FEAR AND LOSING
Terror attacks and nervous tourists may blow Kenyan conservation efforts.
KENYAN conservationists fear that the stayaway by tourists following the recent wave of terrorist attacks may turn the country’s wildlife reserves into farmlands.
I have just returned from the Maasai Mara, arguably Africa’s most famous wildlife habitat, as it heads for the peak safari season. Although the camps and lodges were busy, according to Gerard Beaton, Kenyan country manager of Asilia, the safari-camp operator, there has been a 30% drop in tourism since the series of bombings in the country’s coastal towns and the US and UK travel warnings.
The UK advises against all but essential travel to the Kenyan coast and also to “low-income areas of Nairobi”. The US State Department said last month it was evacuating some of its Nairobi embassy staff, saying it “continues to receive information about potential terrorist threats aimed at the US, Western and Kenyan interests in Kenya”.
Forward bookings are looking grim. Many of the camps and lodges in the Mara are reporting a wave of cancellations and although the July-through-September season is still showing reasonable numbers, after that a severe drop-off is expected.
The conservancies under threat, which cover almost 81 000ha, are adjacent to the main 150 000ha Mara reserve and not only form a buffer zone to farmlands and ever-growing rural communities but are also seen as a role model of community conservation practices.
They began forming 10 years ago, the brainchild of several Kenyans, among them Gerard Beaton’s father Ron and Jake Grieves-Cook, a former chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board. They persuaded Maasai landowners to set aside large sectors of their land for wildlife, agreeing not to live there and only graze their cattle there at restricted times. In exchange, they receive rent.
The pride of Beaton’s portfolio is the 20 000ha Naboisho conservancy, which has just five camps (134 beds) and pays the local community $1-million a year.
Calvin Cottar, who owns and runs Cottar’s 1920s Camp, is clear about the impact that a serious tourism downturn will have. “All eight conservancies around the greater Mara ecosystem have been built on tourist revenues and if this revenue dries up, as it has recently, our Maasai landowners will have no choice but to cancel the conservancies and convert their land to farming maize or wheat instead.”
Cottar’s 1920s Camp is in the Ol Derikesi wildlife conservancy. He says this year there will be a $140 000 shortfall in revenues
Wildlife areas are hundreds of miles from terrorist activities
owed to the local community.
The success of the conservancies may be measured by the relatively low incidents of elephant poaching in the greater Mara ecosystem in recent years. While it is believed that the country as a whole is losing more than 1 000 elephant a year to poachers, the Mara has actually seen a drop in poaching. There are also significant lion prides in the conservancies, although conservationists say Africa’s lion population is declining dramatically.
Much of this conservation is down to the Maasai community benefiting from tourism. Operators say if you take these revenues out of the equation, a massive increase in poaching is inevitable.
Last month, there were two more terror attacks, one in Lamu and the other in Tana River county, leaving 30 people dead. Yet operators I spoke to in the Mara are angry at what they regard as “knee-jerk” blanket warnings from Western governments when the terrorist activities have centred on Kenya’s coastal region.
They point out that wildlife areas such as the Mara are hundreds of miles from terrorist activities. However, to allay the fears of clients, some operators are avoiding transfers from Jomo Kenyatta airport by putting on charter flights to the Mara directly out of Kenyatta. Others are avoiding Nairobi completely and re-routing clients through Tanzania.
As Beaton says, the Maasai Mara, and the conservancies in particular, now face a fight for survival. If tourism collapses in the wake of this murderous campaign, then the terrorists will have achieved one of their major goals. There is much at stake.