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.
​
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.
​
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.
​
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. 

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​Excerpt from the Preface

We stand at a pivotal point in human history. In our rise from small, scattered Neolithic communities living precariously, we have become so supremely dominant as to reshape nature, change the course of evolution and engineer a new geological age, the Anthropocene.  In the process we have created a global economy that has narrowed our food webs and stretched our supply chains to the point we can no longer sense or contain our planetary impact.
 
Belatedly, climate warming has risen to the top of the international agenda as hotter summers, colder winters, stronger hurricanes, torrential floods, searing droughts, and rising sea levels impinge on our daily lives. Trapped between a receding industrial age powered by toxic and dwindling fossil fuels and the Fourth Industrial Revolution and circular economy promising hope of a greener planet and sustainable lifestyles, we face a tragedy of the global commons for lack of action.
 
Prescriptions for a sustainable future range from strong central government control to trusting in the invisible hand of the free-markets and rationale choices. Neither Big Government nor Free Market solutions has yet solved the ultimate human challenge of living within planetary limits.
 
In We Alone I look for answers by delving into how we rose from a lowly savanna primate to conquer the Earth and examine how successful societies avoided the pitfalls of overuse and social breakdown. My exploration is partly a personal voyage tracing my evolution from hunter to conservationist and highlighting insights I’ve gleaned from observing communities: from the Maasai surviving droughts, to Californians up against intensifying droughts and wildfires caused by global warming. I also draw on scientific discoveries over the last half century to show how we humans are far from being constrained by the selfish gene and limited by local ecology; instead our success lies in cooperation and cultural institutions that enable us to create novel economies and lifestyles that defy the biological imperative to reproduce to the limits of food supply.
 
I argue that our global conquest lay in breaking biological barriers, domesticating the selfish gene, and curbing the downsides of our actions for larger common gains. The more ecologically emancipated we became, the greater our ability to shift beyond conserving food and water for survival to saving whales, art, music, and cultural traditions, based on our new-found knowledge and sensibilities. Conserving other species lifts us to the highest plane of altruism, beyond kinship, tribe, and economic self-interest.
 
Our future well-being depends on our unique capacity for cooperation, foresight, and planning as well as on new technologies and green economies, rather than in using a vanishing Pleistocene Age as a template. No less than in the past, our success hinges on using our emotions, morality, and expanded empathy to create the world we wish for rather than the polluted and degraded planet we have inherited.
 
We Alone takes up where Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac leaves off by showing that we can scale up from husbanding the land to sustaining the planet within boundary limits. Neither the end-of-nature pessimists nor rational optimists offer solutions for cleaning up the global problems we have created. Our future lies instead in the collective actions of billions of citizens rather than philosophical debates and scientific prescriptions.
 
We Alone is written for a popular audience but is also intended to appeal to students looking for answers to who we are and how we can become good a custodian of the global commons.

Get your copy here.

By David Western and Victor N. Mose | Amboseli Conservation Program (ACP)
​
Amboseli Conservation Program’s five decades of continuous monitoring the Amboseli region shows an astonishing turnaround for wildlife after years of decline. Many species are now more abundant than forty-five years ago, a remarkable contrast to the rapid losses across Africa and around the world.
 
What explains this small point of light in a gloomy outlook for wildlife? What lessons does Amboseli offer conservation? And how can the success be kept up as the space for wildlife shrinks?
 
As scientists patch together wildlife counts of the past few decades, a dismal picture emerges. Joseph Ogutu and associates (2016) show wildlife to have declined by over two thirds in Kenya since the late 1970s. Western and colleagues found similar declines in protected areas (Western et al., 2009), and yet other biologists show numbers to have fallen by well over a half across Africa (Caro and Scholte, 2007;  Craigie et al., 2010).
 
Africa’s wildlife losses mirror worldwide trends. The World Wildlife Fund’s distillation of 14,000 populations of 3,700 species of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles have slumped by nearly sixty percent in forty years (WWF 2016). The causes? Over-harvesting, land and habitat loss, ecosystem degradation and climate change. 
 
In our ACP counts of the eastern Kajiado’s former pastoral lands north and south of Amboseli we find the same picture. Here, where migratory populations of wildebeest, zebra, elephants, giraffe and eland spread from the slopes of Kilimanjaro to the Mombasa Road in the early 1970s, the herds have all but vanished. Amboseli stands alone as the only ecosystem in Kenya to have sustained its wildlife numbers since the 1970s. More remarkably, the numbers of two threatened species, the elephant and giraffe, have grown.
 
Let’s take a closer look at the Amboseli record and the cause of its conservation success.
 
The causes of wildlife declines in eastern Kajiado as in Kenya generally include population growth, land pressures, sedentarization, pasture degradation, poaching, human-wildlife conflict, and drought (Western et al. 2009a, Ogutu et al. 2014, Okello et al. 2016). Of the many threats, by far the gravest is subdivision and settlement. 
 
The impact of privatization and burgeoning permanent settlements on wildlife in the formerly open pastoral lands is well documented after the subdivision of the Kaputei Group Ranches north of Amboseli. Here, wildlife declined sharply from 1970 to 2005 following land subdivision (Western et al. 2009a). In stark contrast, wildlife increased on the adjacent open lands of Mbirikani Group Ranch (see figure below). The losses on the privatized Kaputei ranches arose from displacement by closely spaced settlements and pasture losses due to heavy year-round grazing (Groom and Western 2013). Aerial counts we’ve conducted since 2005 show wildlife declining faster still on Kaputei and Mbirikani rebounding strongly after the severe drought of 2009.

​The findings from the two ranches, one subdivided and privatized, the other open to free-ranging herds of wildlife and livestock, explains the conservation success of Amboseli. 

​A map of the migratory wildebeest populations in eastern Kajiado tells the story. 

​The migratory range of the wildebeest, zebra, elephant and other migratory species using the permanents swamps of the Amboseli Basin and national park in the dry season ranges across 3,700 km² falling within the rain shadow of  Kilimanjaro—an area too dry to farm. Wildlife numbers here have grown in the migratory populations since 1974, as shown below. Several smaller non-migratory species including Thomson’s gazelle, impala, kongoni and oryx have declined, but among the larger and migratory species, the wildebeest has held its own and zebra numbers have grown strongly, along with elephant and giraffe.

​Amboseli success is due in part to the creation of Amboseli National Park in 1974. Had the park not protected the permanent swamps the migrants depend on in the late dry season, they would have been drained for the irrigated farms that have shrunk the archipelago of swamps and permanent rivers east of Amboseli. Wildlife in the park itself only thrived because of the pioneering steps Amboseli took to pay the Maasai group ranches to protect the migratory herds and promote ecotourism enterprises around the national park. Today the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust--made up of group ranch representatives, the Kenya Wildlife Service, conservation organizations and tour operators--has developed an Ecosystem Management Plan for 2020 to 2030 to sustain the open rangeland areas.  
 
A closer look at the two of Africa’s threatened species, the elephant and giraffe, highlights the success of Amboseli—and the formidable hurdles in keeping the migratory lands open as the migratory lands become privatized.
 
Africa’s elephant population fell from over 1.2 million in 1970 to under 600,000 in 1989 when a world-wide ban on ivory took effect. After a brief recovery, a second surge in poaching followed the reopening of the ivory trade in 2008, causing numbers to fall to some 450,000 Africa-wide. The following illustrations tell the story of the impact of heavy poaching in the 1970s on the numbers and spread of Amboseli elephants, and the strong recovery once community-based conservation kicked in after 1977.

​The decline and rebound of the Maasai giraffe population in Amboseli tells a similar story. The four sub-species of giraffe have decline by over a half across Africa in the last three decades, and the combined populations of reticulated and Maasai giraffe in Kenya from 73,000 to 27,000. The giraffe recently joined the elephant as a threatened species on the IUCN Red List. The ACP counts of  the Maasai giraffe in Amboseli reflect the Africa-wide sharp drop in numbers once the bushmeat in Kenya picked up in the 1990s. By the mid-1990s the population had fallen to well under a half. Following the creation of a strong community wildlife ranger force by Big Life Foundation and other NGOs in 2010, the giraffe population has grown steeply to one of the largest in Africa.

Unlike elephants, giraffes barely use Amboseli National Park, which has lost most of its woodlands due to a five-fold increase in elephants. Rather the success of the giraffes is due to the extensive bushland habitats on the surrounding group ranches under Maasai ownership, as the map above shows.
 
The success of Amboseli is now threatened by the same land subdivision and settlement forces closing off land and displacing wildlife across the pastoral lands. Ololorashi Ogulului Group Ranch, which spans most of the migration range of Amboseli’s wildlife, is currently subdividing the land into individual holdings. Selengei and Mbirikani Group Ranches are following suit.
 
If subdivision follows the Kaputei route of permanent settlements on each allotment, the future of wildlife and pastoral herds is bleak. If on the other hand Ololorashi Ogulului carries out its land use plan to keep the pastoral lands open and set up a land trust for its members, it could sustain the a healthy population of livestock and wildlife as it has done for millennia.
 
This report summarizes the extensive findings of the long-term ACP monitoring report which underpinned the Amboseli Ecosystem Management Plan. Fuller reports have been submitted for publication in international journals. The most important conclusion is that space, mobility, and supportive communities are vital to conserving wildlife populations.

References

1. Caro, T., and P. Scholte. 2007. When protection falters. African Journal of Ecology 45:233–235.
2. Craigie, I. D., J. E. M. Baillie, A. Balmford, C. Carbone, B. Collen, R. E. Green, and J. M. Hutton. 2010. Large mammal population declines in Africa’s protected areas. Biological conservation 143:2221–2228.
3. Groom, R. J., and D. Western. 2013. Impact of land subdivision and sedentarization on wildlife in kenya’s southern rangelands. Rangeland Ecology and Management 66:1–9.
4. Ogutu, J. O., H.-P. Piepho, M. Y. Said, and S. C. Kifugo. 2014. Herbivore dynamics and range contraction in Kajiado County Kenya: climate and land use changes, population pressures, governance, policy and human-wildlife conflicts. The Open Ecology Journal 7.
5. Ogutu, J. O., H.-P. Piepho, M. Y. Said, G. O. Ojwang, L. W. Njino, S. C. Kifugo, and P. W. Wargute. 2016. Extreme wildlife declines and concurrent increase in livestock numbers in Kenya: What are the causes? PloS one 11:e0163249.
6. Okello, M. M., L. Kenana, H. Maliti, J. W. Kiringe, E. Kanga, F. Warinwa, S. Bakari, S. Ndambuki, E. Massawe, and N. Sitati. 2016. Population density of elephants and other key large herbivores in the Amboseli ecosystem of Kenya in relation to droughts. Journal of Arid Environments 135:64–74.
7. Western, D. 1994. Ecosystem conservation and rural development: the case of Amboseli. Page in D. Western, R. M. Wright, and S. C. Strum, editors. Natural connections: perspectives in community-based conservation. Island Press, Washington, DC.
8. Western, D., R. Groom, and J. Worden. 2009a. The impact of subdivision and sedentarization of pastoral lands on wildlife in an African savanna ecosystem. Biological Conservation 142:2538–2546.
9. Western, D., S. Russell, and I. Cuthill. 2009b. The status of wildlife in protected areas compared to non-protected areas of Kenya. PloS one 4.
10. WWF. 2016. Living Planet Report 2016. Risk and resilience in a new era. Page World Wide Fund for Nature: Gland, Switzerland.

By David Western
 
The Kenya Wildlife Service has floated a ten-year plan (2020-2030) for Nairobi National Park. This is timely and urgently needed.  Nairobi was Kenya’s first national park, gazetted in 1946. With the park under growing pressure on all sides, and from within, its future looks bleak as the standard bearer of Kenya’s parks. What better event to celebrate the 75th anniversary of our national park than a plan to secure the future of Nairobi National Park for all time? The ten-year plan to save and restore the park is five years late and doubly urgent because of the delay.

Unfortunately, KWS was put under pressure to ram through the proposal with little public input apart from box-ticking. The railroading ran up against a hail of criticism. Hidden from view were a rash of developments that run counter to the goals of the Wildlife Act 2013: to keep parks in an “untrammeled” natural state. With KWS already having ceded parts of the park to the Southern Bypass Road, overhead rail line and a goods depot in the works, the public criticisms are well grounded.  

I participated in public reviews of the Nairobi National Park 2020-2030 plan and have given my comments at various meetings and to KWS directly. I feel strongly that the plan needs all the public participation it can get and will be greatly strengthened by the input and guidance. Kenya’s parks are, after all, vested in the citizens of Kenya, not the government.

KWS as the custodian has the heavy burden and deep responsibility to ensure its future for all its peoples, and as a world heritage. I was asked by Swara magazine to review the plan. The review is given here. Most of the points are straightforward, but I had too little space to expand on the two most important points of all: fencing and the ecological restoration of the park. I have added some addition points here to clarify my views and  recommendations.

I visited NNP regularly in the late 1960s when I was a graduate student at the University of Nairobi starting out on my research and conservation work in Amboseli. The park in the early dry season was like a mini-Serengeti with long lines of zebra and wildebeest snaking back into the park from their wet season migrations on the Athi Plains. During the rains, large resident herds of kongoni, impala, warthog, gazelle and solitary territorial wildebeest dotted the short grass plains, giving lions and cheetahs abundant prey to keep them in the park. In the early 1970s, as I flew across the Athi Plains to Amboseli, I looked down on the tens of thousands of wildebeest and zebra stretching across the southern plains from Konza to the rift edge during the rains. Traffic on the Namanga Road was often held up for minutes by the migrating herds.
 
In the early 1980s when I bought land bordering the park, I wandered across the open plains, stretching unbroken to Kajiado, through large herds of eland, wildebeest and zebra, all milling about waiting to file across a narrow defile in the Mbagathi gorge into the park. Within a few years the wildebeest migrations were severed by residential housing. A solitary male hung on in a resident herd of impala on our land for a further year before he too disappeared. By then the tens of thousands of migratory animals on the Athi Plains had been whittled down by meat poachers, sprawling settlements and fences to a whisper of their former honking masses.
 
Once the migratory herds dwindled, long grasses and shrubs spang up with the falling grazing pressure and the suspension of burn management programs the wardens formerly used to prevent the invasion of rank vegetation. By the late 1980s, when it was clear that wildebeest were shunning the tall rank grasses in favor of the shorter grasslands on the Athi ranches to the south, I asked Helen Gichohi, a MS student at the time, to conduct an experimental burning program to restore the shorter grasslands. Her study showed how early burning to create shorter greener grasses became a magnate for wildebeest, zebra, gazelle and warthog, as they were in the 1960s (Gichohi, 1990). We went on to show that the more heavily grazed grasses outside the park were richer and more palatable than the rank grasslands inside. In other words, parks can lose their richness of wildlife and vegetation without restorative management (Western and Gichohi, 1994).
  
In the mid-1990s, as director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, I used the evidence of Helen’s work to begin restoring the dwindling wildlife numbers and grasslands using an experimental early burning program. The results were dramatic. For the next three years the burned area in the south west of the park drew in large herds of wildlife and an entourage of visitors. After I left KWS,  conservation lobbyists pressured KWS to abandon the restoration program, arguing nature should be left unmanaged. The heavy El Niño rains of 1998 hastened the growth of tall vegetation and the decline of wildlife, especially the smaller species, including gazelles and warthogs. The dwindling herds of wildebeest and zebra returned to the park later each season and, the once resident herds in the rain season shrank too, lions and cheetahs began regularly attacking livestock outside the park.
 
By 2010 dense settlements spreading out from Ongata Rongai township and Tuala blocked all wildlife movements at the western end of the park. I saw the last cheetah shortly afterwards and worried about the mounting toll of lion and hyena attacks on livestock and dogs in the residential estates. The community, angry and scared, demanded KWS remove the predators and fence the park after a series night encounters. In December, the anger  bubbled over when a person returning from Tuala late at night was eaten by a lion.
 
I’m no fan of fencing parks. I’ve done all I can to prevent that happening by  promoting community-based conservation and nature enterprises as a win for park neighbors and wildlife. The 150-plus conservancies in Kenya testify to the success—where land is still open. Where parks are surrounded by  a sea of settlement, the Aberdare, Shimba and Nakuru among them, fences are vital for protecting wildlife and people. I’ve promoted fencing in each of these cases and raised funds to electrify the fence hard up against the city on its northern and western boundaries. Yet I hold out the hope of avoiding fencing the park on its southern border.

How in any event would  the park be fenced when the center of the Mbagathi River is the park boundary? The only option is to fence inside the river edge, but this would exclude the river, the park’s most important lifeline. There are other problems with fencing in the southern park. Unless the grasslands and wildlife are restored first, the park will become more of an ecological trap than conservation lifeline as predators drive down the depleted herds even further.  The herbivores need as much space and movement as possible to sustain the interplay of predators, prey and healthy pastures.

Adding to the fencing problem, not all residents south of the park agree on the solutions. The Ongata Rongai and Tuala residents want the park fenced now, and there is no other option. The eastern end of the park remains open though, and the largely Maasai ranching community has joined a leasing program to keep wildlife on their lands, hoping to benefit from nature enterprises. Many oppose fencing altogether.

I’ve long advocated that the debate about whether to fence or not should be informed by what is to be fenced in and left out. Even if the park is to be fenced in, the abundance and diversity of plants and animals should be restored first to avoid further ecological decline. KWS is to be commended for making ecological restoration a primary plant of the 2020-2030 Plan. The restoration program stands to boost wildlife numbers, keep predators anchored in the park, improve habitat quality and diversity, and raise the park’s profile and visitor appeal.
I’ve suggested in the Swara article that the southern fence be considered in three phases, emulating the step-by-step approach to fencing in the Aberdare National Park.

For Phase 1, I’ve joined neighboring landowners along the Mbagathi River discussing with KWS a fence running along the back of our properties as far as Maasai Gate. This will give wildlife access to the river and use of our land and prevent predators from straying into the built-up Ongata Rongai and Tuala areas.

Phase 2, running from Maasai Gate to the overhead rail line, needs similar consultations to see how far into the Athi Plains the fence can extend.

Phase 3, from the rail line to the eastern border of the park, is far more contentions. Here most landowners are Maasai ranchers who have formed a wildlife conservancy and land leasing arrangements, hoping to benefit from wildlife on their land. The prospects for winning a large area of open space for wildlife are good yet call for detailed property and land surveys and open discussions. This will take time. Rushing ahead without due process will anger the community, frustrate KWS and short-change wildlife.

KWS should focus on getting agreement on the broad principles and strategies in the 2020-2030 plan for Nairobi National Park and work out the details as a part of its execution. As the plan stands, it is too saturated with details. It loses sight of the broad areas of agreement, public support and continuing engagement and refinement needed for the plan to succeed. No two issues in the plan need these open-minded flexible approaches more than ecological restoration and fencing.

Gichohi, H. W. (1990). The Effects of Fire and Grazing on the Grasslands of Nairobi National Park. MSc thesis. University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya.

Western, D. and Gichohi, H. (1994). Segregation effects and the impoverishment of savanna parks:  the case for an ecosystem viability analysis. African Journal of Ecology 31 (4): 269-281.

​The pandemic is already disrupting every sector of society, from entertainment and sports to manufacturing and the health and service industries. And the worst is yet to come. Conservationists blame the pandemic on the loss of biodiversity degraded ecosystems and climate change. They have a point. New virulent diseases, along with invasive species and pests, thrive when nature dies.
In the case of the Coronavirus the blame lies squarely on the illegal trade in wildlife species, fueled by globalization. Diseases such as Ebola, Marburg and HIV erupted in small scattered communities in the past but remained localized epidemics. No longer.
In the last few decades, global travel has spawned virulent novel viruses such as SARS, MERS, H1N1 and COVID-19, infecting hundreds of millions around  the world in weeks. These new pandemics are a grave threat to every nation, every individual. causing 6 of 10 infectious diseases, 2.5 billion illnesses and 2.7 million deaths each year.
The wildlife trade, worth $23 billion annually, operates largely underground like drug trafficking. And like the ivory wars which slashed elephant numbers across Africa from 1.2 million in 1970 to 450,000 today, the wildlife trade is driven by rising wealth in Asia. Hundreds of species of amphibians, snakes, fish, birds and mammals are butchered for the wildlife trade, among them bats, civets and pangolins suspected of transmitting lethal viruses.
We can’t be sure which species in the wildlife market in Wuhan sparked the COVID-19 pandemic. Regardless, the cramped confined conditions flouting concerns for animal welfare and human health, have unleashed the most devastating pandemic in modern times.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been dubbed the revenge of wildlife. Revenge it isn’t. Coronavirus smites indiscriminately. For every illegal trader infected, hundreds of millions of people are at risk, among them ardent animal lovers, doctors and nurses. Overlooked is the impact of the pandemic on wildlife. 

Worst hit by the coronavirus is the global travel industry. Worth $5.3 trillion a year and employing 1 in 10 people worldwide, tourism generates over 10 percent of Kenya and Tanzania’s GDP. The unseen victims of the tourism collapse are the very communities which protect and benefit from wildlife.
Community-based conservation is the greatest home-grown success in protecting Africa’s wildlife. Today, Kenya’s 150 community and private conservancies span 11 percent of the country, a larger area than all the national parks and reserves combined. Tanzania’s Wildlife Management Areas under local stewardship are playing an ever-growing role in conservation. In both countries, tourism is the engine of community-based conservation, creating thousands of jobs running ecotourism enterprises, deploying wildlife rangers and providing support services.   

​The elephant and wildlife populations are larger than when I first began counts in 1967, despite the precipitous declines across the continent. Even the giraffe, newly listed as a threatened species, has increased in the last two decades and is among the largest and safest population in Africa. The remarkable success of Amboseli depends on the hundreds of community rangers protecting wildlife, and on the income from tourism which generates jobs, scholarships for children and supports social services and women’s enterprises. Visit here to learn more.
The South Rift Association of Landowners joining Amboseli to Maasai Mara has shown similar success. The migratory herds and lion numbers have increased, and elephants have returned to the area for the first time in decades.
The collapse of tourism worldwide is disastrous for wildlife and community initiatives in East Africa. The shutdown at peak tourism season is closing lodges and wildlife enterprises overnight, and there will be no quick recovery. With the coronavirus causing a global recession, it will be many months before tourism recovers. 

​First, lobby your politicians to pressure for the closure of the wildlife trade. A remote shot two years ago, China and other Asian countries have since banned the sale of ivory, showing a total closure is possible. Elephant poaching has declined sharply across Africa since the bans. Now is the moment to press for an end to the animal trade and make the world a safer place.
 
Second, help fill the void left by the collapse of the tourism industry in Africa. Wildlife tourism creates a virtuous circle. The visitor enjoys the safari of a lifetime to the greatest wildlife spectacles on earth, creates jobs and opportunities for communities, and wins a place for wildlife.
For the hundreds of thousands of visitors who‘ve had to cancel or defer safaris, a small portion of the savings made as a conservation contribution will make a world of difference. For others unable to make a wildlife safari,  a contribution to community-based conservation helps support the custodians of wildlife.
A lion is worth ten times more alive through tourism than supplying claws to the wildlife trade. Stopping the wildlife trade and supporting community programs will help prevent another pandemic and save wildlife. 

​By David Western and Victor Mose
​
ACP commissioned the Department of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing (DRSRS) to conduct an aerial count of the Amboseli ecosystem and surrounding areas in February. The sample count covered  approximately 7800 km² of Eastern Kajiado between February 10th and February 14th, 2020.  The methodology followed the same procedures and  covered the same areas as counts conducted regularly by ACP since 1974.
The results of the February count are given in the table below, followed by the distribution maps for each species. The  counts and standard errors for each species are given in the table alongside figures for the 2018 count to compare changes in population size.

We draw several conclusions and observations from a comparison of the 2018 and 2020 counts.  
​
There have been significant increases in cattle, sheep and goats, despite the declining trends until 2018 and a sharp fall in body condition and milk yields in cattle over the past two years, as indicated by our pressure gauge index. The indications are that the higher numbers reflect livestock returning to the Amboseli ecosystem following widespread movements in search of forage during May of 2018 when the count was conducted. A similar case can be made for elephant numbers. During the dry  spell of 2018, many elephants moved out of the Amboseli region in search of forage.

Increases in kongoni and warthog numbers may reflect the increased likelihood of being detected during wet rather than dry seasons. The increase in buffalo numbers may reflect the statistical quirk of hitting or missing small clustered herds in the Amboseli basin where monthly total counts record a population of 400 or so. The increase in Grants gazelle likely continues the upward trend in population over the past decade. The population sizes of Thomson's gazelle, impala, oryx, ostrich and camel are small, the standard errors large, and so the reliability of detecting actual changes over a two-year very low. ACP is currently completing a detailed analysis of the long-term trends of all species in the ecosystem to amplify the changes and causes.

Perhaps the most reassuring figures in the 2020 count are for zebra, wildebeest, eland and giraffe, the most abundance of the wildlife species. The zebra population is evidently continuing its upward trend since the severe drought of 2009 and is close to the highest peak recorded since 1974. Wildebeest, eland and giraffe populations all held stable over the past two years despite the declining pasture conditions in 2019. The giraffe result is especially gratifying. At over 6,500, the Amboseli giraffe population is among the largest in Africa and defies the rapid declines recorded across its range in the past few decades.

The long rains in April and May  of 2018 were exceptionally heavy and replenished pastures across the region. However, the heavy stocking rates quickly depleted the recovery and set in motion another decline in pasture production throughout 2019 when young livestock began to die.

The torrential short rains which began in September 2019 and continued through to March 2020 have changed what was shaping up to be a severe year. The prolonged rains have pushed pasture production to a peak reached in the El Niño year of 1998. The replenished pastures provided a temporary stay on the steady decline in pasture production recorded since 2016 and will likely see a stepped recruitment in livestock and wildlife populations in the coming year. Unless, however, there is a reduction in the heavy persistent grazing pressure caused by the current large livestock populations, the pasture restoration seen in increased ground cover and forage production will revert to a downward trend by the end of 2020.