Conservation Program Gives Kenya Landowners Stake in Saving Wildlife

Not so long ago, Josphat Saiko and his fellow Maasai warriors would have turned a blind eye to poachers, or might have been out killing animals themselves to protect crops.

Today, they guard Cape buffalo, zebras, elephants, Thompson’s gazelles, elands and wart hogs against danger and hope their efforts pay out in cash.

“They are like my goats,” Saiko says of his new charges. “Why should I let anyone kill them?”

The 24-year-old is in charge of 16 guards at the new Kimana Wildlife Sanctuary near Amboseli National Park in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Under a new program of the Kenya Wildlife Service, the 40-acre sanctuary belongs to 840 local people rather than the government, as do Kenya’s famous game parks. Saiko and the other residents now have a financial stake in the animals’ well-being.

The sanctuary is part of what David Western, director of the national wildlife protection agency, calls “a new brand of conservation.” He says the concept is necessary not only to save Kenya’s wildlife and its 56 national game reserves but its economy as well.

Wildlife is the backbone of the tourism industry, which Western says brings in an average of $500 million a year and is the single largest earner of foreign currency.

Because of changes in rainfall and available food, wild animals must migrate in and out of the parks, Western notes. If the animals are not allowed to live on and cross private property unmolested, the national reserves will eventually be choked off.

“The future of wildlife ultimately depends on what happens outside the parks more than [what happens] inside,” he said.

At the entry gate to the Kimana sanctuary, which opened Feb. 28, Saiko collects $10 from each non-Kenya resident and 100 shillings (about $2) from each resident to see the animals.

Saiko and his colleagues hope it will make a profit and pay dividends to the local owners. For now, the only real expense is the small salaries paid to Saiko and the other guards. The wildlife service maintains the sanctuary’s roads.

A second experimental local sanctuary, also financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, is operating at Kwale in the elephant-rich Shimba Hills forest south of Mombasa near the Indian Ocean coast.

Western sees the two pilot sanctuaries as the first step in finding ways to make wildlife benefit more Kenyans and give them a reason to protect animals. Among the ideas under consideration are allowing hunting to cull wildlife herds and making it easier to get licenses for tourism businesses.

By law, wild animals belong to the state, but about 75% of Kenya’s wild animals roam on private land. Farmers and herders hate sharing their turf with the wild animals because they kill people, livestock and crops and have brought no economic benefits.

Between January 1989 and June 1994, wild animals killed 230 people and injured 218. Elephants alone killed 14 people last year.

Government compensation for such deaths is the equivalent of $500. There is no payment for injuries and medical bills or for damage to crops and property.

Patrick Balozi, a Maasai in his late 20s, had expected a handsome onion harvest earlier this year from a two-acre plot outside Kimana, a settlement near the sanctuary. But one night, he said, a herd of elephants “dug them up systematically, following the rows,” eating the onions and a season’s income.

To Western, such farmers and herders are a constituency to be won over.

The Kenya National Wildlife Assn., a group of landowners, is pressing with Western’s support for changes in legislation to permit financial gain from wild animals on their land.

“There are alternative uses of land other than keeping wild animals without any benefits,” said Koikai Oloitiptip, the association’s interim chairman. “Some of the uses may not be viable in the long run, but people need the money.”

A report published in December 1994 by a five-member team appointed by the Kenya Wildlife Service recommended that landowners and communities be given “authority to utilize wildlife for economic benefits as well as take on certain responsibilities and costs of conservation.”

In addition to running sanctuaries, landowners should be allowed to operate tourist lodges and create jobs through industries such as making leather bags and shoes from the skins of culled animals, the report said.

Kenya licenses operators of lodges and other tourist services, and until now such licenses have not been available to simple farmers and herders.

“If people know they can benefit from those buffalo, then they will protect them,” Western said.

James Githui, chief game warden at Amboseli National Park, supports the approach. He is also responsible for protecting wildlife in the region around the park and said his job would be much easier if more Kenyans could benefit from protecting wildlife.

The idea of allowing any hunting is sure to bring strong opposition from conservationists.

And Western says conservation groups in the United States and Europe are skeptical about grass-roots conservation.