BACK	ENVIRONMENT-KENYA: Making Wildlife Pay

''If hunting will improve conservation outside the national parks, that's fine with us,'' KWS Director Dr David Western told a recent workshop called by his agency to sensitize landowners to the importance of conservation and of protecting wildlife and its habitat.

The workshop ended with the formation of the ''Kenya Landowners Wildlife Forum (KLWF)'', that aims to help lay a realistic basis for decisions and policies that are good for wildlife, the land and landowners.

''We have formed the forum to represent millions of people in rural and rangeland areas on whose land 85 percent of Kenyan wildlife lives,'' Dr David Hopcraft, proprietor of a game ranch, told IPS.

''We will speak with one voice and join together with other interested parties, the donors, NGO's, tour operators and KWS to implement the partnership programme, and build capacity in communal areas to manage and benefit from our land and wildlife resources,'' he added.

According to Koikai ole Oloitipitip, chairman of the Amboseli/Tsavo Conservation Association, which comprises seven ranches occupying over 50,000 acres of range land in the south of the country, the old emphasis on protection as the key to the conservation of wildlife has ''excluded landowners from managing and benefiting from African animals''.

Livestock that had originated in Europe and Asia proliferated, creating a man-made imbalance in African ecosystems, he added. ''Wildlife was excluded and eliminated as it was rendered worthless by the law,'' explained Oloitipitip. ''This in turn led to degradation, desertification and a massive loss in biological diversity.''

An estimated 60 to 70 percent of Kenya's wildlife lives outside protected areas and this makes the conservation of game on communal and private lands vitally important for the health of the nation's wildlife resource base. ''The cost of maintaining these animals has always been borne by the landowners,'' said Western.

He said surveys carried out in Laikipia and Taita-Taveta, two districts where limited game hunting and culling have been going on on a trial basis since 1992, the wildlife population density has increased three-fold whereas it has decreased drastically in other places.

''It has proved that the new paradigm of utilisation is clearly good for the wildlife,'' said Western. ''The re-establishment of diversity is good for the land. This should now be extended to the landowning communities on whose land 80 percent of Kenya's wildlife live so they too can benefit.''

Tourism is Kenya's second foreign exchange earner after agriculture, and most of the tourists come to view its wildlife. However, landowning communities and individual landowners claim that though most of the animals are on their land, they rarely derive much benefit from this.

This is what has prompted them to come together and lobby, with the KWS, for a new ''partnership programme'' aimed at giving rights and responsibilities for wildlife to landowning communities as a means of conserving wildlife and increasing bioligical diversity.

They want the new partnership programme enacted into law by Kenya's parliament. A bill seeking to develop the programme is already in the office of the Attorney General, who is to take it to parliament for debate and amendment. ''When enacted into law, this will secure the future of wildlife into the next century, and will ensure the survival of rare animal species'' said Hopcraft.

''Hunting, when introduced on a limited scale, under the control of land owners, will greatly enhance landowners' income,'' he said. But he added that ''this would only be achieved when the land owners realise the true value of wildlife and protect it even more vigorously.''

Since 1993, communal ranches in Ol Morani, Sipili and Luonek locations in Laikipia district, where culling is being carried on a limited scale, earned some 20,000 U.S. dollars from culling zebras, the most abundant animal on Kenya's rangeland.

Allowing hunting would increase earnings even more, say advocates of the scrapping of the ban. A culled animal fetches the landowner between 125 and 150 U.S. dollars, but when the same animal is hunted for sport, it nets the farmer between 600 and 800 U.S. dollars, they say.

''By the end of the day the it doesn't matter how the animal died,'' said Oloitipitip. ''The point is how much did the farmer reap?''

But conservationists are campagning against the lifting of the ban, which was imposed in 1977 after years of wanton killing of animals such as the elephant which, by that time, was becoming extinct. The East African Wildlife Society (EAWS) and the Department of Resource Survey and Remote Sensing (DRSRS) say lifting the ban would bring back indiscriminate slaughter of the most threatened animal species.

They say the time is not yet ripe for bringing back licensed hunting as Kenya lacks the capacity to supervise proper sport hunting. Such a move, they contend, will only benefit a few influential ranch owners and politicians. (END/IPS/pn/kb/97)