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Smallholder farmers living in the buffer zone around the Mount Kenya National Park and Forest Reserve have struggled for years with the elephants that regularly invade their land and destroy their crops. An IFAD-supported project will help strengthen efforts already being made by the Kenya Wildlife Services to find ways of protecting wildlife and farming communities, and the natural resources that both depend upon.

Most human-wildlife conflicts in the Mount Kenya area are caused by elephants

“Last night there were about twenty elephants on my farm,” says Ngathu Mugwe owner of the Muramati farm in Laikipia East. “We drummed and yelled to chase them away, but they trampled down fences and ruined fields we had recently planted with corn.”

For small-scale farmers, elephant crop-raiding is often an emotional issue. Livelihoods can be lost in a single night.

In the Mount Kenya area hardly a day goes by without an incident occurring between a farmer and the elephants. Elephants inhabiting the park can easily stray outside its perimeters and cause damage to crops and homes, and even injury and loss of life. Confrontation can take place around water points. But injuries and deaths also occur when farmers try to drive wildlife off their land. The hot spots are located on the northern, southern and eastern perimeters of the park. In some areas buffaloes and baboons are also a problem to farmers.

The Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) is a government institution responsible for protecting wildlife and resolving conflict issues. KWS is working in partnership with Kenya Forest Services to help communities find immediate and long-term solutions to the problem of human-wildlife conflict. A component of the IFAD-funded Mount Kenya East Pilot Project, partially funded by a GEF grant, will support KWS in addressing this very particular natural resource issue across the whole Mount Kenya area.

The IFAD project, which started in 2004, aims to improve the lives of Mount Kenya’s poorest people by promoting environmental conservation and management of natural resources - including the park’s rich biodiversity - and also improving farming practices. An environmental impact assessment carried out by KWS will evaluate the natural resource situation around the whole perimeter of the park. KWS is meeting all communities affected to ensure they are involved from the outset in finding a global solution to the wildlife problem.

Who is encroaching on whom?

“The problem began when these areas were settled by farmers looking for land to work,” says Elizabeth Osiromo, project manager for the Mount Kenya East Project. “More and more new settlements are pushing right up to the park boundary and some have even encroached into the forest reserve. The population density in the area has become very high. As a result the competition for resources between humans and wildlife has intensified.”

Ibrahim Kamore surveys damage caused by elephants to his wheat field

“The Mount Kenya area is an important refuge for elephants,” says Thomas Mailu, District Warden for KWS in Meru. “They come here from arid areas further north to find forage, water and a place to breed. These new settlements occupy land that was traditionally used by animals. At certain times of the year elephants move out of the park and along seasonal migratory routes to other national parks, such as the Aberdare National Park. Elephants remember their old routes, and will flatten anything – crops, fences, houses – that they find in their way.”

At other times the elephants will move out of the reserve during drier periods in search of water, or a tasty meal, when crops are ready for harvest. “From October to November when the maize is ripe, our phones are ringing off the hook,” says Isaac Mwangi, KWS warden of Laikipia West.

Finding solutions

KWS is helping train farming communities to find solutions that are compatible with the protection of wildlife. In the short-term KWS will only evacuate people or animals if the problem is particularly pressing. Otherwise they encourage communities to dig moats around their land, or plant a barrier of thorny plants that are difficult for the elephants to penetrate, or else cultivate crops that are repellent to elephants, such as chilli.

Electric fences are among the most effective long-term solutions.
Some communities have begun to erect fences themselves, paying for them out of their own pocket. Electric fences are solar-powered and can be either two-strand or four-strand. The two-strand fences will stop the elephants from roaming beyond the park’s perimeters, but will allow other wildlife, such as buffaloes or antelope, to pass through.

“We used to have to sleep in the fields,” says John Mwende, chairman of a community organization in Meru which helped erect electric fences in the area. “When the elephants came we were up all night using slings, drums, or lighting fires to drive them away. All our energy went into chasing the animals off our land. Our harvests were ruined and we were mostly dependent on food subsidies from the government.”

John’s community now lives peacefully alongside the elephants. “Our children can go to school and we can return to farming,” says John. “We never even used to have clean water because the funnel system that channelled the water was repeatedly destroyed by elephants.”

One drawback is that these fences are very costly for smallholder farmers, and require maintenance. Some large groups of elephants are even able to break down the electric fences.

KWS are raising funds to continue erecting electric fences around the trouble spots. But the placement of fences requires care. Fencing needs to incorporate corridors along which animals can migrate out of the park. It also needs to avoid simply displacing the problem; by increasing conflict issues for communities in other areas where there are no fences.

A concerted effort to preserve natural resources

An important aspect of the work of KWS officers involves sensitizing local communities to environmental issues. They help promote conservation of the forest resource and the animals that live within as well as helping local residents understand that the presence of wildlife can be beneficial to them, and even become a major source of revenue.

One long-term solution to the conflict problem is to encourage communities to adopt activities that are compatible with wildlife: rather than farming and struggling with wildlife, they can allow animals to live on their land and make a living from ecotourism. “In the Samburu area pastoralist communities have established successful conservancies of this kind. With a little organization and some seed money to kick off this kind of initiative, the same solutions could be brought to the Mount Kenya area,” says Elizabeth Osiromo.

In the meantime, to demonstrate the benefits wildlife can bring, the government is using some of this revenue from tourism to satisfy basic needs in communities; providing water bore-holes, constructing classrooms and health facilities.

Eventually KWS intends to help the government draft a land-use policy that incorporates established wildlife corridors and dispersal areas. “We need to find a way to coexist so that everyone can benefit,” says Faith Muthoni Livingstone, MKEPP project coordinator.

Source: IFAD