Wildlife populations decline in Kenya's national parks

Wildebeest and elephants in Amboseli National Park.
Credit: David Western  from http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu

Long-term declines of elephants, giraffe, impala and other animals in Kenya are occurring at the same rates within the Kenya’s 23 national parks and 26 national reserve boundaries as they are outside of these protected areas, according to a new study.

This study represents the first time, researchers looked at population changes within a national park system relative to all of the wildlife populations across the whole country.  "And we found that wildlife populations inside and outside of the parks are declining at much the same rate," according to David Western, an adjunct professor of biology at University of California, San Diego and the founding executive director of the African Conservation Center in Nairobi, who headed the study published in the July 8 issue of the journal PLoS One.

Western said this finding may be surprising to those who regard national parks as sanctuaries where wildlife populations are protected, but illustrates the problems that maintaining protected areas can create on wildlife and ecosystems inside and outside of the parks.

His research team compiled data from more than 270 counts of wildlife in Kenya over a period of 25 years. Many of the population changes observed were “drought-driven.”   Moreover, when land surrounding the parks is developed for agriculture and other uses, migratory routes and important sources of food for wildlife are destroyed.

Confining animals within park boundaries to protect them apparently has changed the ecology of many Kenyan parks. For example, elephants need a lot of space and move around a great deal. When confined, they consume the woody vegetation in that space, changing the biodiversity of the vegetation. The woody habitats become grassland habitats, threatening species that thrive in woody areas, such as giraffe, lesser kudu and impala.

The researchers said that wildlife populations throughout Kenya—inside and outside the national parks—declined by 40 percent from 1977 to 1997. However, the overall declined is marked by considerable fluctuations.

Western said a third contributing reason for declines in some species, such as elephants, has been the antagonism created by the parks with surrounding communities. Forced to settle in land outside the parks, some local tribes view the parks as threats to their survival.

"What happens is that wildlife now becomes a threat to their agriculture and their pastoral way of life," Western said. "So they willingly invite poachers to get rid of the wildlife."

The biggest parks suffer the largest losses because they are harder to protect from poachers.  Big parks suffer particularly from poor relationships with the community.

Small parks, such Nairobi National Park are surrounded by people who are more educated and better off financially, so they don't see the parks with the same antagonism as the others and they're more amenable to conservation, Western said.

Western suggests that to avoid further decline, the Kenyan government needs to set policies to share the profits of ecotourism with local communities so that they can reap the economic benefits of protecting the wildlife and ecosystems within and surrounding the national parks.

Western said another study showed that where community based conservation is linked to a national park, the losses of wildlife are much, much less.

He said those lessons apply not only to national parks in Kenya, but to those in other countries, including the United States.

"The combination of local involvement with national parks makes a very good fit," he said.

Source: UC San Diego News Center