A new study conducted in Kenya is challenging the conventional wisdom that cattle are inherently bad for wildlife, reports Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo.
In contrast to previous research, the recent study found that a limited number of cattle — grazing illegally in one portion of Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve (MMNR) — had a negligible effect on wildlife.
Indigenous Maasai in an area adjacent to the park called Talek, lack rangeland for their livestock, so they routinely slip into MMNR, where grazing is prohibited. Between 2018 and 2019, researchers collected dung samples from 60 sites in the reserve adjacent to Talek, returning to each site once a month to collect dung samples to determine what other animals had used the area. They also measured the quantity and quality of grass and soil at each location.
The researchers found that at the level of grazing extending 12 kilometers (7 miles) into MMNR, there was no decline in the quality or quantity of forage. Furthermore, they found no evidence that wildlife grazing there were affected by the presence of cattle.
“None of the wildlife showed a direct negative association with cattle,” said co-author Wenjing Xu, a postdoctoral researcher at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Germany. “The only one might be buffalo, which had a very weak negative relationship.”
Assessing cattle’s impact on wildlife goes beyond ecological concerns. It also raises broader questions about land rights for the Maasai, who have herded cattle in the region for centuries. In neighboring Tanzania, for example, Maasai pastoralists have been forcibly evicted from their land near Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Officials argue that with limited resources, cows compete with wildlife that tourists pay a lot of money to see.
“The big driver here is that tourists don’t like to see cows,” study co-author Bilal Butt told Mongabay’s Mukpo. Yet in community conservancies near MMNR, which also attract many tourists for wildlife viewing, Maasai pastoralists can graze their cattle rotationally to avoid overgrazing.
Some researchers aren’t convinced and caution against a shift in land management to allow large numbers of cattle in key conservation areas. Robert Buitenwerf, an assistant professor of biology at Denmark’s Aarhus University, pointed out that while some species can share space with cattle, large animals, like elephants and buffalo, need a large quantity of food and tend to avoid areas where cattle have grazed.
Xu, however, said their study could potentially reframe the way we think about cattle and conservation.
“Not just in East Africa, but across the world, pastoral communities are being undermined as a potential conservation partner. For me this is a first step to use the empirical, ecological method but root it in the political context,” she said.
This is a summary of “Can cattle and wildlife co-exist in the Maasai Mara? A controversial study says yes” by Ashoka Mukpo.
Banner image: Elephants in the Loita forest, near Maasai Mara National Reserve. Image by Stuart Butler.
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