​The AEMP also broke new ground in setting the framework for the Amboseli National Park Plan 2020-2030. After several months delay caused by the Covid-19 lockdown, the final planning meeting for the ANPP 2030 was convened by the Kenya Wildlife Service in Amboseli on 20th September 2020. The review by the community members, NGOs, the tourist industry and conservation NGOs was quickly ratified, and the decision made to launch the ANPP and AEMP plans simultaneously.

The launch was held at the Kimana Gate of Amboseli National Park, attended by the Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, Najib Balala, the Principal Secretary, Fred Segor, the DG and senior staff from KWS, a large contingent from the Amboseli group ranches, UNDP and US AID representatives, conservation NGOs, and the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust.
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The Cabinet Secretary expects to have both the AEMP and ANPP gazetted immediately by the Attorney General’s Chambers and give the plans the legal enforcement needed to regulate developments compliant with the plans.

​Download the posters here.

By David Western

Prince William’s presentation of the 2020 Tusk Award to Kenya’s John Kamanga gives global recognition to an African leader of community-based conservation (CBC). Above all, the award celebrates John’s outstanding stewardship of the South Rift Association of Landowners (Soralo) which has overseen a resurgence of wildlife in the Kenya-Tanzania borderlands. 

I joined John at the award ceremony in Nairobi, transmitted by video from the Kensington Place in London on December 3rd 2020. The tension among John’s family and colleagues erupted into a joyful outburst when Prince Willian declared John this year’s winner of the prestigious Tusk Award. John asked me to say a few words in his honor, as his “conservation mentor,” he said.  I lamented ironically how long it had taken the international community to recognize the remarkable legacy of the Maasai in conserving the richest wildlife lands on earth. Finally, here was John being honored on the world stage for his leadership in rekindling the capacity of his community to coexist with wildlife before those skills are lost forever.
Nairobi’s Covid-19 curfew put, paid to my longer reflections on John’s journey from Maasai pastoralist to national and global conservationist—and the far longer road community-based conservation has taken from its roots in southern Kenya to a global movement. Let me add here the words I would have given in John’s honor as a CBC leader, Covid-19 permitting.
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The first tentative step in recognizing the role of communities in conserving Kenya’s wildlife heritage was taken in Amboseli in the late 1960s when I worked with the warden, Daniel Sindiyo to advocate a Maasai wildlife park. A presidential decree declaring Amboseli National Park scuttled the endeavor but provoked such a spate of wildlife killings that the government agreed to pay the surrounding Maasai community for migratory wildlife using its land, and to promote ecotourism enterprises to reap the economic benefits and fund social amenities such as schools and health clinics. That small victory, backed by a Tourism and Wildlife loan from the World Bank, prompted Kenya to introduce a new wildlife policy promoting community participation in wildlife conservation.
Similar community conservation efforts sprang up in Zimbabwe and Namibia, and with gathering speed, around the world as the limitations of parks were recognized and the prospects of conserving wildlife on the extensive community lands took root.

Recognizing a watershed moment, the Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation (LCAOF) convened a meeting of community leaders, conservation organizations and donors at Airlie House in Virginia in 1994. The novel assembly collated case studies from around the world to give visibility and backing to the emerging CBC movement, dedicated to the coexistence of wildlife and community livelihoods. The success of the Airlie House event prompted similar gatherings at a Red Lodge meeting in Montana to promote collaborative resource management across the Interior West of the U.S, and communities across East Africa convened by the African Conservation Centre (ACC) to foster local conservation initiatives.

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) gave the CBC movement a big shot in the arm in setting up the Community Wildlife Service and granting seed money to promising community programs. In 1997, I launched the KWS’ Parks Beyond Parks program to recognize and encourage the emerging CBC movement, pushed for legal registration of community organizations, and set up the National Wildlife Forum to give them a strong voice. The European Union sponsored the Biodiversity Conservation Program and Tourism Trust Fund which gave start-up grants to dozens of local initiatives, including the first community sanctuary in Kimana, ecotourist lodges, tourism infrastructure and community scouts trained by KWS. The first community owned lodge, Ilng’wesi, backed by the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and funded by KWS and LCAOF, laid the foundation of a host of community ecotourism ventures to follow.

Each new step and innovation triggered yet others, creating the self-propelling momentum behind the success of locally-inspired movements. By the early 2000s dozens of new community-based efforts had sprung up, among them the Northern Rangelands Trust in northern Kenya, and the Taita-Taveta, Mara, Amboseli and SORALO initiatives in southern Kenya, each spawning dozens of new conservancies.

Ecotourism Kenya, launched by ACC to promote green tourism, refreshed Kenya’s fading reputation as Africa’s premier safari destination by promoting conservancies and injecting tourism revenues into the CBC movement. The ecotourism boost and the formation of the Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Association has given the CBC movement a strong foundation. In the last decade, over 150 conservancies have spread across Kenya covering more land than all Kenya’s national parks and reserves and employing more wildlife rangers than KWS.

Which brings me back to SORALO, among the most successful of all Parks beyond Parks in Kenya. ACC started the ball rolling in the South Rift by helping Shompole Group Ranch set up an ecotourism lodge and conservation programs. John Kamanga, chairman of Olkiramatian Group Ranch, invited John Waithaka, director of ACC and me to meet his committee and support the plans they had drawn up to emulate Shomopole’s success--and to go further in engaging the community. John’s plans married well with ACC‘s vision of creating a conservation link between Amboseli and Maasai Mara to conserve the richest assemblage of vertebrates in all Africa and find space for the growing elephant herds spreading out from the two parks.

The success of Shompole and Olkiramatian soon drew in other group ranches, and so SORALO was born. Before long, the growing network of group ranch conservation plans fulfilled the vison of linking Mara and Amboseli across the Rift Valley. Key to the growth of SORALO has been John’s leadership and ACC’s support of Maasai traditional practices for managing pastures, the health of the land and fostering coexistence with wildlife. Among the many innovations is the construction of the Lale’enok Centre which deploys local resource assessors to monitor the rangelands and community rangers to protect wildlife and regulate the use of pastures; the promotion of cultural tourism; encouraging women’s enterprises; attracting visiting scientists and university field visits; setting up an education outreach program and launching a Rebuilding the Pride predator program to restore carnivore populations. The unique feature of the Lale’enok Centre is its practice of using Maasai traditional methods of producing, sharing, and using knowledge for the common good of the community.

The CBC initiatives in SORALO, Amboseli and across southern Kenya in collaboration with ACC and other conservation organizations have created “horizontal learning exchanges,” the swapping of ideas and skills among communities within Kenya and reciprocal visits across Africa, with American ranchers and among pastoral communities around the world, The Rangelands Association of Kenya, cattlemen’s associations and the Maasai Heritage Program are some of the new bodies to have sprung up from the learning exchanges, many of them with John at the helm.

There is no leader without a successful movement and no movement without effective leaders. The CBC movement in Kenya has spawned and been driven by several world class conservation leaders, John among them. Growing up as a livestock herder with wildlife as his neighbors, John is the epitome of and an ambassador for the coexistence of people and wildlife. SORALO over the last two decades has seen its lion population grow four-fold, elephants return to the South Rift after decades of being driven out by poachers, other wildlife thrive and the community take pride in its conservation achievements.

The Tusk Award gives long overdue recognition to John’s conservation achievements through SORALO and on the national and international stage. For the most part the success of CBC in Kenya has succeeded because of the traditional land practices of its pastoral peoples and their ability to live with wildlife. With those traditions eroding, the land shrinking and being carved up by private allotments, CBC now calls for new forms of collective action and land management--if the pastoral herds no less than wildlife are to find a place in the East African future savannas. This new landscape calls for visionary leaders like John Kamanga, strong community organizations and the support of national and international conservation organizations dedicating to supporting them. 

By David Western

Prelude to the Community-Based Conservation (CBC) meeting
The future of the open rangelands in Kenya looks bleak in the face of land subdivision, privatization and changing national aspirations. Is there any role for community-based conservation in maintaining open rangelands, and if so, how should it be refashioned to meet the enormous challenges ahead?
 
I called a meeting of experienced CBC practitioners to confront the harsh realities of the breakdown in the social networks and institutions, which have sustained Kenya’s rangeland for generations. We must give hard thought to how to retain and strengthen the communities of landowners in shoring up the health of the land for its people and wildlife.
 
This is a formidable task and perhaps a lengthy one, but we need to start now when  there is still hope and scope. The topics we should address include the threats to the open rangelands, options for keeping the rangelands open and collectively managed, the future of CBC, and the way ahead.
 
The meeting at The House of Waine, Nairobi
 The meeting at the House of Waine in Nairobi on 3rd December 2020, was hosted by the African Conservation Centre under the Institutional Canopy of Conservation (ICAN), and brought together experienced CBC practitioners from across the southern rangelands of Kenya. The group included Lucy Waruingi and Johnson Sipitiek, ACC; Dickson Kaelo, Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Association; Jackson Mwato and Koikai Oloitiptip, Amboseli Ecosystem Trust; Michael Tiampati, Pastoral Development, and Donald Mombo, Taita-Taveta Wildlife Forum. Virginia Musengg’ya and Alvin Oduor of ACC served as rapporteurs. Daniel Sopia, Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancy Association and Martin Mulama, World Wildlife Fund, were unable to attend but sent their apologies and support of the meeting.
 
The meeting set out to review the threats to the open rangelands vital to the pastoral livestock communities and wildlife alike, the opportunities and options for keeping the rangelands open and collectively governed, and the future of CBC as the driving force it has been over the last three decades.
 
The Dialogue
The discussions explored several topics, among them the need for an analysis of current institutions and their roles, reinforcing existing Community-based Organizations (CBOs), strengthening supporting NGOs, and pushing for better services from county governments and national agencies. Another was the need for new forms of collective governance to reflect the shift in land tenure from communal to private ownership. Yet another was the need for livestock producer associations, which could diversify and improve rangeland production and market access. The role of conservation champions was also seen to be vital in speaking up for collaborative governance of the rangelands.
 
The meeting debated whether to focus on the future of CBC or the open rangelands and concluded that both are intimately linked. Land tenure and collaborative institutional arrangements are both necessary for governing large open landscapes, sustaining the productivity of the rangelands and the coexistence of livestock and wildlife.
 
Some of the main points covered in the discussion included:

• The need for donors and international NGOs to become resource brokers stimulating and funding the growth of national CBOs and NGOs to define and carry out conservation and development priorities.
• Addressing the undervaluing of rangeland resources and attracting a diverse portfolio of investments.
• Rethinking the future of the livestock production and ranching in the transition from subsistence pastoralism to commercial operations and product diversification, including renewal energy production, carbon credits, grass banks and the like.
• Building better connections between livestock production and wildlife conservation to create additive values.
• Diversifying tourism from the present wildlife focus to reflect range of amenities and products in the rangelands.
• Dovetailing government development programs with the needs and priorities of rangeland communities.
• Educational outreach and dialogue programs to prepare communities for the emerging challenges ahead. 
• Articulating the views of the community-based conservation and development of the rangelands from the bottom up with the support of collaborating organizations.
• Policies and governance practices developed locally, reinforced by county and government legislation, and planning.
• Highlighting local successes as the foundation of broader coalitions and collaborative arrangements.
• Promoting a demand-drive for conservation and development from within communities rather than depend on the supply-side programs driven by donors and conservation organizations. 

 
Conclusions
The concluding discussion revolved around whether to create new institutions to address the challenges ahead or to reinforce existing ones. It was agreed that rather than new institutions, a collaborative grassroots approach is called for to tackle land fragmentation and the political marginalization of pastoral communities. Recognizing the power of collective action, the meeting agreed that the four large landowner associations present--Taita-Taveta, Amboseli, SORALO and Mara conservancies—should form a Sothern Rangeland Coalition. The lands covered by the associations include the richest livestock and wildlife population in Kenya and are the primary tourism destination in Kenya. The southern rangelands can benefit from spotlighting its many values and opportunities, branding them for collective benefit and drawing up its own plans rather than have government and NGOs decide future directions and programs.
 
It was agreed that the minutes and deliberations of the meeting should be prepared and circulated and that the four-landowner groups and supporting institutions should convene on January 19th to decide on the next steps. The meeting will flesh out the terms of Sothern Rangeland Coalition, rotate the chair among member landowner associations and chart the way forward. ICAN will encourage a matching meeting to be held in Tanzania, leading to a joint workshop later in the year under the auspices of ICAN, the Borderland Conservation Initiative and SOKNOT. It was agreed that ACC should be the coordinating body for charting the way forward for CBC and the open rangelands.
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Excerpt from the Preface
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We stand at a pivotal point in human history. In our rise from small, scattered Neolithic communities living precariously, we have become so supremely dominant as to reshape nature, change the course of evolution and engineer a new geological age, the Anthropocene.  In the process we have created a global economy that has narrowed our food webs and stretched our supply chains to the point we can no longer sense or contain our planetary impact.
 
Belatedly, climate warming has risen to the top of the international agenda as hotter summers, colder winters, stronger hurricanes, torrential floods, searing droughts, and rising sea levels impinge on our daily lives. Trapped between a receding industrial age powered by toxic and dwindling fossil fuels and the Fourth Industrial Revolution and circular economy promising hope of a greener planet and sustainable lifestyles, we face a tragedy of the global commons for lack of action.
 
Prescriptions for a sustainable future range from strong central government control to trusting in the invisible hand of the free-markets and rationale choices. Neither Big Government nor Free Market solutions has yet solved the ultimate human challenge of living within planetary limits.
 
In We Alone I look for answers by delving into how we rose from a lowly savanna primate to conquer the Earth and examine how successful societies avoided the pitfalls of overuse and social breakdown. My exploration is partly a personal voyage tracing my evolution from hunter to conservationist and highlighting insights I’ve gleaned from observing communities: from the Maasai surviving droughts, to Californians up against intensifying droughts and wildfires caused by global warming. I also draw on scientific discoveries over the last half century to show how we humans are far from being constrained by the selfish gene and limited by local ecology; instead our success lies in cooperation and cultural institutions that enable us to create novel economies and lifestyles that defy the biological imperative to reproduce to the limits of food supply.
 
I argue that our global conquest lay in breaking biological barriers, domesticating the selfish gene, and curbing the downsides of our actions for larger common gains. The more ecologically emancipated we became, the greater our ability to shift beyond conserving food and water for survival to saving whales, art, music, and cultural traditions, based on our new-found knowledge and sensibilities. Conserving other species lifts us to the highest plane of altruism, beyond kinship, tribe, and economic self-interest.
 
Our future well-being depends on our unique capacity for cooperation, foresight, and planning as well as on new technologies and green economies, rather than in using a vanishing Pleistocene Age as a template. No less than in the past, our success hinges on using our emotions, morality, and expanded empathy to create the world we wish for rather than the polluted and degraded planet we have inherited.
 
We Alone takes up where Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac leaves off by showing that we can scale up from husbanding the land to sustaining the planet within boundary limits. Neither the end-of-nature pessimists nor rational optimists offer solutions for cleaning up the global problems we have created. Our future lies instead in the collective actions of billions of citizens rather than philosophical debates and scientific prescriptions.
 
We Alone is written for a popular audience but is also intended to appeal to students looking for answers to who we are and how we can become good a custodian of the global commons. 

Get your copy here.
 

​By David Western
 
The Kenya Wildlife Service has floated a ten-year plan (2020-2030) for Nairobi National Park. This is timely and urgently needed.  Nairobi was Kenya’s first national park, gazetted in 1946. With the park under growing pressure on all sides, and from within, its future looks bleak as the standard bearer of Kenya’s parks. What better event to celebrate the 75th anniversary of our national park than a plan to secure the future of Nairobi National Park for all time? The ten-year plan to save and restore the park is five years late and doubly urgent because of the delay.

Unfortunately, KWS was put under pressure to ram through the proposal with little public input apart from box-ticking. The railroading ran up against a hail of criticism. Hidden from view were a rash of developments that run counter to the goals of the Wildlife Act 2013: to keep parks in an “untrammeled” natural state. With KWS already having ceded parts of the park to the Southern Bypass Road, overhead rail line and a goods depot in the works, the public criticisms are well grounded.  

I participated in public reviews of the Nairobi National Park 2020-2030 plan and have given my comments at various meetings and to KWS directly. I feel strongly that the plan needs all the public participation it can get and will be greatly strengthened by the input and guidance. Kenya’s parks are, after all, vested in the citizens of Kenya, not the government.

KWS as the custodian has the heavy burden and deep responsibility to ensure its future for all its peoples, and as a world heritage. I was asked by Swara magazine to review the plan. The review is given here. Most of the points are straightforward, but I had too little space to expand on the two most important points of all: fencing and the ecological restoration of the park. I have added some addition points here to clarify my views and  recommendations.

I visited NNP regularly in the late 1960s when I was a graduate student at the University of Nairobi starting out on my research and conservation work in Amboseli. The park in the early dry season was like a mini-Serengeti with long lines of zebra and wildebeest snaking back into the park from their wet season migrations on the Athi Plains. During the rains, large resident herds of kongoni, impala, warthog, gazelle and solitary territorial wildebeest dotted the short grass plains, giving lions and cheetahs abundant prey to keep them in the park. In the early 1970s, as I flew across the Athi Plains to Amboseli, I looked down on the tens of thousands of wildebeest and zebra stretching across the southern plains from Konza to the rift edge during the rains. Traffic on the Namanga Road was often held up for minutes by the migrating herds.
 
In the early 1980s when I bought land bordering the park, I wandered across the open plains, stretching unbroken to Kajiado, through large herds of eland, wildebeest and zebra, all milling about waiting to file across a narrow defile in the Mbagathi gorge into the park. Within a few years the wildebeest migrations were severed by residential housing. A solitary male hung on in a resident herd of impala on our land for a further year before he too disappeared. By then the tens of thousands of migratory animals on the Athi Plains had been whittled down by meat poachers, sprawling settlements and fences to a whisper of their former honking masses.
 
Once the migratory herds dwindled, long grasses and shrubs spang up with the falling grazing pressure and the suspension of burn management programs the wardens formerly used to prevent the invasion of rank vegetation. By the late 1980s, when it was clear that wildebeest were shunning the tall rank grasses in favor of the shorter grasslands on the Athi ranches to the south, I asked Helen Gichohi, a MS student at the time, to conduct an experimental burning program to restore the shorter grasslands. Her study showed how early burning to create shorter greener grasses became a magnate for wildebeest, zebra, gazelle and warthog, as they were in the 1960s (Gichohi, 1990). We went on to show that the more heavily grazed grasses outside the park were richer and more palatable than the rank grasslands inside. In other words, parks can lose their richness of wildlife and vegetation without restorative management (Western and Gichohi, 1994).
  
In the mid-1990s, as director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, I used the evidence of Helen’s work to begin restoring the dwindling wildlife numbers and grasslands using an experimental early burning program. The results were dramatic. For the next three years the burned area in the south west of the park drew in large herds of wildlife and an entourage of visitors. After I left KWS,  conservation lobbyists pressured KWS to abandon the restoration program, arguing nature should be left unmanaged. The heavy El Niño rains of 1998 hastened the growth of tall vegetation and the decline of wildlife, especially the smaller species, including gazelles and warthogs. The dwindling herds of wildebeest and zebra returned to the park later each season and, the once resident herds in the rain season shrank too, lions and cheetahs began regularly attacking livestock outside the park.
 
By 2010 dense settlements spreading out from Ongata Rongai township and Tuala blocked all wildlife movements at the western end of the park. I saw the last cheetah shortly afterwards and worried about the mounting toll of lion and hyena attacks on livestock and dogs in the residential estates. The community, angry and scared, demanded KWS remove the predators and fence the park after a series night encounters. In December, the anger  bubbled over when a person returning from Tuala late at night was eaten by a lion.
 
I’m no fan of fencing parks. I’ve done all I can to prevent that happening by  promoting community-based conservation and nature enterprises as a win for park neighbors and wildlife. The 150-plus conservancies in Kenya testify to the success—where land is still open. Where parks are surrounded by  a sea of settlement, the Aberdare, Shimba and Nakuru among them, fences are vital for protecting wildlife and people. I’ve promoted fencing in each of these cases and raised funds to electrify the fence hard up against the city on its northern and western boundaries. Yet I hold out the hope of avoiding fencing the park on its southern border.

How in any event would  the park be fenced when the center of the Mbagathi River is the park boundary? The only option is to fence inside the river edge, but this would exclude the river, the park’s most important lifeline. There are other problems with fencing in the southern park. Unless the grasslands and wildlife are restored first, the park will become more of an ecological trap than conservation lifeline as predators drive down the depleted herds even further.  The herbivores need as much space and movement as possible to sustain the interplay of predators, prey and healthy pastures.

Adding to the fencing problem, not all residents south of the park agree on the solutions. The Ongata Rongai and Tuala residents want the park fenced now, and there is no other option. The eastern end of the park remains open though, and the largely Maasai ranching community has joined a leasing program to keep wildlife on their lands, hoping to benefit from nature enterprises. Many oppose fencing altogether.

I’ve long advocated that the debate about whether to fence or not should be informed by what is to be fenced in and left out. Even if the park is to be fenced in, the abundance and diversity of plants and animals should be restored first to avoid further ecological decline. KWS is to be commended for making ecological restoration a primary plant of the 2020-2030 Plan. The restoration program stands to boost wildlife numbers, keep predators anchored in the park, improve habitat quality and diversity, and raise the park’s profile and visitor appeal.
I’ve suggested in the Swara article that the southern fence be considered in three phases, emulating the step-by-step approach to fencing in the Aberdare National Park.

For Phase 1, I’ve joined neighboring landowners along the Mbagathi River discussing with KWS a fence running along the back of our properties as far as Maasai Gate. This will give wildlife access to the river and use of our land and prevent predators from straying into the built-up Ongata Rongai and Tuala areas.

Phase 2, running from Maasai Gate to the overhead rail line, needs similar consultations to see how far into the Athi Plains the fence can extend.

Phase 3, from the rail line to the eastern border of the park, is far more contentions. Here most landowners are Maasai ranchers who have formed a wildlife conservancy and land leasing arrangements, hoping to benefit from wildlife on their land. The prospects for winning a large area of open space for wildlife are good yet call for detailed property and land surveys and open discussions. This will take time. Rushing ahead without due process will anger the community, frustrate KWS and short-change wildlife.

KWS should focus on getting agreement on the broad principles and strategies in the 2020-2030 plan for Nairobi National Park and work out the details as a part of its execution. As the plan stands, it is too saturated with details. It loses sight of the broad areas of agreement, public support and continuing engagement and refinement needed for the plan to succeed. No two issues in the plan need these open-minded flexible approaches more than ecological restoration and fencing.

Gichohi, H. W. (1990). The Effects of Fire and Grazing on the Grasslands of Nairobi National Park. MSc thesis. University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya.

Western, D. and Gichohi, H. (1994). Segregation effects and the impoverishment of savanna parks:  the case for an ecosystem viability analysis. African Journal of Ecology 31 (4): 269-281.

​The pandemic is already disrupting every sector of society, from entertainment and sports to manufacturing and the health and service industries. And the worst is yet to come. Conservationists blame the pandemic on the loss of biodiversity degraded ecosystems and climate change. They have a point. New virulent diseases, along with invasive species and pests, thrive when nature dies.
In the case of the Coronavirus the blame lies squarely on the illegal trade in wildlife species, fueled by globalization. Diseases such as Ebola, Marburg and HIV erupted in small scattered communities in the past but remained localized epidemics. No longer.
In the last few decades, global travel has spawned virulent novel viruses such as SARS, MERS, H1N1 and COVID-19, infecting hundreds of millions around  the world in weeks. These new pandemics are a grave threat to every nation, every individual. causing 6 of 10 infectious diseases, 2.5 billion illnesses and 2.7 million deaths each year.
The wildlife trade, worth $23 billion annually, operates largely underground like drug trafficking. And like the ivory wars which slashed elephant numbers across Africa from 1.2 million in 1970 to 450,000 today, the wildlife trade is driven by rising wealth in Asia. Hundreds of species of amphibians, snakes, fish, birds and mammals are butchered for the wildlife trade, among them bats, civets and pangolins suspected of transmitting lethal viruses.
We can’t be sure which species in the wildlife market in Wuhan sparked the COVID-19 pandemic. Regardless, the cramped confined conditions flouting concerns for animal welfare and human health, have unleashed the most devastating pandemic in modern times.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been dubbed the revenge of wildlife. Revenge it isn’t. Coronavirus smites indiscriminately. For every illegal trader infected, hundreds of millions of people are at risk, among them ardent animal lovers, doctors and nurses. Overlooked is the impact of the pandemic on wildlife. 

Worst hit by the coronavirus is the global travel industry. Worth $5.3 trillion a year and employing 1 in 10 people worldwide, tourism generates over 10 percent of Kenya and Tanzania’s GDP. The unseen victims of the tourism collapse are the very communities which protect and benefit from wildlife.
Community-based conservation is the greatest home-grown success in protecting Africa’s wildlife. Today, Kenya’s 150 community and private conservancies span 11 percent of the country, a larger area than all the national parks and reserves combined. Tanzania’s Wildlife Management Areas under local stewardship are playing an ever-growing role in conservation. In both countries, tourism is the engine of community-based conservation, creating thousands of jobs running ecotourism enterprises, deploying wildlife rangers and providing support services.   

​The elephant and wildlife populations are larger than when I first began counts in 1967, despite the precipitous declines across the continent. Even the giraffe, newly listed as a threatened species, has increased in the last two decades and is among the largest and safest population in Africa. The remarkable success of Amboseli depends on the hundreds of community rangers protecting wildlife, and on the income from tourism which generates jobs, scholarships for children and supports social services and women’s enterprises. Visit here to learn more.
The South Rift Association of Landowners joining Amboseli to Maasai Mara has shown similar success. The migratory herds and lion numbers have increased, and elephants have returned to the area for the first time in decades.
The collapse of tourism worldwide is disastrous for wildlife and community initiatives in East Africa. The shutdown at peak tourism season is closing lodges and wildlife enterprises overnight, and there will be no quick recovery. With the coronavirus causing a global recession, it will be many months before tourism recovers. 

​First, lobby your politicians to pressure for the closure of the wildlife trade. A remote shot two years ago, China and other Asian countries have since banned the sale of ivory, showing a total closure is possible. Elephant poaching has declined sharply across Africa since the bans. Now is the moment to press for an end to the animal trade and make the world a safer place.
 
Second, help fill the void left by the collapse of the tourism industry in Africa. Wildlife tourism creates a virtuous circle. The visitor enjoys the safari of a lifetime to the greatest wildlife spectacles on earth, creates jobs and opportunities for communities, and wins a place for wildlife.
For the hundreds of thousands of visitors who‘ve had to cancel or defer safaris, a small portion of the savings made as a conservation contribution will make a world of difference. For others unable to make a wildlife safari,  a contribution to community-based conservation helps support the custodians of wildlife.
A lion is worth ten times more alive through tourism than supplying claws to the wildlife trade. Stopping the wildlife trade and supporting community programs will help prevent another pandemic and save wildlife. 

In 1969 Dr. Western gave a public talk at the National Museums of Kenya urging the need to engage communities and general public in wildlife conservation. Over 50 years later he reviewed the strides Kenya has made yet the continuing failures to halt wildlife declines. In his talk he reviews how Kenya turn the tide and make its wildlife conservation a real success story.

Watch the presentation here.

The African Conservation Centre is pleased to announce that our founding executive director, Dr. David Western, is a nominee for the 2016 Indianapolis Prize.  Initiated in 2005 by the Indianapolis Zoo, this prize is recognized as the world’s leading award for animal conservation. The Indianapolis Prize is awarded biennially to an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to conservation efforts involving an animal species or group of species.  In addition to a $250,000 cash award, the winner — selected from among six finalists — receives the Lilly Medal and each of the other five finalists receives $10,000. Finalists will be honored at the next Indianapolis Prize Gala to be held Oct. 15, 2016.

Dr. Western was selected as a nominee for his more than 48 years of pioneering research and community-based conservation strategies in East Africa.  He was among the first scientists to recognize the limitations of national parks and investigate how humans and wildlife can coexist. His pioneering community-based conservation work has served as a model for finding a place for wildlife beyond parks around the world.  

As former executive director and current chairman of African Conservation Centre, director of Kenya Wildlife Service and conservation director for Wildlife Conservation Society International, Western has been a leader in many areas of conservation, including research, international programs, short and long-term conservation planning, ecotourism, training, directing governmental and non-governmental organizations and public education.

He established the Wildlife Planning Unit in Kenya in 1978, was the chairman of the African Elephant and Rhino Specialist Group in the 1980s, founding president of the International Ecotourism Society, chairman of the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya and Carter Chair of Conservation Biology, Wildlife Conservation Society.  He established the “Parks Beyond Parks” movement to promote communities setting up their own wildlife sanctuaries and enterprises and led efforts to set up the first community-based wildlife conservancies in Kenya. Western also promoted horizontal learning exchanges in East Africa and around the world so that communities can learn first-hand from each other’s experience.  

During his many national and international assignments, Western has continued his groundbreaking research in Amboseli. The Amboseli Conservation Program he set up in 1967 is the longest running ecosystem research program in Africa. His research has pioneered the integration of human-wildlife studies, underscored the significance of pastoralism in savanna ecosystems, shown the underlying basis of human-wildlife coexistence in the savannas and developed many of the basic techniques for studying and monitoring large mammal ecosystems. His research into the life history and ecology of large mammals has been cited as one of the foundational studies in the new field of macroecology. His articles have appeared in Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Bioscience, PLoS, Ecology and other prominent science journals.

His honors include the World Ecology Award, Harris World Ecology Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis; Conservation Medal, Zoological Society of San Diego; Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Ecotourism Society; Order of the Golden Ark; San Diego Zoo Conservation Medal, Cincinnati Zoological Society; and Elder of the Burning Spear.

Western’s publications include Conservation for the Twenty-first Century (OUP, 1989), Natural Connections:  Perspectives in Community-based Conservation (Island Press, 1994) and In the Dust of Kilimanjaro (Shearwater, 2001).  He earned his bachelor’s degree from Leicester University in England and his doctorate from the University of Nairobi in Kenya.  Leicester University awarded him a prestigious “Doctor of Science” in 2002.

For more information about the Indianapolis Prize, please visit:  www.indianapolisprize.org and accafrica.org.

1st Annual Rangeland Congress of Kenya
11th and 12th August 2015

The future of rangelands is at a crossroad. Covering three quarters of Kenya, supporting 60 percent of national livestock herd and 90 percent of all wildlife, the rangelands face grave threats. The threats include population growth, poverty, land degradation, recurrent drought, loss of rivers and wetlands, declining wildlife and climate change. The collapse of subsistence economies and cultures has left families destitute. Land subdivision and sales, the extraction of charcoal, sand, building stone and wildlife poaching have risen with poverty and social disruption. Poor social services and lack of technical skills hamper opportunities for alternative livelihoods in a tight job market.

Despite the enormous threats facing Kenya’s rangelands, the opportunities to reverse the trends through improved breeds, better husbandry and marketing skills, range restoration, grass banks, arable and irrigated arming, wildlife enterprises, ecotourism, renewable energy, carbon markets and natural resource businesses have been poorly developed. The 2010 constitution sets the tone for rangeland communities to form a strong constituency, set the agenda and build the skills needed to conserve and develop the arid and semi-arid lands.

Many progressive landowner associations have taken the initiative in recent years to redress the threats and open up new opportunities for managing and sustaining the rangelands. The Rangelands Association of Kenya, in collaboration with the African Conservation Centre, University of Nairobi Centre for Sustainable Drylands Ecosystems and Societies and the International Livestock and Research Organization, hosted the congress at the Commercial Bank of Africa Conference Centre in Nairobi on the 11th and 12th of August 2015. The congress brought together the voices and views of land owner associations invited  speakers, government and country governments, national and international agencies to highlight the status, threats and opportunities in the rangelands and chart the way ahead.

David Western and Lucy Waruingi of African Conservation Centre were key speakers. Courtney White, founder of the Quivira Coalition based in New Mexico, gave a talk on the New Ranch concept emerging in the US to ensure sustainable and resilient ranching practices and restore degraded rangelands.

After the congress members of the Rangeland Association of Kenya held a one-day meeting to decide on the way ahead. The steps will include recruiting as many rangeland communities and associations as possible in the coming year to give them a strong voice in the conservation and management of their lands; address the marginalization of pastoral societies; engage national and county governments on policy and planning matters, build up the management capacity of communities in collaboration with NGOs, improve access to education and information; promote sustainable livestock systems and wildlife conservation enterprises, and draw on the best of traditional and modern husbandry practices in guiding the transition from subsistence to market economies.

At the closing of the congress David Western formally launched the Rangeland Association of Kenya, representing landowner associations. Prof. Jessi Njoka of University of Nairobi announced the launch of the Rangeland Society of Kenya, representing professional managers and scientists.

The Amboseli Conservation Program teamed up with the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust, Kenya Wildlife Service, the African Conservation Centre and Big Life in winning support from the NAGA Foundation to restore fever tree and tortilis woodland in and around Amboseli National Park damaged by many years of heavy elephant concentration. The program will also restore pastures damaged around permanent livestock settlements by setting a series of traditional olopololi, calf grazing areas protected by thorn fencing.

The start-up funding in the first year will cover the cost of setting up and monitoring three high-level electric fences that exclude only elephants, allowing seedlings held in check by heavy browsing to mature and regenerate the once abundant woodlands of Amboseli. More details of the restoration program will be posted shortly.