By David Western, Victor N. Mose, David Maitumo, Immaculate Ombongi, Sakimba Kimiti, Winfridah Kemunto, Samson Leikanaya, Paul Kasaine, Sunte Kimiti and Julius Muruiki.

jonahwestern@gmail.com | vnmose@gmail.com  | victor.mose@acc.or.ke

The impact of the drought

The drought in Amboseli and across southern Kenya has intensified according to all Amboseli Conservation Program (ACP) measures. The pasture available has fallen deeper into the red zone (Figure 1), milk yields have dried up, and livestock body condition is falling to the levels of the 2009 drought (Figure 2). The pressure gauge comparing the intensity of grazing for 2022 with the catastrophic drought of 2009 when well over half the livestock died is now as deep in the red zone (Figure 3).
Cattle deaths are rising sharply and sale prices are falling steeply. The average price of a steer has fallen from Ksh 65,000 in January to Ksh 25,000 in August, making families reluctant to sell. To keep their animals alive, herders are buying hay and feeding their animals maize meal. The price of hay has risen from Ksh 250 a bale to Ksh 350 in the past few months and will rise steeply as supplies run short. Maize meal is set to rise from Ksh 100 a 2kg package to Ksh 200 with the removal of subsidies. With schools due to open after the half-term, families are struggling to keep their animals alive, feed their children and send them to class. Many herders who left Amboseli with their cattle to find better forage in the southern rift and as far off as Narok and Ngorongoro in Tanzania are returning home because they need family and neighbors to split their herds and manage them more intensively, including cutting browse from trees and bushes. 

​With rains unlikely for several weeks, the drought will intensify further. Satellite images comparing the Enhanced Vegetation Index across southern Kenya and northern Tanzania for the same months as the 2009 drought show the state of pasture by August to be far worse (Figure 4). The dire conditions in Amboseli were not expected at the start of the year when conditions were far more favorable than 2009. 

The mass immigration of an estimated 150,000 cattle into the Amboseli region from as far away as Narok and Tanzania changed the outlook by using up the flush of pasture produced by unseasonal rains in January and February 2022. The failure of the long rains saw the immigrating herds move west in search of grazing, followed by over half the Amboseli herds. The movements back and forth across southern Kenya since January have been on a scale not seen by living herders (see www.amboseliconservation.org). 

The outlook in the coming months

The drought will worsen in the coming weeks as the remaining pastures are grazed down, the cost of supplementing cattle feed with hay and maize rises with commodity prices, and weakened animals die. Large numbers of cattle are already dying around many settlements. Unexpected at the beginning of the years was a heavy toll on wildlife. We anticipated after the ACP aerial count in February that there was going to be sufficient reserve grazing in the swamps to see the herds through to the long rains. This is no longer the case. 
The large influx of cattle early in the year quickly used up the surplus grazing. The resident Maasai have, as a result, had to rely heavily on the Amboseli swamps to save their herds. Over 10,000 cattle were using the swamps by July, hardening the outlook for wildlife. 
The swamps pastures are now so depleted that on 16th of August 2022, ACP counted only 175 of a total of 2,000 elephants known to use Amboseli, the lowest in decades. The herds are scattered widely outside the park, raising the risks of conflict with people. The zebra and wildebeest populations which have recovered fully from the 2009 drought and are the highest recorded in Amboseli in a half-century of ACP counts, are also facing severe losses. Large numbers of zebra are dying and grazing deep in the swamp to find grazing. Barring early rains, the coming weeks will take a heavy toll on livestock and wildlife herds.
The incoming Kajiado and Narok County Governments and the new National Government elected to office on August 9th must take emergency drought measures to relieve the distress. We estimated the loss of 100,000 cattle in the 2009 drought, together with the time to recovery, to have incurred Ksh 3 billion in economic losses to families in the Amboseli ecosystem. The losses in 2022 may not be as great but, coupled with the cost of feeding animals to get them through the drought, will be a severe burden on family income and health. The damage done by the recurring and intensifying droughts to the county and national governments must be urgently addressed and remedied, given the impact on the livestock industry, wildlife and tourism revenues. 

​The Amboseli Ecosystem Trust (AET), ACP and African Conservation Centre (ACC) will shortly be holding a partner’s meeting aimed at integrating data collection and dissemination to plan and manage the ecosystem more effectively through the Nongotiak Centre. The Southern Rangelands Coalition (SRC), hosted by AET, will follow-on with a two-day meeting to discuss the future of the open rangelands, livestock and wildlife in the face of land subdivision, fragmentation and degradation. 

Download PDF version below.
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By David Western and Victor N. Mose

Milk yields are dwindling, livestock prices are falling to rock bottom, and animals are in such poor condition that few herders can sell them at acceptable prices. This is the picture in Amboseli as the effects of drought are being felt across the country. Mothers are concerned about a lack of milk for their school-age children, and absent fathers are desperate to save their cattle which are out searching the remaining pastures far from their homesteads.

Data from the Amboseli Conservation Program (ACP) on livestock prices, milk yields, and body condition scores show the rapidly declining trends. Gourds are empty, the body condition of the remaining lactating cows is far below average, and market prices for a heifer are fetching Kenya shillings 5,000 or less. The numbers of animals up for sale is now so large, many herds are unable to find any market at all.

Following the release of an ACP drought alert in May, stakeholders in the Amboseli ecosystem, led by the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust (AET), convened in Kimana to guide the community on immediate drought mitigation measures and preparedness for extreme drought in the coming months. A separate report on the deliberations during the meeting will be published shortly.
Graphs of recent livestock market prices, milk yields, and body condition scores collected by the ACP locally-recruited monitoring team are presented below. 

The current average price for a mature bull has dropped to Ksh 41,000, a 21% decrease. Steers, heifers, and cow sale prices have dropped by 50% compared to the same time last year. Despite the drop in prices, herders report difficulty in finding any markets for the animals.

The graph tracking lactating cow body scores and milk yields at the homesteads shows conditions falling fast to the 2009 catastrophic drought levels. Herders at the Kimana meeting were told to brace for harsh times in the coming months and plan ahead.  ACP has modelled economic losses due to droughts and the gains made when herders sell off their livestock before extreme forage shortfalls. The results will be posted shortly. The early warning model guides herders on when to sell livestock based on forage conditions and market forces to avoid extreme economic losses. The information will be presented using simple open-source dashboards for ease of understanding by local herders.

Download full report below.
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Harsh times ahead for herders as the rains fail

By David Western and Victor N. Mose
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Herders face an extreme drought in Amboseli in the coming dry season, perhaps as bad as the 2009 drought when over half the cattle died, milk yields dried up and sale prices fell to rock bottom. The dire outlook is forecast by ACP’s monitoring and herder’s own assessments. The cause of the dire outlook is a combination of a mounting grazing pressure over the last few years, an influx of over 150,000 cattle in from Matapatu, Kaputei and Tanzania in January and February, and poor long rains in April and May.

The satellite data shown below compares the conditions before the large livestock die-off after the long rains in May of 2009 with May of 2022. All group ranches in the Amboseli region face dire drought in the coming months.

​Grazing pressure for April 2022 is at peak across the group ranches, hitting 100% in Kimana, Imbirikani, Olgulului and sections of Eselengei. The Chyulu Hills, usually a drought refuge, have already reached 98%. Despite the heavy rains of 2017 to 2021 being the wettest run of years in decades, the continuous grazing pressure since the beginning of the year due to the influx of cattle has reduced pasture levels close to those of the 2009 drought.
In response to the grave pasture conditions on the Amboseli group ranches, herders are driving their cattle to Matapatu / Mailua  and into northern Tanzania, areas where the May 2022 satellite image shows some pastures still remain. 

​In a further warning of the hard months ahead, livestock prices are already dropping to drought levels due to the excess numbers entering the market. The extreme drought warning calls for herders to sell excess animals as soon as they can before the prices fall further, and to buy in hay to feed their maintenance herd through the drought.
Unless excess stocks are removed soon, large numbers of livestock will die of starvation, further damaging the pastures and resulting in poor recovery even if the short rains are good.

​Download Extreme Drought Alert for Amboseli below.

​By David Western and Victor N. Mose
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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"
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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
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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.
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​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
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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.