An Idea in Turmoil: The Future of National Parks and Game Reserves in

East Africa

Alex O. Awiti

The national park idea was developed in the late 19th century in North America and
was exported and applied to natural landscapes of Africa by the colonists. History
reminds us that ideas and the institutions that they spawn often become outmoded
and inconsistent with contemporary realities. Crisis and senescence are not too
strong words to use to describe the plight of national park and reserve systems in
East Africa.

It is nearly 100 years since the national park and reserve system was introduced in
East Africa to ostensibly to protect nature in its entire splendor from anthropogenic
greed and ruin. But today, the national park system, just like the biodiversity
conservations goals that it seeks to promote, faces profound and hitherto unknown
challenges. The notion of national parks as exclusive and pristine ecosystem
assemblages, managed for posterity, is under intense challenge by recent advances
in ecosystems ecology and resilience thinking.

The cutting-edge ecological understanding and management policies of the 1900s

are no longer tenable. Ecological understanding has moved on but park centric
conservation practice is standing still. I know few ecologist who still believe that in the
absence it human disturbance, natural ecological processes will lead inevitably to
ecological balance. Anthropogenic climate change and habitat loss through
fragmentation as well as land degradation have profoundly modified the rules that
govern ecosystem response characteristics.

A study by Ogutu and others, published in the Journal of Zoology in 2008, revealed
that abundance of six major ungulates in the Maasai Mara National Reserves
declined markedly and persistently between 1989 and 2003. Ecologists believe that
these declines in wildlife populations are attributable to habitat deterioration owing to
recurrent droughts, increasing human population and changing land use in pastoral
lands contiguous to the reserve.

Similar patterns of decline have been reported by Kenya Wildlife Services in

Amboseli National Park. In 2007, there were an estimated 10,000 zebras. Early this
year, only 982 Zebra were counted. Similarly in 2007, there were 7,100 wildebeests
compared to 143 recorded in 2010. This massive die-off left lions without prey. In
response to this unprecedented decimation of large ungulates, Kenya Wildlife
Service relocated 7,000 Zebra and Wildebeest to Amboseli National Park in an
attempt restore the predator–prey balance. This relocation was estimated to cost
$1.3 million dollars.

Tanzania’s national parks and reserves, especially in the north, are becoming
increasingly insulated due to human settlement, agricultural cultivation, and the
active elimination of wildlife on lands adjacent to the parks. Recent studies have
shown that insularization of the national parks and reserves have been an important
contributory factor in large mammals extinctions in six northern Tanzania parks over
the last 35-83 years.

Worrying declines in wildlife populations have also been recorded in Uganda. die-offs
For instance, according to figures published in the Uganda Wildlife Policy of 1999
show that between 1960 and 1998, Uganda lost 97% of its Elephants, 85% of its
Impala, 57% of its Buffalo and 57% of her very own Uganda Kob.

At the time of their establishment by the colonists, parks were seen as primarily as
“vignettes of primitive Africa”. The traditional mission of national parks and
reserves–“to preserve wildness, and as much as possible of the rich biological and
cultural heritage of this planet.

Clearly, the mission of parks and reserves is no longer tenable in the context of
contemporary East Africa. The evidence is both chilling and compelling. What is
worrying is that despite the evidence of their inefficacy, conservation authorities in
East Africa still rely on parks and reserves as the main tools for biodiversity
conservation.

Today, parks and reserves in East Africa, whether large or small are islands in a sea
of humanity. They are isolated and wildlife is trapped in habitats that lack the
requisite diversity of resources. Historical migration corridors – that pre-date parks
and reserves – which hitherto enabled spatial and temporal dynamics in resource
utilization, are no longer accessible.

I argue that when recent declines in wildlife populations are examined in the context
of patterns of human settlement, the natural dynamics of ecosystems and climate
change, we must re-think the design and management of parks and reserves.

I suggest that there is need for a paradigm shift toward spatially connected,
interdependent parks and reserves. This is absolutely critical if the goal of long-term
biodiversity conservation is to be achieved. This is not to suggest that existing parks
and reserves be eliminated. My point is that parks and reserves need not be isolated
entities but be part of spatially connected interdependent ecosystems. Connectivity
will enable dynamic interactions among species and diverse ecological resources
across different spatial and temporal scales.

Spatial connectivity among parks and reserves has the best chance to conserve
optimum diversity and preserve ecological memory, which is a key component of
ecological resilience. I define resilience in this context as the as the capacity of parks
or reserves to absorb disturbance (drought, floods, habitat degradation, disease
epidemics) and re-organize while undergoing change, so as to retain essentially the
same function and structure (e.g. savannah, forest, wetland).

Designing spatial connectivity among parks and reserves must take a holistic
ecosystems approach. This means that planned contiguity and connectivity of parks
and reserves must be based on reliable understanding of how wildlife uses
ecosystems. We have much to learn from the centuries old migration corridors of
wildebeest to inform the design principles for spatial connectivity between and among
parks and reserves, both at national and regional levels.

Thousands of wildebeest and zebra, followed by predators (lion, hyena and cheetah)
migrate between Kenya's Nairobi National Park, Maasai Mara Game Reserve and
Tanzania's Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro conservancy. Hence, designing
dedicated connecting corridors and joint management of the parks and reserves of
northern Tanzania and southeastern Kenya would be an excellent and exciting place
to start.

I am mindful that this will require new policy, legal and institutional frameworks to
coordinate multiple stakeholders, including governments, national wildlife authorities,
pastoralists, agriculturalists and game ranchers. The East African integration
experiment provides an institutional platform for design and joint management of
transboundary wildlife corridors.

The bigger challenge lies in negotiating access and acquisition of portions of wildlife
migration corridors currently under private ownership. But there is a great opportunity
here to create the largest and most lucrative ecosystem service markets in Africa.
Landowners can be persuaded by financial incentives through ecosystem service
payments to lease their land for use as wildlife corridors. I would argue that the
ecosystem service market could be developed further to enable trading of such
leases in financial stock markets.
But providing a scientific evidence-base for why our parks and reserve systems are
not viable is not enough. It will also be critical to communicate the science in an
accessible and compelling manner in order to convince policy makers, the general
public and conservation lobbyists that managing parks and reserves through
interconnected and interdependent networks has long-term national and regional
socio-economic and most of all, biodiversity conservation value.

Dr. Awiti is an Ecosystems Ecologist working on resilience in social and ecological systems.
He works with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of the Aga Khan University in East Africa.