​By David Western and Victor N. Mose
​
We anticipated a severe dry season in June 2021 when the long rains were paltry across the Amboseli region and severe in northern and eastern Kenya. It was soon apparent from our ground monitoring that Amboseli faced severe grazing shortages in the eastern portion of the ecosystem. By January the extreme pasture shortages had spread well to the east towards the Chyulu Hills. Anticipating a severe drought in early 2022, the Amboseli Conservation Program commissioned the Department of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing (DRSRS), and the Flight Training Centre at Wilson Nairobi, to conduct an aerial count of the Amboseli ecosystem in January 2022. 

​By late December it was apparent that Amboseli had been invaded by a huge influx of cattle from Tanzania, Matapatu, the Rift Valley and other places to the west and south where the rains had failed. The influx quickly reduced the sparse forage around Amboseli and moved east towards the Chyulu Hills where the rains were moderately good. By mid-January cattle were emaciated, most especially those from Tanzania, and the weaker animals were dying. We planned our count to capture the extent of the invasion and issue a forecast of heavy anticipated livestock deaths and plunging market prices.
In what follows we report the findings on the extent of the cattle invasion, the numbers and distribution of livestock and wildlife in the first bulletin by the Amboseli Conservation Program. Based on the counts, other monitoring data and unseasonal rains in January and February 2022, we project the outlook for the next half year.
Download the first Amboseli Monitoring Outlook Bulletin below.

​"We Alone: How humans have conquered the planet and can also save it"
​
by Dr. David Western, African Conservation Centre, Nairobi
 
Renowned Kenyan conservationist Dr. David Western will be presenting thoughts and insights from his new book, "We Alone." The invited lecture will cover a broad swathe of human history and geographies from Masaai herders in East Africa to the frontiers of 21st century technology. Dr. Western will discuss how conservation is not a modern or western invention. Further, he will explore the relationship and feedbacks between humans and nature, determine the success and sustainability of societies and how modern sensibilities and knowledge otter hope for combatting climate change and maintaining the wealth of life on planet earth.

By David Western

My talk, “We Alone. How Humans Have Conquered the Planet and Can Also Save It” is the title of a book I published a year ago exploring where the bizarre urge to conserve other species came from, and how we can rally global collaboration to save the planet.
​
I want to start by dispelling the view that conservation is a modern invention of the West. I will show instead that conservation is a truly ancient and universal feature of all societies which learned to live within ecosystem limits. These universal lessons offer hope for living within planetary limits too.
 
So, how does conservation feature in our rise to global conquest? What evolutionary quirks made us so super-dominant? And how can we redirect those skills to save our planet? 


Click here for more information.

David (Jonah) Western
​
Several important developments bearing on the future of Amboseli have occurred in the last few months.
 
Amboseli Ecosystem Management Plan 2020-2030
​
The AEMP 2020-2030 was due to go into effect in 2019, immediately after the AEMP 2008-2018 lapsed. The gap was due to the greatly expanded work entailed in expanding the 2008-2018 plan from wildlife to include land use planning and zoning for the ecosystem, and the need to comply with the Kajiado County spatial planning mandate. The formal launch was held in Amboseli on the 11th December 2020, attended by the Cabinet Secretary of Tourism and Wildlife. The plan was gazetted by the Attorney General in January of this year, giving the plan the legal standing needed to ensure compliance.

The implementation workshop was scheduled immediately afterwards but had to be deferred until 11th August due to government restrictions on meetings. The formal launch at Sopa Lodge in Amboseli was attended by some 30 people with others, including KWS assistant directors and staff, using Zoom. The meeting fell well short of assigning roles, responsibilities and funding pledges we hoped for, but did set up implementation committees and appoint members from across the spectrum of partners. In a big step forward, the Amboseli National Park Plan 2020-2030 is firmly embedded within the ecosystem plan. The national park committee includes community representatives and NGOs to ensure the two plans are developed in parallel.
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Funding for the ecosystem and park plans is encouraging. WWF, US AID, IFAW, Big Life, Amboseli Trust for Elephants, ACC and other agencies are all likely to support portions of the plans. Therein lies the challenge. The number of players, funding and projects involved calls for implementing committees under KWS and AET to play a firm coordinating role to avoid a fragmentation of the ecosystem and park plans.
​

​Conservancy Fund
The Amboseli Ecosystem Trust, Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Association and conservation bodies met with the Governor, Kajiado County and his senior staff in August, urging his government to create a trust fund in support of wildlife conservancies around Amboseli and across the county. A follow-up meeting was held on 29th September 2021, convened by the Kajiado Cabinet Secretary Tourism, Wildlife and Culture along with the CS of Lands and other senior officers. Some forty members of NGOs, conservancies, county officials and other agencies attended the meeting to map out a bill setting up a county fund in support of wildlife conservancies. It transpired that few landowners had registered under the Wildlife Act because of the restrictive provisions.
 
ACP suggested the reservations could be overcome by widening the definition to include water, pasture, woodland and forest conservancies aimed at sustaining land health and resource use. The broader provisions are covered under the Environmental Management and Coordination Act. The advantage of the such conservancies is in giving landowners a way of forming larger voluntary associations to protect their lands from alienation and degradation. It was agreed that the bill should adopt the broader definition of conservancies to encourage their spread. Grass banks are likely to play an increasingly important role in providing late season forage in the face of land subdivision and sedentarization of pastoral communities. The meeting resolved to draw up a draft conservancy fund support bill and submit it back to the members.
 

Subdivision and land trusts
​
As successful as the ecosystem and community-based conservation has been in Amboseli the pressure of sub-division has been building for years. Hastening the land rush, the Cabinet Secretary Lands two years ago declared all pastoral areas open to adjudication. The group ranches can choose to subdivide and give each member a parcel. Subdivision plans are well advanced on Ololograshi Ogululi Group Ranch (OOGR) and underway on Mbirikani, Kuku and Selengei, the three group ranches spanning the migratory range of the Amboseli animals beyond OOGR.
 
ACP, through a series of publications and reports over the last fifteen years, has documented the dire impact of sub-division and sedentarization on wildlife and livestock in Kaputei area north of Amboseli. Together with the African Conservation Centre, ACP produced a booklet charting ways to keep the rangelands open, based exchanges between East African pastoralists and American ranchers concerned about the future of their lands and way of life.
 
Anticipating land subdivision, several years ago I recommended the formation of a land trust for the Amboseli group ranches as way to keep subdivided lands open and viable for herders and wildlife. Unfortunately, OOGR, under growing pressure from members, pushed ahead with subdivision plans before exploring the land trust option as a way to avoid the mistakes of Kimana Group Ranch disaster years earlier. Kimana’s subdivision not only accelerated pasture degradation, but led to the sale of land to speculators and the displacement of herders.
 
At the request of AET, the Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation, (LCAOF), agreed to fund the consultancy of Michael Odhiambo, a land use specialist. The consultancy should have looked into the role of AET land trusts for all group ranches rather than solely OOGR. Odhiambo scoped a land trust for OOGR and submitted his proposal to conservation partners. The proposed land trust and management body was supported in principle. OOGR, under growing pressure of group ranch members to form their own conservancy arrangements with tour operators and NGOs has floated a funding proposal for the land trust. Other group ranches are also forging ahead with their own subdivision plans and setting up post-group ranch bodies.  
 
In discussion with AET, recommended a two-tiered approach to avoid the growing divide between OOGR and other group ranches threatening to fracture ecosystem planning and the AEMP. First, recognizing OOGR is pressing ahead with its own trust willy-nilly, it should put the proposal to the partners who came together to develop the AEMP 2020-2030 to solicit their input and funding. Second, AET should invite a scoping exercise among group ranches and partners to explore how to patch together the plans of the dissolving group ranches, conservancies and other bodies under AEMP and the umbrella role AET can play in supporting members lacking skills and funds to implement their plans.
 
AET in my view has a key role to play in raising funds to support the conservancies, lease arrangements, easements and land purchases under an ecosystem trust which it is already empowered to do. It also has a role to play in forging a strong political voice for the pastoral community in Amboseli, championing mix livestock-wildlife use, garnering donor funds through GEF, USAID, AID and other agencies, promoting larger community associations, and in integrating and coordinating grazing plans and the like. Its success recent overture to the Kajiado County to set up a conservancy support fund is a good example.
 

By David Western

Today, three decades on from its inception, we celebrate the Kimana Conservancy as first community wildlife initiative in East Africa. Kimana stands as a testament to those first pioneering steps and how far we have come in recapturing the long-tradition of the Maasai coexisting with wildlife and conserving the richest wildlife populations on Earth.

The Kimana Wildlife Sanctuary grew out of the efforts in Amboseli in the 1970s when the national park became the first anywhere to pay the surrounding communities to protect wildlife across the entire ecosystem and encourage tourism enterprises. The community-based conservation initiative launched a Kenya-wide movement picked up around the world and ushering in ecotourism as a way for communities to benefit from wildlife on their lands.
 
Kimana with its open plains, woodlands, swamps and wealth of wildlife was formally launched under the banner of the KWS Parks Beyond Parks in 1997. Assisted by KWS, ACC and US AID, Kimana built up tourism enterprises and conservation programs. Kimana also deployed the first cadre of KWS-trained community rangers in Kenya. Kimana’s success was celebrated by the Royal Ballet joining the Maasai in Dances in Harmony on stage beneath Kilimanjaro.
 
The community-based successes of Amboseli and Kimana led to the Amboseli Ecosystem Management Plan (AEMP) 2008-2021, the first of its kind. The Amboseli Ecosystem Trust was created as the coordinating body made up of group ranch reps, KWS and conservation partners.
 
Let’s be clear, Kimana has had hard times with hoteliers, its own bad management and lack of professional support. Today, the future looks far brighter with the Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Association developing, promoting and protecting the interests of wildlife conservancies.
 
The growth of conservancies in Amboseli in the last two decades testifies to the collaborative efforts of group ranches, KWS and conservation partners. Looking to the future, AET and partners have drawn up AEMP 2020-2030, aimed at integrating land uses and sustaining the health of the ecosystem.
 
The ultimate success of community conservation begun in Kimana is told in Amboseli being the only ecosystem in Kenya where wildlife has actually increased over the last fifty years. Today there are more elephants, zebras and wildebeest than when I first began counting them in 1967.
 
I join you in celebrating the long journey to the Kimana Conservancy. But I also caution of the far larger hurdles ahead, calling for the same community-based conservation approaches behind the successes.
 
Ololorashi Ogulului has begun subdividing the group ranch into individual private holdings. If this leads to the scattered houses and fences that followed the subdivision of the Kitengela and Kaputei, there will be no future for pastoralism or wildlife.
 
OOGR, fully aware of the threats posed by land fragmentation and degradation, has drawn up a land sub-division plan to protect its members from losing their lands, to sustain pastoral livelihoods and to conserve wildlife. This bold vision depends on the formation of a land trust and the same community-based management which has sustained the coexistence of pastoralism and wildlife down the generations. We owe our full support to the land trust initiative, another first for Kenya, and to other group ranch conservation efforts in Amboseli.

David Western and Victor Mose
 
Our two most recent papers document the changes in Amboseli ecosystem from the free-ranging movements of subsistence livestock pastoralists and wildlife in the 1960s to a human-dominated landscape of our global age. The longest running ecosystem monitoring program of its kind, the ACP study is momentous in showing humans now far exceed natural forces such as rainfall in defining the numbers and distributions of wildlife and livestock. We give abstracts of the two papers and broad conclusions below with links to the full articles. 




The changing role of natural and human agencies shaping the ecology of an African savanna ecosystem

Abstract
Reconstructing the historical interplay of wildlife and pastoralists in the African savannas is clouded in contemporary studies by the transformation of subsistence societies and land use changes. We draw on five decades of monitoring by the Amboseli Conservation Program (ACP) to illustrate the rainfall-plant-herbivore linkages in a free-ranging wildlife-livestock system transitioning to contemporary savanna landscapes. In half a century, the coupled interactions of wildlife and livestock in the Amboseli ecosystem driven by rainfall and water sources have been severed and reshaped by farming, land subdivision, sedentism, poaching and intensified herbivory. Livestock ranges have expanded, wildlife ranges have contracted and overlapping spatial use has fluctuated with population sizes. In contrast, wildlife and livestock herds have been sustained where the rangelands remain open.  A decrease in the mean body size reflecting a shift to small stock among pastoralists has increased species dominance, decreased diversity, and elevated biomass turnover and the probability of extreme shortfalls. In recent droughts pastoralists have been importing food supplements to reduce drought risk and purchased livestock to restock herds, further uncoupling the rainfall-herbivore link.  Our study reinforces the view that biomes worldwide are shaped at an accelerating pace by human agencies rather than endogenous environmental factors. Disputes over models of rangeland systems echo the wider debate over using natural ecosystems as benchmarks for conservation verses “gardening” nature. We argue that models of natural ecosystems fail to account for the dominant role of humans in contemporary ecosystem yet that it is possible to monitor the complex interplay of human and natural systems and interpret the changes in terms of ecological function using macroecological analysis. The key finding for conservation is the importance of space, landscape heterogeneity, social networks and mobility in sustaining the large herbivore populations.

Download the full paper below.

The photos and captions are taken from We Alone: How Humans Have Conquered the Planet and Can Also Save it, which covers the story of how the long history of coexistence of pastoralists and wildlife in Amboseli holds lessons for sharing our planet in future.

Long-term changes in the plant ecology of an African savanna landscape and the implications for ecosystem theory and conservation management
 
David Western, Victor N. Mose, David Maitumo and Caroline Mburu

​Abstract
Studies of the African savannas have used national parks to test ecological theories of natural ecosystems, including equilibrium, non-equilibrium, complex adaptive systems, and the role of top-down and bottom-up physical and biotic forces. Most such studies have excluded the impact of pastoralists in shaping grassland ecosystems and, over the last half century, the growing human impact on the world’s rangelands. The mounting human impact calls for selecting indicators and integrated monitoring methods able to track ecosystem changes and the role of natural and human agencies. Our study draws on five decades of monitoring the Amboseli landscape in southern Kenya to document the declining role of natural agencies in shaping plant ecology with rising human impact. We show that plant diversity and productivity have declined, biomass turnover has increased in response to a downsizing of mean plant size, and that ecological resilience has declined with the rising probability of extreme shortfalls in pasture production. The signature of rainfall and physical agencies in driving ecosystem properties have decreased sharply with growing human impact.


Download the full paper below.

A summary of the findings from both papers:

The Amboseli study shows the value of using long-term integrated ecological monitoring to track the spatial and temporal changes in the species composition, structure, and function of rangeland ecosystems and the role of natural and human agencies in the process of change.
 
We compare the Amboseli findings to the long-term studies of Kruger and Serengeti national parks to show that the human influence, whether by design or default, is increasingly shaping the ecology of savanna ecosystems. We look at the findings in the larger perspective of human impact on African grasslands and the world rangelands, in general, and discuss the implications for ecosystem theory and conservation policy and management.
 
The study was designed and intended to provide ecological information for the conservation of the Amboseli ecosystem. The conservation applications have been detailed elsewhere (Western 1994). More recently the long-term monitoring data formed the basis of the Amboseli Ecosystem Management Plans 2008–2018 and 2020–2030 and the Amboseli National Park Development Plan embedded within the ecosystem plan (KWS 2020) found here. 

The Amboseli study reflects universal changes underway. On a global scale, for example, Tucker et al. (2018) found that a wide range of species in the Anthropocene show reduced movements and constricted ranges. The findings demonstrate human impact to be so widespread and pervasive as to call for a reclassification of natural biomes as anthromes (Ellis and Ramankutty 2008). The pervasiveness raises the question of whether ecosystem theories have validity or utility in conservation management, whether baseline reference points are useful given millennial changes (Foster and Aber 2004; Briske et al. 2020), and whether species diversity as a measure of ecosystem functionality is useful. Boles et al. (2019), for example, found in all major ecosystems and climatic zones worldwide that, despite no systematic change in species richness, composition had changed extensively. The biodiversity crisis, they concluded, is more of a case of large-scale reorganization than species loss.
 
Janzen (1998) and Kareiva et al. (2011) assert that human modification is so great and irreversible as to justify “gardening” nature rather than management based on historical templates. Sinclair and Dobson (2015) argue that protected areas can serve as a control to test whether human-dominated ecosystems are sustainable and robust. Based on the  continued growth in protected areas worldwide (McNeely and Miller 1983), and the growing conservation efforts in human-dominated landscapes (Berkes 2007), we consider both protected and non-protected areas to play important and complementary roles (Western et al. 2020). We argue that the worldwide biodiversity loss calls for some level of ecosystem management to prevent land degradation and the erosion of ecological function, services, and resilience as documented in detail in Amboseli. Further, the complexity of ecosystems and the multiplicity of human factors call for monitoring human activity as an integral part of research.
 
The prospects of conserving wildlife using traditional husbandry and land management practices for sustaining space and winning a place for wildlife among pastoral societies without protected areas have been documented by David Western, Peter Tyrrell, Peadar Brehony, Samantha Russell, Guy Western and John Kamanga Conservation from the inside-out: winning space and a place for wildlife in working landscapes, People and Nature 2020:00:1-13. The success in Amboseli in conserving wildlife by adopting an ecosystem approach and integrating wildlife in pastoral economies on land is documented here.

See publications for full reference list.

Other recent articles you may wish to read include the following:
 
2020. Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, David Western, Kathleen A. Galvin, Pamela McElwee, Mar Cabeza. Historical shifts in local attitudes towards wildlife by Maasai pastoralists of the Amboseli Ecosystem (Kenya): insights from three conservation psychology theories. Journal for Nature Conservation 53 125763.
 
2020. Western, Peter Tyrrell, Peadar Brehony, Samantha Russell, Guy Western and John Kamanga Conservation from the inside-out: winning space and a place for wildlife in working landscapes David. People and Nature 2020:00:1-13.
 
2020. Scaling up the governance of the commons to sustaining our planet. In A Book of the Body Politic. Connecting Biology, Politics and Social Theory. San Giorgio Dialoge 2017. Latour, B., Schaffer, s and Gagiardi, P. Fondazioni Giorgio Cini. ISBN 9788896445228
 
2020. We Alone. How Humans Conquered the Planet and Can Also Save It. Yale University Press.
 
2020. With Potts, R. et al. Key Pleistocene human adaptations emerged during a shift to less predictable resources. Science Advances 6:eabc 8975 1-14.
 
2020. David Western. A review of Nairobi National Park Plan 2020-2030. Swara.  Restoration calls for good science to guide management. Swara July-September 2020.
 
2021. Kariuki, R.W.; Western, D.; Willcock, S.; Marchant, R. Assessing Interactions between Agriculture, Livestock Grazing and Wildlife Conservation Land Uses: A Historical Example from East Africa. Land 2021, 10(1), 46; https://doi.org/10.3390/land10010046.
 

By David Western, Victor Mose and David Maitumo
 
We began regularly counting wildlife in the Amboseli Basin in 2009 in anticipation of the severe drought in the course of the year. The counts of 700 square kilometer Amboseli Basin were designed to catalogue the drought and subsequent recovery in far greater detail than we could glean from the large-scale aerial counts of the 8,500 square kilometer ecosystem censuses once a year. The ground counts of live and dead animals proved timely.
The wildlife and livestock losses to drought in 2009 became so alarming that we convened an emergency meeting in of the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust, Kenya Wildlife Service and conservation organizations in December 2009. At the meeting we presented the extreme drought losses: over 95 of the wildebeest and two thirds of the zebra and cattle died, died in the preceding few months. The two hundred remaining wildebeest of the 6,000 at the start of the year were in imminent risk of extinction. We also forecast heavy predation on cattle around Amboseli National Park once wildlife left on migrations. Unfortunately, our warnings went unheeded and many lions were killed by herders suffering heavy cattle losses.
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The unexpected good news is that wildlife bounced back far faster than the slow recovery we projected due to heavy predation on the small surviving herds, by 2020 wildlife numbers had recovered, and even exceeded those at the start of 2009. The graph below shows the strong recovery of wildebeest and zebra between the 2009 and 2014. Buffalo, which seldom migrated in the rains, suffered far heavier predation than zebra and wildebeest and were slower to bounce back but had also recovered their pre-drought levels by 2017.  

​The faster than expected recovery from the extreme drought of 2009 resulted from a fortuitous influx of wildebeest and zebra from Tsavo National Park and Ngaserai in Tanzania. Had the links to these wildlife areas been cut off, Amboseli’s wildlife would have taken years longer to recover, and wildebeest would likely have gone extinct. The recovery shows just how important is the connection between wildlife areas and parks become more isolated and vulnerable to drought and other hazards. The connections to adjacent wildlife areas have been incorporated into the Amboseli Ecosystem Management Plan and Amboseli National Park Plan 2020-2030.
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For a fuller description of the drought see David Western. The Worst Drought. Turning Point or Tipping Point. Swara 2010: 3 16-20, for an account of the drought. 

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.
 

By David Western and Victor Mose

On our January 7th 2020 web posting , we announced the ratification and adoption of the Amboseli Ecosystem Management Plan 2020-2030. The plan broke new ground in going beyond the wildlife plans of the AEMP 2008-2018 to include all aspects of natural resource and land use management of the ecosystem. ACP’s technical report to the planning committee formed the foundation of the ecosystem plan. ACP also gave a poster demonstration of its monitoring work and contribution to the AEMP plans at the KWS Information and Education Centre prior to the launch (Download posters  below).

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.

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.