Kenya’s Wildlife Get a City View

No other place boasts such a wide variety of wild animals so close to a bustling metropolis. Lions, giraffes and ostriches roam freely against a backdrop of skyscrapers and jets landing at Kenya’s international airport.

But people are moving in and fences are going up around the Nairobi National Park, threatening an important migration route for zebras and wildebeest -- and the lions, jackals and hyenas that hunt them.

Development could cut off the animals’ annual movement to southern grasslands during the rainy season and their return in the dry season to the park’s plentiful water supplies.

So the government and wildlife groups are paying the Maasai, the famous tribe of southern Kenya, not to farm or fence in land as a way to keep the migration corridor clear. In another conservation step, tribal people are being compensated whenever a lion kills their livestock, as long as they let the lion live.

The efforts come on a continent that in the last century has lost half its forest and a significant chunk of wildlife.

Protected game reserves like the Nairobi National Park make up about 8% of Kenya’s land, but more than three-fourths of the country’s wildlife lives outside the reserves.

“A lot of structures are coming up,” says Godfrey Ntapayia, a Maasai community leader, pointing to a cement factory at the edge of the 330-square-mile wildlife corridor linking the Nairobi National Park to the southern Amboseli region.

“These industries are encouraging construction around the dispersal [migration] area. People are buying land and erecting a lot of fences,” he says.

Wildlife experts also worry about the migration region between the Serengeti in northern Tanzania and the Masai Mara area of southern Kenya, whose array of wildlife has been cut by 60% since the 1970s.

But development is most pronounced in the Kitengela area south of Nairobi, in which private property has replaced the Maasai’s traditional system of collective ownership and farming is replacing cattle raising.

The corridor is 70% blocked, Environment Minister Newton Kulundu says. This has led to a marked increase in “human-wildlife conflicts,” he says, with wildebeest wrecking fences and crops and Maasai tribesmen killing lions that prey on their cattle.

Residents of the region killed 11 lions last year, about the same as in each of the last four years. But no lions -- a threatened though not acutely endangered species -- have been reported killed in 2004, giving hope that the 2-year-old compensation program may be bearing fruit.

“I like to see lions,” says James Turere, 42, a Maasai shepherd. “Other places don’t have so many animals like we do. It’s something special.”

He says he used to kill lions but stopped when he started getting compensation for livestock lost to the predators.

A total of 115 Maasai families in Kitengela are now receiving the equivalent of $4 a month per acre in exchange for not farming or erecting fences.

The program protects 8,500 acres, or about 4% of the corridor, says Paul Gathitu Masela, senior warden at Nairobi National Park. But he says that land is often in the most critical areas for animal crossings, such as near roads and rivers.

Masela says authorities would like to increase the protected area to 50,000 acres, but there isn’t enough money. Lack of funds has long been a problem plaguing Kenyan conservation efforts, along with poor coordination and government support.

Still, the “lease” program shows a shift in attitude among Kenyan tribes, which now often see wildlife as a tourism resource to be exploited rather than vermin to be destroyed.

“Twenty years ago our young Maasai warriors used to go around killing the animals,” says David Koshal, a Maasai wildlife guide. “Things are changing now. They know that there are benefits to be had from these lions, these animals.”

The Maasai seek ways to funnel park entry fees and other tourism revenue into their communities. The government and conservation groups are encouraging tribes to develop campsites for safari-goers and to sell handicrafts rather than cultivate the land.

Some environmentalists say the “lease” program doesn’t go far enough. They want the government to forbid human encroachment on wildlife corridors. Environment Minister Kulundu says that idea is being considered.