Wildlife or our life?

Resiato Martyn from the Maasai Conservation and Development Organisation is a Maasai pastoralist who struggles to raise livestock. She argues that while nature tourists bring in millions to the economy of Kenya each year – very little of this revenue “trickles down to local communities”. And the growth in tourism raises serious questions for traditional indigenous culture.

The Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania have co-existed with wildlife for generations. The wildlife has survived because of the protection and respect that the Maasai pastoralists have for the environment. The Maasai Mara National Reserve (MMNR) attracts 60 per cent of the nature tourists who visit Kenya every year, earning the country £50 million in 1996, yet less than one per cent of the revenue collected trickles down to local communities.

The Maasai have grown less tolerant of wildlife. Today more than 80 per cent of wildlife, which belongs to the state, lives outside protected areas on the Maasai land. The most pressing issue is the ownership of the wildlife in communal areas at a time of rapid population growth. The land is under pressure from people and wildlife. Having wild animals that they do not own living on their land raises questions for the Maasai, such as:

• Why would the Maasai forego their own development and needs for a wildlife resource that they do not own or use ?
• Why should Maasai not share the money accrued from the wildlife that feeds on their cows and children?
• Why should communities bear the costs of conservation but not the benefits?
• If local communities own the land on which the wildlife exists, are they not the best people to implement and monitor measures to relieve pressures on biodiversity?
• Is not their full involvement in the decision-making and management process imperative for the success of conservation and development on their land ?
• Why should the conservation of wildlife have precedence over local people’s needs ?

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), a state corporation responsible for conserving and managing all of Kenya’s wildlife, has done little in educating the communities around the MMNR on how to benefit from the resource on which Kenyan tourism thrives. KWS has also neglected the community; out of a population of 46,331 people, 36,138 lived below the poverty line in the Mara planning unit in 2001.

Furthermore, the theme of the 1997-2001 District Development Plan for Narok District was “rapid industrialisation for sustainable development”. This included improving the infrastructure, developing local raw materials, marketing and access to credit. In the Mara division this has hardly been realised.

The Maasai’s changing view of wildlife is driven by the fact that they do not have the marketing and financial skills to utilise the natural resource commercially, leaving them feeling that someone else is reaping what they have sown.

The government has encouraged the Maasai pastoralists to practise agriculture, but with the high numbers of wildlife found in their areas, it is impossible. The animals eat the crops and wildlife is seen as a curse and an obstacle to development.

The Maasai are becoming frustrated by the wildlife that lives on their land but over which they have no control. They are moving from seeing wildlife as something with which they must live alongside in mutual respect, to a commercial commodity to be used. In agricultural areas wildlife is even seen as a pest to be eliminated.

Their monopoly of power by KWS, a central power outside the community, prevents the chances of sustainable co-existence outside protected areas. However, the pastoral landowners feel that they can potentially absorb the impact of human-wildlife conflict if they are granted wildlife ownership and rights to management, legal hunting and culling.

Other problems that the communities in wildlife areas face in relation to KWS policies include the issue of compensation. The compensation for loss of human life, is Ksh 30,000 ( £215) - not enough to help bereaved families who have lost a breadwinner. If a lion eats all the livestock of a family, no compensation is paid. Yet the law has outlawed the killing of rogue animals.

There has been some progress in that the community and the Maasai Conservation and Development Organisation are designing a programme to create self-reliance through conservation and tourism and to demarcate a core conservation area. The project aims to educate the community on how to utilise the wildlife by building tourism facilities and encouraging visitors to the area. The hope is that the benefits they see will balance their increasingly negative views of the wildlife.