The African Conservation Fund

Yusuf Ole Petenya, left, secretary of the Shompole Community Trust, a Maasai  foundation in Kenya's southern Rift Valley, was featured this week in an international news story by Associated Press writer Chris Tomlinson.

"A million tourists a year spend more than $580 million to see and photograph lions, elephants, gazelle and other wildlife on this East African country's savannas," Tomlinson wrote. "But the revenue is not enough to protect the animals.

"Only 8 percent of land in Kenya, a country twice the size of Nevada, is set aside for wildlife. The rest is privately or communally owned and studies show that most of Kenya's wild animals live there." The studies cited by Tomlinson are primarily done by our partner, the African Conservation Centre, which has been a strong supporter of the Shompole Community Trust since its inception.

The challenge recently for people like Petenya and the Maasai is that their ability to manage wildlife on their lands is strictly limited, and they are trying to change that, through a new government initiative. But international, non-Kenyan organizations are getting involved, and making the budding democratic process in this turbulent country even more difficult to navigate - especially for people who long have been marginalized and have little political expertise.

Tomlinson writes:

By some estimates, wildlife numbers have dropped 60 percent since the mid-1970s and continue to plummet, because of human encroachment and illegal hunting for food.

Landowners say they can only go on maintaining animal sanctuaries if they can sell hunting rights. No one is suggesting killing endangered species, or hunting in existing protected areas. Only common animals on private land would be hunted, in a controlled way that would sustain their numbers, advocates say.

"The losses we are getting from livestock predation, or even medical bills for people who have been injured by elephants, buffaloes and even lions, is quite high," said Yusuf Ole Petenya, secretary of the Shompole Community Trust, a tribal foundation in animal-rich southern Kenya.

The trust opened a luxury wildlife lodge to help lift Petenya's Maasai clan out of poverty, but "it's not working," he said, because the cost of conservation outstrips the profits from tourism.

Mt. Shompole, in the South Rift

 

Kenya has bad health care, low education levels and a government that barely functions outside of the capital, Nairobi. There is no money to buy land or pay people to protect wildlife. Kenya banned sport hunting in 1977, but allowed limited hunting to cull animals and harvest game meat until 2003, when animal rights groups managed to shut it down.

Groups such as African Conservation Centre - an indigenous Kenyan organization - and support organizations such as African Conservation Fund are working to help communities diversify their income to help pay for conservation. These include expanded and innovative tourist endeavors, craft programs such as our Sanaa Africa: Art for Conservation, and training programs in business development and management.

Petanya has taken part in some of the training programs sponsored by our groups - he was a member of a delegation of Maasai who exchanged places with American cowboys to learn about their respective communities and challenges with conservation. You can read more about the Two Cowboys project via the African Conservation Centre website, and the African Conservation Fund website.

Tomlinson's full story can be read here, on Yahoo News.