In response to some questions: Wildlife Conservancies are community-owned, multi land use areas, which benefit local people using wildlife conservation as the catalyst for security, stability and human development. However, the benefits of the Wildlife Conservancy concept go way beyond conservation and tourism alone. The implementation of these conservancies yield multiple local, national and even international benefits for people by stabilizing regions, improving security, building local capacity, diversifying livelihoods, increasing community resilience, generating prosperity, reducing donor reliance, protecting the natural environment, facilitating access to social services and enhancing local governance. Critically, by stabilizing communities, conservancies act as a bulwark against the escalating threat of infiltration by extremist organisations that historically have preyed on the poor and disenfranchised. There is credible evidence that ivory is being used to fund terrorist operations. Due to its geographical location, poverty levels and large elephant population, our region is particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Not only do these conservancies spawn tangible benefits for the potentially impoverished and vulnerable resident communities, they will also create buffers protecting the ecological integrity of the National Parks, make more space available for wildlife and support Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), the national wildlife authority, in its role of protecting for posterity Kenyas rich biodiversity and areas of key environmental importance - for the benefit of all. A lot of the former Maasai cattle-grazing districts have been converted into wildlife conservancies. In these exclusive, wildlife sanctuaries, the Maasai landowners (each of whom owns a small tract of ranch land, none of which are fenced) have come together to benefit from safari tourism by agreeing joint land-use and lease agreements with safari camp operators who pay their members an annual rent and a fee for each visitor. There have been positive developments in the Mara almost every year, with one large bush district after another semi-converting from cattle-grazing to safari tourism and conservation. Sometimes the Maasai retain limited livestock-grazing rights in these areas, and particularly in the corridors between them – and there are small islands of resistance here and there, where a landowner has done a private deal, or ‘forgets’ he is not supposed to be grazing his livestock beyond the agreed invisible boundaries. Grazing management and concessions are in place to compensate in most conservancies. Minor teething troubles aside, however, the conservancy model has been a massive success – so much so that the wildlife is often more prolific in the conservancies outside the Maasai Mara National Reserve than inside it. And with livestock-grazing far from unknown in the National Reserve in any case – and busy tourist traffic in much of it, especially in migration season and peak holiday periods – there is evidence that the wildlife is steadily adjusting to the fact that the bushier, less visited lands are also relatively safe havens, where humans pose only a limited threat and the natural environment is increasingly returning to a state of healthy balance. The conservancies are exclusive to their guests and the limited number of camps in each conservancy can organise bush walks and night drives, neither of which is possible in the National Reserve. The conservancy camps are still able to take safari visitors into the National Reserve. It doesn’t work the other way round: most conservancies do not permit casual visits to safari travellers staying in the big camps and lodges in the national reserve or clustered around its boundaries. Most of the camp and conservancy staff in the conservancies come from the region’s Maasai community. In the case of one or two camps, staff are drawn exclusively from local Maasai villages.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 06:03:03 +0000
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