Famous Kenyan park experiencing large declines in wildlife
Jeremy Hancemongabay.com
April 21, 2009
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The Masai Mara National Reserve lies over 1500 square kilometers in southwestern Kenya where it eventually links to Serengeti park in Tanzania. Heavily visited by tourists, the park is one of the best places in the world to see the famous wildebeest migration.
 According to a new study warthogs have declined by 80 percent in fifteen years in Kenya’s Masai Mara Reserve. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. |
"The situation we documented paints a bleak picture and requires urgent and decisive action if we want to save this treasure from disaster," said Joseph Ogutu, the lead author of the study and a statistical ecologist at ILRI. "Our study offers the best evidence to date that wildlife losses in the reserve are widespread and substantial, and that these trends are likely linked to the steady increase in human settlements on lands adjacent to the reserve."
 Maasai elder and child with cattle. Photo courtesy of ILRI. |
"Wildlife are constantly moving between the reserve and surrounding ranchlands and they are increasingly competing for habitat with livestock and with large-scale crop cultivation around the human settlements," Ogutu said. "In particular, our analysis found that more and more people in the ranchlands are allowing their livestock to graze in the reserve, an illegal activity the impoverished Maasai resort to when faced with prolonged drought and other problems.”
 The topi is one of six hoofed species to show significant decline. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. |
"The traditional livestock livelihoods of the Maasai, who rarely consume wild animals, actually helped maintain the abundance of grazing animals in East Africa, and where a pastoral approach to livestock grazing is still practiced, it continues to benefit wild populations," said Robin Reid, a co-author of the paper who is now director of the Center for Collaborative Conservation at Colorado State University. "There appears to be a 'tipping point' of human populations above which former co-existence between Maasai and wildlife begins to break down. In the villages on the border of the Mara, this point has been passed, but large areas of the Mara still have populations low enough that compatibility is still possible."
 The waterbuck is one of six hoofed species to show significant decline. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. |
"We know from thousands of years of history that pastoral livestock-keeping can co-exist with East Africa's renowned concentrations of big mammals. And we look to these pastoralists for solutions to the current conflicts," said Carlos Seré, Director General of ILRI. "With their help and the significant tourism revenue that the Mara wildlife generates, it is possible to invest in evidence-based approaches that can protect this region's iconic pastoral peoples, as well as its wildlife populations."
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