The news on the wildlife front is finally positive after the population crashes of the 2009 drought. The recovery is captured simply and compellingly by the ACP ground monitoring program: Zebra numbers have sprung back to a pre-drought levels of 6,000 animals. The rebound is due in part to recruitment, but also to fresh immigration from outside the Amboseli ecosystem. Wildebeest numbers have inched up to nearly 3,000, entirely due to recruitment. Buffalo numbers, which were declining steadily until the long rains, have risen strongly from around 160 to over 280 since then. There is clear evidence that at least two herds moved into the basin, most probably from the Kilimanjaro forest. Infant survival is also picking up from heavy predation by hyenas in the aftermath of the drought. I attribute the resurgence in the ungulate herds of Amboseli in the last year to the strong aversive movement zebra, wildebeest and buffalo have used to escape predation by moving out of the park at night and wide dispersal at the onset of the rains. Tellingly, now that their numbers are up, the nightly migration of zebra and wildebeest out of the park has ebbed.
Elephant numbers are also continuing to climb and now stand at around 1,600, in the larger Amboseli Ecosystem marking a full recovery from the 2009 drought losses www.elephanttrust.org. The recovery testifies to the negligible poaching, as documented in Big Life www.biglife.org. The growing Amboseli population is dispersing widely across the Kenya Tanzania borderlands, according to collared elephant tracking by IFAW www.ifaw.org. As reported earlier, elephant numbers in the park grew sharply after a long declined from the late 1980s to the drought of 2009. The resurgence was due to the lower elephant pressure on the swamps and regrowth of sedges following the loss of some 400 animals in the drought. The elephant numbers in the park have begun to decline once more with the heavy pressure on swamp grazing. The growing and dispersing herds of elephants is causing conflict with farmers east and south of Amboseli. David Western and Peadar Brehony (coordinator of the Borderlands Conservation Initiative) met Richard Bonham and his staff of Big Life on Mbirikani Group to discuss how to address the mounting human-elephant conflict. We agreed to pull together all the main NGOs, including ACC, ACP and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants to address the conflict under the umbrella of the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust. The AET board of trustees met the following week and agreed to serve as the umbrella for the human-wildlife conflict study and management program.
Livestock populations
Livestock populations sprang back to pre-drought levels far faster than from natural recruitment. The resurgent population is due in large measure to pastoralists selling their healthy cattle and buying up twice the number of Somali cattle from the north. The rapid recovery has stunted pasture regeneration and pushed Amboseli back into a premature grazing deficit. Cattle have moved in from as far as the rift valley, putting yet more pressure on the grasslands. This recurrent boom and bust cycle of livestock and grassland production will be the focal point of land use and herd management at the Mbirikani land planning workshop in January. Funds are available under the GEF grant, starting January, to develop better herd and pasture management programs.
Livestock populations
Livestock populations sprang back to pre-drought levels far faster than from natural recruitment. The resurgent population is due in large measure to pastoralists selling their healthy cattle and buying up twice the number of Somali cattle from the north. The rapid recovery has stunted pasture regeneration and pushed Amboseli back into a premature grazing deficit. Cattle have moved in from as far as the rift valley, putting yet more pressure on the grasslands. This recurrent boom and bust cycle of livestock and grassland production will be the focal point of land use and herd management at the Mbirikani land planning workshop in January. Funds are available under the GEF grant, starting January, to develop better herd and pasture management programs.
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