AMBOSELI CONSERVATION PROGRAM
​Connecting skills to advance conservation knowledge and applications
  • Home
  • About ACP
  • The Amboseli Ecosystem
  • Collaborators
  • Library
  • News & Commentaries
  • Contacts

Celebrating the First Community Conservation Initiative

7/28/2021

 
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.
Picture
Participants during the formal launch under the banner of the KWS Parks Beyond Parks in 1997.
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.

Comments are closed.

    Amboseli Conservation Program

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    October 2021
    July 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    September 2018
    June 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    July 2016
    April 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    April 2014
    November 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.