In one of our previous articles, we had the pleasure of alerting some of our readers to the existence of the Nashulai Conservancy. Where Nashulai differs from some of the better known and more long-standing conservancy projects in Kenya, is in the fact that it is local community led.
There was once a time when the relationship between peoples local to wild spaces and the animals that also inhabited there was almost consistently defined by friction. Kenya, as the cradle to mankind, has obviously played host to the interactions between human beings and animals for millenia. As the fact that wildlife still thrives here attests to, that relationship has worked.
Communities such as the Kamungi and Shirango here in Tsavo, or the Maasai in Kenya’s south-east, have lived alongside wildlife for as long as oral histories can be stretched into the past. Despite this long history of cohabitation with wildlife, fractious may still be the best word to define the nature of that relationship.
Lion occasionally hunt cattle, elephant occasionally ruin crops and many species of birdlife are considered a pest. And just about every animal, threatening or non-threatening will look to human settlements in search of water, if they’re desperate.
The variedly-expressed and gradual advance of modernity here in the spaces surrounding wildlife was an obvious new advantage for human beings in their rivalrous interactions with wild animals. Just as was done in Europe hundreds of years earlier, Africa has been able to build better defences and more destructive offensive weaponry for the use in protecting itself against the more threatening behaviour exhibited by wildlife.
As a result, wildlife is under constant threat. But, here in Africa, modernity’s destabilisation of the playing field is happening at the same time as the entire planet is waking up to the importance of preserving biodiversity.
And so, here in Kenya, one occasionally finds great examples of a community going out of its way to do something for wildlife that might not directly advance their own livelihood.
The Nashulai Conservancy in the Maasai Mara ecosystem is one such example. It is an illustration of how a community can turn it’s efforts to protecting wildlife and get something back in the process.
Drought-hit Kenyan pastoralists protecting wildlife at their own expense
As many of you know, the east of Kenya has been drastically affected by drought this year. Many of the efforts put toward conservation in the Tsavo Conservation Area over the last few months have been with the aim of providing water for the ailing flora and fauna.
Drought is obviously dangerous. It degrades a habitat and can push that habitat’s inhabitants to desperation. In periods of drought, we elephant conservationists worry about our big-drinking wards wandering where they mightn’t be welcome.
In so doing, of course, they heighten the likelihood of human-elephant conflict playing itself out.
With this drought being so long-standing and influentially-felt as it has been, we’ve been worried. This is why we were so gladdened to hear about the initiative in operation near the Maasai Mara, amongst the peoples of Enonkishu. Enonkishu has been a conservancy, like Nashulai’s, since 2009.
It is an area of land earmarked for wildlife and managed by certain promises limiting where human settlements are built and the size of agricultural plots.
We’re happy to hear about any project that promotes the need and sustainable conservation of wildlife. But we’re especially happy to hear about how those living in Enonkishu have also built water sources in wild spaces that are providing water for the wildlife they live amongst.
Since building water sources that wildlife are allowed access to, community members say that instances of human-wildlife conflict have been reduced. Grazers know where to find water and predators don’t need to leave the conservancy to find water or the prey they eat.
Enonkishu also makes money from tourism now and community members say that the relationship between themselves and their wild neighbours has improved.