TSAVO NATIONAL PARKS

Tsavo National Parks and Chyulu Hills are not only one of the most important expressions of Kenya´s natural and cultural diversity, but also enlisted on the UNESCO tentative list of world heritage sites.

As much as they are protected and guarded as an attraction for tourists, they are also endangered due to ongoing human-wildlife conflicts.

This has strongly been felt especially in the eco-system that hosts Tsavo National Park. Maasai, Kamba, Borana and some of the Mijikenda sub tribe communities that live adjacent to the reserve have for many years lived in peace with the wildlife, since their land use practice has until recently been strictly pastoralist. The introduction of agriculture by the neighbouring communities, among others, has as a result greatly affected the human wildlife relationship.

The wildlife is prone to destroy the crops on the farms and in return retaliatory attacks are launched by the Morans and the conflict continues to escalate. This has led to the enormous reduction of lions, elephants, buffalos and the general animal population in the vast Tsavo Game Reserve.

Additionally, rampant poaching continues to threaten the existence of some of the largest land animals in Tsavo like elephants, rhinoceros and the african buffalos.

The reserve is also characterized with the largest number of carnivores in Kenya, with lions and cheetahs being listed as threatened. It is also a wintering spot for palearctic migrants thus in-situ conservation is of greatest importance.

The success of conservancy measures may be measured by the relatively low incidents of elephant poaching in the greater Mara ecosystem since 2015, when KVSO Kenya started its first World Heritage Volunteers Program to sensitize the Maa’ community on the importance of world heritage, wildlife and eco-system conservation.

While it is believed that Kenya as a whole is losing more than 1,000 elephant a year to poachers, the Mara has actually seen a drop in poaching.

Last year, out of a total Mara population of 4,000, only 56 elephants were poached, half as many as in the previous year. There are also significant lion prides evident in the conservancies and, it must be said, in the great Mara ecosystem as a whole, this at a time where conservationists such as Botswana’s Dereck Joubert say that Africa’s lion population is declining dramatically.