Are we Doing Enough to Save Our Wildlife

Are we Doing Enough to Save Our Wildlife

Kenya’s diverse wildlife and its pristine wildlife habitat are worldly recognized. We are naturally blessed with a rich ecosystem, remarkably the presence of all the big five animals. Wildlife populations are dwindling at an alarming rate due to some factors ranging from human encroachment, climate change, poaching, to the extensive use of un-recyclable materials such as plastics (Kideghesho&Rija, 2019). Therefore, there’s a need for the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, Kenya Wildlife Services, and other stakeholders to step up their conservation efforts to combat the declining trends in wildlife and their habitats.

The Wildlife Management and Conservation act, 2013, was enacted to solve wildlife issues and revamp the declining numbers of wildlife species and their ecosystems in order to attain the best conservation results.  Section 6 of the act stipulated the establishment of the KWS. The KWS isa state corporation mandated to conserve and manage wildlife in Kenyaacross all protected areas in collaboration with other stakeholders. Kenya’s 23 terrestrial national parks and 26 terrestrial national reserves, collectively, account for only 8% of the national land surface of Kenya. This indicates that the larger part of the terrestrial land is owned by the communities and private landowners.Inanother sense, community land alongside private land, which constitutes more than85% of the total landmass in Kenya, must be used if proper wildlife management isto be achieved (Kameri-Mbote, 2019).

Given that communitylandforms the bulk of the total landmass in Kenya, it then follows that it is acrucial resource in terms (Western, Russell &Cuthill, 2009)of providing habitat and migratory routes for wildlife. The efforts put by KWS alone without the help of the local communities surrounding these protected areas is not enough to significantly overturn the declining trends in species conservation. Under Section 40 of the Wildlife Management and Conservation Act, 2013, the Community Wildlife Associations were put in place to facilitate conflict resolution and cooperative management of wildlife within a specified geographic region or sub-region. The fact that’s Kenya’s protected areas, national parks and national reserves, hosts approximately 35% of Kenya’s wildlife indicates that 65% of the wildlife inhabits the unprotected regions (Western, 2009)..

In Northern Kenya, the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) is working with communities to promote and facilitate the implementation of wildlife conservation initiatives and improved grazing through collective management.Established in 2004, NRT is currentlysupporting 39 community wildlife conservancies across northern and coastal Kenya.

Kenya Wildlife Service has teamed up with the AWF to work on Maasai giraffe conservation in the Tsavo-Mkomazi transboundary landscape, which should hopefully serve as a model for emulation across Africa. Kenya’s ability to team up with Tanzania for conservation efforts should not be taken for granted.

If it pays, it stays. It was a phrase I heard over and over again, in myriad discussions about African conservation, in part to describe how money has changed the mind-set of rural populations regarding the value of big game.

References

Kideghesho, J. R., &Rija, A. A. (2019). Wildlife Management-Failures, Successes and Prospects.

Western, D., Russell, S., &Cuthill, I. (2009). The status of wildlife in protected areas compared to non-protected areas of Kenya. PloS one, 4(7).

Kameri-Mbote, P. (2019, January). Wildlife conservation and community property rights in Kenya. In Law| Environment| Africa (pp. 221-246). Nomos VerlagsgesellschaftmbH& Co. KG.