By David Western
 
The severity of conflict between wildlife and people intensified with scanty short rains in November and December. The conflict was the main topic of discussion at a meeting of the Borderlands Conservation Initiative, held in Nairobi in 1st and 2nd of March. Wardens, county representatives, conservation organizations and researchers reviewed the scale of conflict in Kajiado and Narok counties and mitigation measures. Amboseli was highlighted as the best documented case of the rising conflict as poaching abates and wildlife expands into human habitation. The following excerpts summarize the findings of BCI meeting:
 
Between 2013 and 2016, 40 human deaths and 300 injuries caused by wildlife were reported in Kajiado, along with 1,700 crop raiding incidents. Many incidents go unreported by farmers who feel there is no hope of getting any compensation. Big Life noted that the growing number of human deaths from elephant attacks has caused a spate of retaliatory spearing by young warriors. Only one elephant was lost to poaching in in Amboseli during 2016, compared to 24 to 30 elephants killed in retaliation. Big Life attended 145 crop raiding incidents in Amboseli area last year.
 
The growing overlap of elephants and small-scale farms (shambas) was presented by the Amboseli Conservation Program:
 
Big Life profiled the distribution of conflict incidents for 2016.  Big Life deploys 60 of the 350 Amboseli community scouts in conflict mitigation. Many farms are isolated and difficult to protect. The average damage per person is 0.5 acres and the interception rate on crop-raiding elephants on the order of 60 percent. Retaliatory incidents have risen sharply, posing dangers to scouts and rangers who intercede.
 
The BCI meeting concluded that the growing conflict needed to be tackled locally rather than rely on government compensation, and through land use planning at a county and group ranch level. Amboseli was highlighted as an example of the steps needed to address human-wildlife conflict.
 
A follow-up meeting of the Amboseli Human-Wildlife Conflict Committee set up in December was held at the Kenya Wildlife Service headquarters on the 22nd March. The meeting, convened by the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust, included the district police and National Intelligence Service, in addition to KWS, community leaders, conservation organizations and researchers.
 
The meeting reached a consensus on a preliminary draft of rapid-responses protocols for dealing with human deaths and injuries caused by wildlife. Kenya Wildlife Service, as the agency responsible for wildlife, will set up a hotline for reporting incidents. Big Life, which has an area-wide radio network, will send out the alerts via Whats App to assemble the rapid-response group on site. The Amboseli Ecosystem Trust will sound out the communities on the protocols being drawn up by the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, Lion Guardians, Big Life, ACC, KWS and the County Wildlife Compensation Committee Chairman. ACP will set up technical group to compile a human-wildlife conflict database.
 
Other measures to address the conflict are underway. Conservation organizations, Amboseli Ecosystem Trust and KWS have held meetings with warrior and youth groups in the Amboseli region to address the conflict:

• In January ACC gave start-up funds to launch conservation education outreach program in memory of Josh Kirinkol ACC US board member, aimed at engaging the younger generation of Maasai.
• ACC, funded by the Global Environmental Facility, is undertaking land use planning on Mbirikani, Kuku and Rombo group ranches. The land use plans zone each ranch into areas for settlement, farming, commerce, extensive livestock-cum-wildlife, ecotourism and conservancies.
• Big Life has completed 48 kilometers of an electric fence to protect the main farming areas east of Amboseli and along the foot-slopes of Kilimanjaro from elephant raids. The fence is proving highly effecting in keeping elephants out of farms.

By Sakimba Kimiti

In November 2016, Sakimba Kimiti, a research assistant with the Amboseli Conservation Program, defended his master’s titled, Rangeland Resource Dynamics and the Implications for Pastoral Livelihoods in the Amboseli Ecosystem, Kenya. Sakimba was interested in describing the local community knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of the extent of change in rangeland resources in Amboseli. Changes in the ecosystem monitored by ACP over the last few decades include land fragmentation, loss of grazing areas, changes in land tenure, restricted herd mobility due to increase in human settlements, changes in land use, and loss of pasture productivity. How well do local perceptions reflect the changes, and what is missing in the changes measured? Few studies have compared traditional and scientifically monitored information.
 
Sakimba integrated scientific approaches and local knowledge to assess changes in the Amboseli ecosystem over time, the causes of changes and the impact of the changes on pastoralists. He stratified the Amboseli ecosystem into nomadic, semi-nomadic and sedentary land uses under group tenure and private holdings. The four decades of change were divided into a pre-park period (1967-76), pre-settlement (1977-86), post-settlement (1987-2006) and the post-2009 drought.
 
From the resource maps drawn by the community, grazing areas have declined significantly over the period. The decline was more pronounced in the sedentary subdivided lands and the semi-nomadic locations, less so in nomadic locations. Areas of cultivation have also expanded over the period in both sedentary and semi-nomadic land sites. The changes have led to a reduction in household herd size in all the land locations, with the biggest declines in the sedentary land use sites.
 
The results of the study show that pastoralism remains a key livelihood strategy in Amboseli. Monitoring rangeland changes through community perceptions is a vital step in designing sustainable strategies for managing change and in strengthening participatory planning process.
 
Click link for full paper
Community perceptions on spatio-temporal land use changes in the Amboseli ecosystem, southern Kenya

By Victor N. Mose

The Amboseli Conservation Program (ACP) on Wednesday 22nd March 2017 launched an all-digital data collection platform that Resource Assessors (RAs) will use to collect and  transmit both plant and animal data in the Amboseli ecosystem.
The platform, called ODK (Open Data Kit), will help generate the first comprehensive ecosystem wide data set of ground sampling for wildlife, livestock, plants, settlement mapping, market surveys and drought conditions.
ODK is a free and highly customizable open source set of tools which simplifies collecting data in the field and aggregates the information on a remote server. Using the platform, ACP can now upload monitoring data onto a tablet in the field. The tablet also logs GPS location, date and time and takes digital pictures. The data is transmitted through the cloud for instant retrieval, updating and analysis on any database. The ACP database has integrated an analysis tool developed in R that analyses and generates instant results.
The digitization of field data and cloud transmission frees up time for Resource Assessors in the field and data analysts in the office to review the results and communicate the findings to user groups.
“I now wouldn’t need to carry my camera and GPS as the platform incorporates them both.” said an elated Maitumo, a long serving RA for the Amboseli Conservation Program.

By David Western

Predator attacks on livestock continue at a high level, despite the increase in wildlife numbers showing up in the ecological monitoring. This suggests that carnivore stock-killing is becoming habitual when wild prey availability should see attacks falling. The reasons likely stem from the loss of herding skills and knowhow in dealing with predators, resulting in the loss of hundreds of straying animals. Five lions have been speared in the Amboseli area in 2016, the highest in several years. The spearing, reported by Lion Guardians at the Human Wildlife Conflict (HWC) group, point to the anger communities feel about the failure of compensation payments, the slow response to conflict incidents, and warriors building up for an age-set ceremony shortly.
 
Crop depredations by elephants are also at an all-time high. Human deaths due to wildlife attacks have caused several riots in the Amboseli region this year. The same underlying causes of anger over lion depredations are fueling angst over elephant crop raiding, made worse by the loss of human life. Elephants have made ten fatal attacks on people in the Amboseli area this year. The lax responses to the attacks, added to the lack of compensation, has turned a bad situation serious. In one incident a few weeks ago, the body of a victim lay unattended by government officials for three days and was eaten by lions, hyenas and a leopard. The community took up spears in retaliation and KWS was forced to kill an innocent elephant in reprisal. The killing of innocent elephants is making docile elephants skittish and dangerous, according to Cynthia Moss.   
 
As reported at the launch of the Nongotiak centre in March, the anger and frustrations of the community and the governor of Kajiado, Dr. David Nkedianye, boiled up over the elephant and lion attacks and was directed at the new KWS Director General, Katili Mbathi. The meeting gave the DG a window onto the challenges facing KWS as the elephant poaching crisis subsides. The bigger longer-term challenges lie in finding space and a place for wildlife beyond parks--and beyond the conservancies--which have been the focus of KWS attention outside parks in the last few years.
 
A number of developments are underway in Amboseli to address the threats.
 
Big Life has taken a lead in tackling the depredations of elephants on small-scale farms on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and swamps east of Amboseli. Assisted by Space for Giants, Big Life has drawn up a fencing plan to secure the farms from elephant attacks. The 45 kilometer fence should alleviate most of the depredations on the farms south and east of Amboseli, areas elephants rarely used before farmers moved in. Most elephants moved north and west of Amboseli with the rains. These areas remain lightly used and could, with the restoration of seasonal dams, reintroduce elephants to their former range.
 
To address the broader human-wildlife conflict, Lion Guardians, Amboseli Trust for Elephants, Big Life, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, ACC and ACP have set up a HWC mitigation group under the umbrella of the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust. The inaugural meeting was held in March, the first fully-constituted meeting on December 7th 2016
 
The December meeting was chaired by Jeremy Goss of Big Life and attended by the warden and KWS Assistant Director, Southern, Daniel Onsembe, Benson Laiyan of AET, Daniel Lolterish, chairman of Ololorashi Ogulului Group Ranch, Jackson Mwato, the Kajiado County Wildlife Compensation Committee chairman, Johnson Sipitiek of ACC, community representative, Cynthia and staff of the Amboseli Elephant Trust, Leela Hadza and staff of Lion Guardians, Craig Miller, head of security for Big Life, and IFAW representatives. The main item on the agenda was the growing elephant and lion conflict.
 
The community members reiterated that the biggest cause of anger and reprisals was the lack of response after an elephant attack on farmers and herders. The warden reported that the only person who can authorize the killing of an elephant, however imminent the threat, is the Director General of KWS. The long delays inevitably mean the elephant has fled the scene even if action is granted. The upshot is that warriors take up spears and kill any elephants in the neighborhood, or KWS ends up killing the wrong elephant to placate the community when authority is granted.
 
Daniel Onsembe, Assistant KWS director, joined in the lengthy discussions about the place of dialogue and enforcement in addressing the conflict. After the last lion killing, the warden got the community to fine the warriors in the traditional manner and no lions have been killed since. The warden referred to the bible in one hand and the gun in the other duality of KWS wardens. The bible has proved more effective than the gun, particularly with the Maasai.
 
Onsembe supported the Warden’s view and said dialogue should be the first KWS response, arrest only when dialogue fails. He noted that KWS doesn’t have the money or manpower to solve the wide-spread conflicts. The best thing going for resolving the conflict is the “Parks Beyond Parks” movement and conservancies, which put wildlife management into the hand of communities and brings in NGOs in as partners. Johnson Sipitiek, chairman of the Narok County Wildlife Compensation Committee, added that KWS and the Ministry have lost credibility because no compensation for human deaths has been paid in two years and the claims now run at $29 million a year.
 
At the conclusion of the meeting, the HWC meeting set up a small group, including ATE, Lion Guardians, Big Life, AET and KWS, to propose rapid response protocols. The Amboseli warden will push the protocols with KWS DG, aimed at devolving HWC responses to approved teams that can act promptly after an attack. ACC will also launch a youth education fund in January, directed largely at young warriors, in memory of one of their most ardent conservation advocates who died recently. AET will set up small groups of warriors on each ranch to join the rapid response group attending victims of attacks.
 
The research and conservation groups agreed on setting up a HWC database with the assistance of ACP. The database will include a deep layer dealing with the long-term and seasonal pressures at the root of conflict—the supply side information--and a top layer dealing with the rapid response information, the demand side of conflict mitigation. The protocol will be presented at the BCI workshop in February for wider discussion and adoption across southern Kenya.

By David Western
 
Wildlife numbers in Amboseli continue their recovery from the 2009 drought. The influx of zebra and wildebeest into the Amboseli basin in October doubled the numbers counted in August. This is good news for Amboseli and, along with Maaasai Mara, has restored the national park to the top league of wildlife viewing in Kenya. I have not seen such spectacular concentrations of zebra, wildebeest and gazelle around the swamps since the 1990s.
 
The increase reflect a continuing recovery of herbivores from the 2009 drought in which wildebeest numbers plunged by over 90 percent, zebra by two thirds and buffalo by slightly more. Zebra numbers have recovered their pre-drought levels of 16,000 but are still below their peak numbers in the 1990s. Wildebeest figures have risen to two thirds of their pre-drought levels and buffalo are approaching the same recovery.
 
The big influx into Amboseli in October also reflects the severity of conditions across the larger ecosystem, as reported in the July posting. With livestock at peak numbers and the long rains falling short in the Chyulus and Mbirikani, Kuku and Rombo Group Ranches to the West, pasture is at its lowest ebb since the 2009 drought. The upshot is a large influx of wildebeest, zebra and livestock that would otherwise retreat to the dry season pastures along the base of the Chyulu Hills. Since July, I have counted the largest numbers of cattle, sheep and goat in Amboseli in many years.
 
The recovery of wildlife and livestock herds poses big problems that need urgent attention to avoid a repeat of the 2009 drought. The pressure on the pasture is showing up in the monthly grassland plots we monitor across the ecosystem. Grazing pressure has severely depleted the late dry season reserves. Pasture recovery is falling sharply in the rains. The body condition and milk yields of cattle has dropped steeply, making life harder for pastoralists. Herders are pushing their animals deep into the Chyulu Hills, Tsavo West and Amboseli National Parks in search of grazing, causing a growing conflict with Kenya Wildlife Service rangers. Elephants running short of late season forage in the park are spreading out of the park and running up conflict with herders and farmers. The intense grazing and browsing pressure in Amboseli National Park is continuing to deplete woody vegetation and biodiversity. A renewed push to build a cement factory between Amboseli and Mbirikani/Chyulu Hills poses a severe threat to the migratory route connecting the two pivotal portions of the ecosystem.

As reported in July, the imminent threats to the Amboseli ecosystem are land subdivision, fencing, loss of habitat due to browsing pressure and pasture due to grazing pressure, and a rising conflict between wildlife and humans. Predator attacks on livestock continue at a high level, despite the increase in wildlife numbers, suggesting carnivore stock-killing habits are persistent. Crop depredations by elephants are running at all-time high. Human deaths due to wildlife attacks have caused several riots in the Amboseli region this year.
 
A number of new development have taken place since the July report on measures to address the threats. The most important is the launch of funding for the Amboseli Ecosystem Management Plan. After a year and a half of delays, a four-year grant from the Global Environmental Facility has been released to KWS, African Conservation Centre, Big Life and Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust. Each organization will take on specific tasks, aimed at restoring the health of the Amboseli ecosystem. ACC will help build the capacity of the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust to oversee the implementation of the plan.
 
Preliminary steps to restore the loss of habitat, pasture and biodiversity were undertaken by ACC, ACP, KWS, Big Life under the umbrella of AET in series of woodland elephant exclosures and pasture restoration plots over the last year. The start-up funds were provided by NAGA. Additional funds are provided under the GEF program. Plans are underway through the partnership headed up by AET to submit a renewed grant application to NAGA for setting up a long-term ecosystem restoration program.
 
Big Life has taken a lead in tackling the depredations of elephants on small-scale farms on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and swamps to the east of Amboseli. Assisted by Space for Giants, Big Life has drawn up a fencing plan to protect the line of farms from elephant attacks. The 37 kilometer fence should block elephants from reaching the growing farming communities to the south and east of Amboseli, areas they rarely used before farmers moved in. Most elephants moved north and west of Amboseli with the rains. These areas remain lightly occupied and, could, with the restoration of seasonal dams, restore elephants to their former range.
 
To address the broader human-wildlife conflict, the main NGOs tackling conflict, including Lion Guardians, Amboseli Trust for Elephants, Big Life, International Fund for Animal Welfare, ACC and ACP will be meeting under the umbrella of the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust and KWS on December 8th to set-up an integrated conflict mitigation strategy and procedures.

In November 2016, Sakimba Kimiti, a research assistant with the Amboseli Conservation Program, defended his master’s titled, Rangeland Resource Dynamics and the Implications for Pastoral Livelihoods in the Amboseli Ecosystem, Kenya. Sakimba was interested in describing the local community knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of the extent of change in rangeland resources in Amboseli. Changes in the ecosystem monitored by ACP over the last few decades include land fragmentation, loss of grazing areas, changes in land tenure, restricted herd mobility due to increase in human settlements, changes in land use, and loss of pasture productivity. How well do local perceptions reflect the changes, and what is missing in the changes measured? Few studies have compared traditional and scientifically monitored information.
 
Sakimba integrated scientific approaches and local knowledge to assess changes in the Amboseli ecosystem over time, the causes of changes and the impact of the changes on pastoralists. He stratified the Amboseli ecosystem into nomadic, semi-nomadic and sedentary land uses under group tenure and private holdings. The four decade of change were divided into a pre-park period (1967-76), pre-settlement (1977-86), post-settlement (1987-2006) and the post-2009 drought.
 
From the resource maps drawn by the community, grazing areas have declined significantly over the period. The decline was more pronounced in the sedentary subdivided lands and the semi-nomadic locations, less so in nomadic locations. Areas of cultivation have also expanded over the period in both sedentary and semi-nomadic land sites. The changes have led to a reduction in household herd size in all the land locations, with the biggest declines in the sedentary land use sites.
 
The results of the study show that pastoralism remains a key livelihood strategy in Amboseli. Monitoring rangeland changes through community perceptions is a vital step in designing sustainable strategies for managing change and in strengthening participatory planning process.

The slow pace of delivering information to decision-makers hinders its application to conservation planners and managers. ACP is developing a fully integrated Windows database with open source software that will speed up the process and be available to all conservation organizations  collecting resource data. Victor Mose has in recent months developed most of the software for rapidly entering, analyzing and producing data for use by SORALO, AET, NTRI and DRSRS among others. The platform includes a GIS and other graphical visualization tools to summarize and display the data; open source analytical and statistical packages for rapid evaluation and application of the data, and spatial tools for assessing the trends, drought early-warning systems and the health of ecosystems.
 
ACP’s ultimate aim for the integrated ecological monitoring and one-stop software program is to produce regular state-of-ecosystem reports of the Kenya-Tanzania borderlands on a Google Earth image for use by participating NGOs and communities.
 
Victor Mose used the new software to analyze the Laikipia Wildlife Forum (LWF) wildlife count undertaken by DRSRS in May. Victor presented a review of the integrated analytical software at the fourth Spatial Ecology Conference in July 2016 in Bristol, United Kingdom (see details here). The presentation will be submitted in the December 2016 report.

The Amboseli Conservation Program (ACP) continues to monitoring wildlife, livestock, settlements and vegetation in the national park and across the ecosystem. David Maitumo conducts regular ground counts and David Western monthly aerial counts of the Amboseli Basin. ACP also commissioned the Department of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing (DRSRS) to undertake an aerial survey of the 8,500 square kilometre ecosystem in May. The results of the ground and aerial counts are in close agreement, showing strong recovery in wildlife populations over the last three years, following four years of paltry rebound after the population crashes during the 2009 drought.
 
The recovery of wildlife numbers in the aftermath of the 2009 drought was far slower than in the 1970s drought, due to the larger losses of herbivores and heavier predation levels by lions and hyenas. The lag in recovery shows up in the prolonged low population numbers of zebra, wildebeest and buffalo from 2010 to 2014. The small populations of wildlife caused heavy predation on livestock and growing resentment among herders. The last two years have seen a strong recovery in all herbivores once the numbers breached the predation threshold. The seasonal migrations have also picked up again, as shown in the graph. Of special interest is the resumption of migrations by buffalo, which ceased after elephants open up swamp-edge grazing following compression by poaching in the 1970s. The resumption of seasonal migrations spares buffalo heavy predation in the basin during the rains.
 
The trends point to a healthy ecological balance returning to the Amboseli ecosystem after the 2009 population crash. With wildlife ungulates approaching their pre-drought levels, carnivores have more wild prey and less need to attack domestic stock. The larger numbers have also precipitate the resumption of strong seasonal migrations during the rains.
 
The ecosystem-wide surveys commissioned by ACP and conducted by DRSRS in May further confirm the recovery of wildlife numbers. Elephants are back to their pre-drought levels and continue to grow in numbers and expand their range. Zebra numbers have recovered their pre-drought levels of 16,000. Wildebeest numbers have also picked up in the past three years, but at 9,000 still fall short of the pre-drought levels of 17,000.

In March 2015 ACP trained up three additional resource assessors to expand the Amboseli ground monitoring across the ecosystem. The expansion covers Selengei, Mbirikani and Kimana Group ranches. Logistically, the expanded coverage is beyond the capacity of ACP. For this reason, ACP called on Big Life to administer and oversee the monitoring on Selengei and Mbirikani. ACC provided two motorbikes to enable the RAs to cover the three group ranches. A Memorandum of Understanding between ACP/ACC and Big Life was drawn up in December 2015. The program was fully operational by December. The ground monitoring now covers the entire Amboseli ecosystem defined by the migratory ungulates. 
 
David Maitumo will continue to mentor and oversee the resource assessor’s field monitoring. The data will be simultaneously logged at ACC and Big Life, and once the Nongotiak Centre is complete at AET.
 
The final step in setting up and ensuring the sustainability and application of the ecosystem monitoring to planning and management is the preparation of a 5-year MoU between AET and ACP. This will be drawn up once the Nongotiak Resource Centre is complete.