people suffer from crop loss or the death of loved ones, they become hostile to conservation efforts.
National Park Buffer Zone:
At present, the conservation projects at Whistling Thorn Camp are just getting underway, but perhaps the most important direct conservation of habitat and wildlife is occuring just by the presence of the camp: land that the camp leases from the community is removed from any intensive uses such as grazing or farming, and thus creates an important buffer between the park and nearby human communities.
Wildlife Corridor:
Because Whistling Thorn Camp is located in the vital Kwa Kuchinja wildlife corridor (click here for information from the Wildlife Conservation Society on the importance of wildlife corridors around Tarangire, and the threats they face), we hope to continue to enlarge our small camp with the cooperation of the surrounding Maasai community. In order to do this, we must ensure that our enterprise is successful and brings benefit to the community.
Community Improvements:
Direct payments through guest fees and hiring staff are just one way for the community to benefit. We have three main community benefit projects for which donations are needed:
1. Primary School. The community's school is in dire need of direct support, not just for supplies but for mere basics we take for granted: a roof, water system (from rainwater collection), and floors, to start.
2. Water System. The local well is controlled by a foriegn mining company. A borehead and pump that belongs to the community would hugely benefit everyone's health and day-to-day lives. Presently, when access to local water is denied, people (mostly women and children) must walk many kilometers to get drinking water, wash clothes, and water their livestock.
3. School Fees. Donations are always needed to send students to school - especially girls.
Results:
Because of the presence of the conservation camp and the support it gives to the very poor communities in the corridor, there is already an improvement in the health of the land, the education of the children (at least 10 children are being supported through the camp, and the schools are improving), and the welfare of the people (during the intense drought of 2006, the camp provided food for the community).
African Conservation Fund is facilitating funding and international communications for this project.
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COMPLETED PROJECTS
Reports & other resources coming soon
Maasai Attitudes Towards Wildlife: Applying Traditional Knowledge to Conservation
Partners in Conservation:
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Kenyan Maasai communities
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National Geographic Society
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Dr. Deborah Nightingale and Dr. David Western, lead investigators and
conservationists working through the African Conservation Centre
Background:
From the time that the first European explorer, Joseph Thomson, entered
the East African plains in 1883, it has been recognized that the Maasai
peoples coexist with the richest wildlife populations on Earth.
Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Manyara, Mara, Amboseli, Samburu, Tsavo and
other famous national parks were carved out of Maasai lands.
Despite a five-fold increase in human population and growing land
pressures over the last 50 years, most wildlife still survives outside
parks in Eastern Africa. The very abundance and richness of wildlife in
the parks also depends on continued migrations on surrounding pastoral
lands.
Whether the coexistence of Maasai with wildlife emanates from their
cultural tolerance and lifestyle or is due to chance circumstances of
pastoralists living in the savannas has been hotly debated.
Either way, the answer will soon be moot, given developmental pressures
and impact on the savannas. Countering the growing intolerance to
wildlife is a series of innovative conservation programs in eastern
Africa.
Results:
The aim of this study, conducted by ecologists and conservationist Dr.
David Western and anthropologist Dr. Deborah Nightingale and funded by
the National Geographic Society through the African Conservation Fund,
is to explore the extent to which the coexistence of pastoral peoples
and wildlife is explained by culture and lifestyle, as opposed to
chance and circumstances such as low population density, pastoral
migrations and drought. A complementary aim is to look at how changes
in culture and lifestyle are eroding the basis of this coexistence.
The study offers one of the last chances to explore traditional
pastoralist’s wildlife attitudes and knowledge before they are lost
forever.
It also offers a unique opportunity to apply that knowledge to new
community-based wildlife initiatives emerging across Africa. The
results bear directly on efforts to reduce the conflict between humans,
large predators and large herbivores, and the spreading bushmeat trade.
The results will be applied to the new community initiatives, aimed at
creating the opportunity, incentives and skills for the Maasai to
benefit from conserving wildlife.
African Conservation Fund is facilitating funding for this project.
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Ecological and Socio-Economic Impacts of Land Subdivision in Maasai Pastoralist Communities
Partners in Conservation:
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Merueshi Group Ranch (Maasai)
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Mbirikani Group Ranch (Maasai)
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Rosemary Groom, chief investigator and conservation partner
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Ol Donyo Uaoas and Richard Bonham Safaris
(Photos: Amy Howard)
Background:
The sedentarisation of nomadic pastoral people is occurring worldwide,
and poses a challenge for the conservation of the worlds' rangelands.
This is very evident in the Maasai homelands of Kenya, where land
subdivision of communal Group Ranches is taking place and previously
nomadic Maasai are becoming settled. Since much of Maasailand is
important as wildlife dispersal areas, the changing land ownership
policies have important conservation implications.
This project aims to assess the socio-economic and ecological
implications of land subdivision and to provide a workable alternative
which upholds the Maasai values and livelihoods whilst making some
provisions for the wildlife.
Chief investigator and conservation partner Rosemary Groom grew up in
Zimbabwe and went through secondary school and university in England.
Since graduating with a zoology degree from Bristol University in June
2002, she has worked in Botswana on several projects, and has since
arrived in Kenya to work on her PhD.
Ms. Groom's study focuses on two Maasai Group Ranches in the Kajiado
District of southern Kenya. Mbirikani Group Ranch (134,000 hectares)
is part of the Greater Amboseli Ecosystem and is still under communal
land use policies. Merueshi Group Ranch (18,296 hectares) borders
Mbirikani to the north, and is part of the South Kaputei Group
Ranches. Merueshi has been subdivided since the 1970s and the land is
now owned privately by individuals.
The land is classified as arid to semi arid, and permanent water is
scarce and restricted to a few swamps and rivers. Parts of Mbirikani
Group Ranch provide an important wet season dispersal area for vast
numbers of wildlife from Amboseli National Park and surrounding ranches.
In recent years the pressures on Africa’s wildlife has intensified due
to rising human population, settlement, farming and conflict between
people and wild animals. The pressures threaten migratory herds and
large predators in national parks no less than the bulk of wildlife
residing on the extensive lands between parks.
Results:
This project is a multidisciplinary one, linking ecology, sociology,
agriculture and economics in an attempt to assess socio-ecological
changes caused by land subdivision and to find an ecologically sound
solution acceptable and beneficial to the Maasai land owners.
It has relevance not only to the Group Ranches studied, but to the
subdivision of Maasailand as a whole and indeed is relevant worldwide
where sedentarisation of nomadic pastoralists is also occurring and
threatening the world’'s rangelands.
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