COMMUNITY CONSERVANCIES

maasai

The Wildlife Foundation supports the Naretunoi Community Conservancy (NCC) south of Nairobi National Park (NNP) to preserve the Kitengela Dispersal Area. As critical stakeholders to the NCC, the local Maasai community receives benefits in exchange for keeping their land open to wildlife. Such benefits include the following:

 

  • Lease Programme;

    The biodiversity conservation lease program brings community and private land under conservation through the use of both monetary and non-monetary incentives to landowners and local communities to keep land open for wildlife and livestock while benefiting from the conservation payments. This increases community acceptance of wildlife conservation measures on their land and in their neighboring areas consequently promoting the thriving of the wildlife.

  • Education Bursary Programme;

    covers high school and/or university fees for high-achieving student community members.

  • Employment Opportunity;

    Community rangers, TWF Centre staff, and many of the TWF employees are from the area.

With the help of our partners MAS Holdings and SGP, we were able to increase the conservancy from 2200 acres to 6250 acres bringing a total of 56 families under the lease program. We hope to increase further to 10,000 acres and eventually cross over to the other triangles within the Athi Kapiti Ecosytem. 

the lease program has enabled the communities tocontinue conserving biodiversity, maintain their way of life (pastoralism), reduce poaching activities, and build resilience, diversifying community livelihoods making biodiversity conservation source of economic sustainability.

Payment of ecosystem services has proved to have positive impacts on communities, wildlife, livestock, and the landscape (ecosystem).

CONFLICT MITIGATION

  • Our most successful strategy for preventing human-wildlife conflict is the installation of Lion Lights, which flash throughout the night and prevent predators from attacking livestock.
  • With the help of WWF, we equipped over 300 bomas with Lion Lights, which saw a reduction in night-time predation of nearly 100%. More are still needed for other community members.
  • Students participating in our Residential Programmes at the TWF Centre help install Lion Lights as an educational activity. Individual donors can also sponsor a set of Lion Lights.
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COMMUNITY RANGERS

The programme is currently being funded in partnership with USAID and the rangers have attended the KWS Law Enforcement Academy at Manyani. They are equipped with uniforms and vehicles which include Suzuki 4WDs and motorcycles.

The Community Rangers programme employs local youth to monitor wildlife in and around community conservancies. They also track instances of human-wildlife conflict and conservancy agreement compliance. This programme collects data on the effectiveness of our work and offers professional development and employment to the local community.

Our Community Rangers monitor and report:

  • Wildlife movement, diversity, and density
  • Human-wildlife conflict
  • Compliance to Lease Programme agreement
  • Poaching and criminal activity against wildlife

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