People vs. Wildlife In Parched Kenya

Plan to Give Maasai Control of Sanctuary Raises Concerns Among Conservationists

AMBOSELI NATIONAL PARK, Kenya -- Elephants, buffaloes and other animals drink water on one side of a swamp. On the other, Maasai warriors watch hundreds of cattle graze as the sun sears the parched land of this wildlife sanctuary.

Balancing the needs of both sides is becoming more complex, and environmentalists fear wildlife is losing out.

Kenyan officials recently bent stringent conservation regulations to allow cattle into the Amboseli National Park -- the only permanent source of water in the region -- to help the Maasai save their precious livestock from a punishing drought.

Conservation workers warn that Amboseli's delicate swamps and streams are threatened by a government plan to hand over management of the park to the local county council. They say the move will probably result in Maasai being allowed to gather firewood, use water and regularly graze cattle in the sanctuary.

Competition for pasture and water could drive wildlife out of the sanctuary and intensify conflict between wild animals and people in a region scarred by clashes over scarce resources, said Connie Maina, spokeswoman for the Kenya Wildlife Service.

The drought has begun to kill animals in wildlife sanctuaries and is driving elephants from national parks and game reserves to search for food and water near human settlements.

Dwindling wildlife would discourage tourists from visiting Amboseli, the country's second-largest generator of tourism revenue. That would hurt the local community, which draws from tourism earnings to fund education, health services and well digging, said Thomas Mailu, the deputy senior warden.

Conservation groups have sued the government in an effort to stop Amboseli's handover to Olkejuado County Council, whose predecessor ran the sanctuary from 1961 until environmental degradation caused by mismanagement and political wrangling prompted the central government to take over in 1974.

Local and international conservation groups say the council politicians lack the ability, experience and personnel to conserve wildlife and its habitat, maintain roads and provide security for tourists and animals in a border region troubled by armed bandits.

A government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, said the government would go ahead with its plan to hand the park over to the council. "The government is empowering the local community so that they can benefit directly from the resources in their area," Mutua said.

Amboseli is essentially a huge salt lake that fills with water during the rainy season and dries up in arid months, except for the swamps and streams that provide water for wild animals, migratory birds, cattle and people. The water comes from rain and melting snow from Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest mountain, which dominates the skyline from neighboring Tanzania.

Amboseli's new status "is going to be absolutely suicidal as far as the management of wildlife is concerned" because the removal of stringent conservation controls could lead to the drying up of water sources," said Mailu, the deputy senior warden.

The Maasai say they are happy they will be able to set new priorities regarding access to water and pastures for cattle and wildlife once control of the park changes. They plan to press the county council to open more parts of Amboseli to livestock.

"We could negotiate with them because they are our people. If it is cows, they have cows like these, so they are people that we could talk to and they could listen to us," Saiyanka Mollel, a nomadic herder, said after washing a herd of 400 cows that later grazed in Amboseli.

"Cows are our life," Mollel said.

Amboseli makes more money than all but one of Kenya's 59 national parks and reserves. Six of these make a profit and finance conservation in others. Taking Amboseli from the Kenya Wildlife Service would hurt the less popular sanctuaries, said Maina, the agency's spokeswoman.

Saitoti Saibolob, a tourist guide, said the new arrangement would be fairer to local people because they will get a bigger portion of revenue from land they share with wildlife, often losing cattle to predators.

Kenya is not the only East African nation struggling to ensure that wildlife and people can share water and land. Ethiopian authorities have relocated members of local ethnic groups from the Nech-Sar National Park and handed over its management to a private firm.

The Netherlands-based African Parks Foundation is expected to take over Ethiopia's Omo National Park, home to the Mursi, very tall nomads famous for the huge clay plates inserted into the lips and earlobes of the women.

Government plans to evict the Mursi "would severely disrupt their present economy, a semi-nomadic mix of cattle herding, riverbank cultivation following the Omo flood, and bushland cultivation following the main rains," Survival, a London-based group that helps tribal people, said on its Web site.

Ethiopia's government says it needs to develop the tourism industry, which is Africa's second-largest source of foreign exchange after oil.

"For the last 40 years we have totally neglected our conservation areas and wildlife," said Tadesse Hailu, head of the Ethiopian Wildlife and Conservation Department.

In Tanzania, conservation workers are concerned that officials are studying an application by a Dubai-based businessman to build a hotel on the route of the annual migration of more than 1.5 million wildebeest, zebras and other grazing animals.

The planned hotel in the Serengeti National Park would violate a ban on building permanent structures inside national parks.