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Explore the opportunities and challenges of wildlife conservancies in Kenya with a focus on rights and tenure issues. Discover how the formation of conservancies is reshaping land use and wildlife management in the country to combat illegal wildlife trade.
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Rights and Tenure as the Basis for New Ways to Deal with IWTBy Calvin Cottar
Dear ladies and Gentlemen, I am Calvin Cottar, and I come from Kenya. I speak today about rights and tenure of wildlife in Kenya and the opportunities and challenges with the formation of wildlife conservancies.
70% of Kenya’s Wildlife Inhabits 60% of the Land Area of the Country
To understand the development of conservancies in Kenya, we have to look at the history and current situation on the ground. 70% of wildlife is on 60% of the land area (green is wildlife)
Kenya’s National Protected Areas Cover Only 7% of Land Area of The Country
And human poverty correlates directly with the presence of wildlife. This correlation is no surprise given that the state has denied landowners rights to wild resources for over 40 years, and made wildlife into a direct competitor to the replacement land uses.
Wildlife Losses in Parks and Reserves Mirror Losses outside- 1977 to 1997
Because of this competition, landowners have killed off Wildlife at a rate that will see it effectively gone in 20 years, including in National parks, with 95% of all IWT happening on private and communal land In Kenya, IWT is a largely product of land use change.
This wildlife competition has also caused conversion of land use at a rate of up to 8% per annum in worst hit areas.
In lieu of resource rights and the impossibility of valuing the individual wild animal itself, we have had to come up with proxy values high enough for landowners to accept wildlife on their land, and this has had some success with a total of 230 conservancies now in operation across the country. There are two conservancy models, one suited to ASAL areas, and the other suited for higher rainfall areas such as Mara. The ASAL model proxies are : (1) Security (2) Community facilities
(3) Alternative livelihood industries (4) Compensation for wildlife costs (5) Tourism. Because personal income generation has not been factored into this model, many of these conservancies are not sustainable in the long run and will need reconfiguration. The Mara Model proxy is simply to pay the landowners hard cash for a 'per ha per year' lease fee that is conditional to the presence of wildlife on their land, the amount being equivalent or higher than the revenues possible from alternative land uses.
And this is where many high end tourism lodges have been built out side the MMNR with a view to improve their guest experience away from mass tourism.
About 20 lodge owners including ourselves have cobbled together 8 different conservancies, with a total of 295,000 acres
The lodge owners were driven to initiate lease agreements with the landowners because of the threat to their own investments by impending land subdivision. On private land such as this, lease agreements are signed with every individual plot owner, making the starting of conservancy relatively simple, however, it also very easy to break if a landowner gets a better offer - freehold 'title rights' for the landowner are always stronger in Kenya law than registered 'lease rights'.
Olderkesi conservancy is community land, and while being more difficult to initiate a conservancy, this model is more resilient because landowners can cannot hive off a piece of land; they can only sell their share to fellow shareholders. This conservancy model works by getting a decent livelihood income to members through regular pro-rata payments; by ensuring that no third parties or government are in the revenue chain; and by inclusion of the landowners in 'day to day' management. Infringements to the agreement such as poaching or cattle invasions triggers a deduction from the quarterly lease payments so that the collective cost ensures landowners identify, discipline or fine the individual responsible; the community police themselves.
Landowners and their families live in centralized villages with easy access to schools, clinics and water, focus on new urban based industry, and behavior change to be more accepting of wildlife, thereby reducing HWC and IWT. However, all these Mara conservancies have a terrible weakness that threatens their very existence.
They were built on Tourism. But tourism is an extremely sensitive industry to the real or perceived threats to the safety of tourists, with for example Kenya projected to lose 60% of its tourism revenues in 2015 due to Ebola and westgate. Every conservancy in the Mara is correspondingly affected. Alternative funding sources such as Wildlife NGO 's donors do not seem to see leasing land for biodiversity in Africa as one of their priorities despite it being a key mechanism in the developed world. This needs to change.
Leasing land is the only method that can realistically secure the hundreds of thousands of hectares of elephant migration routes across the country; what will come of the 15,000 elephant that currently depend on private and community land if it is no longer available?
Where to Look For Money to Lease Land for African Biodiversity
We need to fatten skinny Africa there in the middle or we can kiss wildlife goodby. So finally, I leave you with a challenge: How can you make the leasing of land in Africa for wildlife conservancies a 'no brainer' for donors? Thank you.
