by Mike Norton-Griffiths
published in AFRICAN INDABA — Dedicated to the People and Wildlife of Africa.
Latest Edition (and full text) [here]
1977 was an important year for conservation in Kenya for it was then that sport hunting and all other consumptive utilization of wildlife were banned. It was also the year when the Kenya Rangeland Ecological Monitoring Unit (KREMU) began to monitor the numbers and distribution of livestock and wildlife throughout the 500,000 km2 of Kenya’s arid and semi-arid rangelands. So, perhaps uniquely, a major change in conservation policy coincided with a new capacity to monitor its effect and impact.
The monitoring results have been deeply disturbing, and by the mid ’90s a number of warnings were being issued about a major decline in wildlife right across Kenya’s rangelands, even in the most heavily used tourist areas. More recent analyses show that the rates of wildlife loss continue unchecked. Since 1977, Kenya has lost 60%- 70% of all its large wildlife.
The economic driving force behind these losses are the differential returns from agricultural, livestock and wildlife production. For most landowners, returns from agriculture are vastly greater than are those from livestock, while wildlife returns are so meager as to be uncompetitive with either. Furthermore, returns from wildlife, however small, are found only on 5% (23,000 km2) of the 500,000 km2 of rangelands where wildlife are found. No returns are made from wildlife anywhere else on Kenya’s rangelands so to the great majority of landowners wildlife is simply a cost that the Government expects them to bear.
January 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Third World wildlife and people
