The status of wildlife in protected areas compared to non-protected areas of Kenya

Abstract

We compile over 270 wildlife counts of Kenya's wildlife populations conducted over the last 30 years to compare trends in national parks and reserves with adjacent ecosystems and country-wide trends. The study shows the importance of discriminating human-induced changes from natural population oscillations related to rainfall and ecological factors. National park and reserve populations have declined sharply over the last 30 years, at a rate similar to non-protected areas and country-wide trends. The protected area losses reflect in part their poor coverage of seasonal ungulate migrations. The losses vary among parks. The largest parks, Tsavo East, Tsavo West and Meru, account for a disproportionate share of the losses due to habitat change and the difficulty of protecting large remote parks. The losses in Kenya's parks add to growing evidence for wildlife declines inside as well as outside African parks. The losses point to the need to quantify the performance of conservation policies and promote integrated landscape practices that combine parks with private and community-based measures.

Figure 1. Combined wildlife population changes for Tsavo East, Tsavo West, Amboseli, Nakuru, Meru and Nairobi National Parks and between 1977 and 1997.

Figure 2. Total wildlife populations for national parks with matching external ecosystem counts.

The parks include Tsavo East, Tsavo West, Amboseli, Nairobi but exclude Meru and Nakuru.