March 2020

General

The exceptional rain continued throughout most of March, one storm on the 28th caused extensive damage to our infrastructure, especially the roads.

The meeting on World Heritage Status ended on the 1st, the conclusion being:

·       The status will be for the National Reserve only;

·       The Conservancies surrounding the Reserve will provide the necessary buffer zone.  However, the proposal will have to satisfy the panel that the conservancies are sustainable;

·       There must be a management plan in place for the Mara;

·       The should also be a spatial plan for the Mara ecosystem, this is being developed buy will need to be fast-tracked;

·       There will be a need to improve management, transparency and accountability within the Reserve for it to pass the evaluation process;

·       There will be a need to involve the Tanzanians in the process;

We have provided a copy of the draft Mara Management Plan for the period 2012 -2021 which was prepared by Conservation Development Consultants (CDC) but never adopted by the then County Council of Narok.  Much of the Management Plan is as relevant today as it was ten years ago and many of the prescriptions on camps and lodges need to urgently be implemented.

COVID-19

It may be too early to fully estimate the impact caused by the worldwide panic over the Corona virus (COVID -19), but all the indications are that, unless a vaccine is found soon, it will cause as much damage as any catastrophe in the past 80 years – the World has gone into shut-down mode.  Countries are banning travel, insisting on self-isolation and quarantining virtually all foreign travellers.  For the Conservancy the implications are almost too dire to contemplate – we originally thought that we might see a 25% drop in tourist numbers and hence revenue.  We are now looking at a 100% drop in the coming two months, maybe longer.  We have not seen a tourist in the Mara for the last ten days of March, all the camps gave closed and won’t open before June.  It is not just tourist travel that is being affected, we are already seeing major impacts in:

• The stock markets;

• Ethnic profiling and harassment.  The Chinese in Kenya are already being targeted;

• Perishable exports such as flowers and vegetables;

• Schools are being closed worldwide;

• Air and local travel;

• Meetings and conferences;

• Sport;

• Shopping, with panic buying; 

• Employment – with a freeze on hiring, how long before we see major retrenchment.

We are fortunate in that we have a reasonable reserve.  This would have been sufficient for a minor downturn in tourism but no one could have envisaged such a total lock-down – probably equivalent to that in a major war.  How many companies and organisations will be able to weather a long-term hit on their businesses?

We  worked on a sensitivity analysis, with drops in revenue anything from 50-90%, and the implications on our ability to sustain management of the Triangle – see Table 1.  We are also looking at drastic cost-cutting measures and almost all these will impact staff:

• Stopping community projects.  This may include compensation, schools and water;

• Retrenching non-essential staff;

• Sending people on unpaid leave;

• Stopping all staff training;

• Stopping all allowances;

• Restricting patrols and ambushes;

• Restricting vehicle movement;

• Stopping all construction – we have just completed one set of housing;

• Minimising road works.

Senior management have done an excellent job at looking at our options and prepared a short paper detailing a possible way forward.

Table 1:  How long can we sustain the Triangle – different options

The most likely scenario at the present time is number 3, revenue down to 10% of the average over the past 8 months and expenditure down to 70% of the current operating costs – this will enable us to continue for 6.5 months but deplete our reserves.   This assumes that we will start to see an easing of travel restrictions before June and a few tourists start travelling in June.

Tourism

The impact of the Corona virus was sudden and drastic, within a few days around mid-March tourist numbers went from slightly below normal to no tourists at all.  By the 17th decisions were being made to temporarily close camps, the first was Angama – which closed for six weeks from the 18th, other camps followed suit and Serena are closing all their camps and lodges from 1stApril to the  beginning of June.

Staff

One of our staff then had a possible contact with an infected person on the 18th, he returned to the Mara on the 20th and interacted closely with a number of our staff before discovering that he had been in close contact with someone who had tested positive.  We immediately isolated nine people, stopped all movement by staff in and out of the Triangle and awaited a result on our staff member, sadly his father died on the 26th.  He was a diabetic, a very high risk for someone with the virus.  Our commiserations to the family during this very sad time.   

Our immediate aim is to minimize the impact on staff, but as staff related costs amount to most of our expenditure, it is inevitable that they will bear some of the cost.  Our immediate aim will be to retain basic salaries and only reduce allowances and bonuses.  We will also work on a roster for time-off and make people take two weeks off at a time from the 1st and the 15th, this will enable us to reduce the rations bill, as we provide rations twice a month, on those dates.

We are hoping that we will be able to send a lot of staff home during the coming months, our intention is to draw down on off-days due, rather than send people on unpaid leave. 

Research

All the overseas researchers working with the Hyena and River projects returned to the America by mid-month.

Two  interesting papers that is very relevant to the sustainability of the Mara ecosystem should be read by anyone interested in the Mara.

Fencing bodes a rapid collapse of the unique Greater Mara ecosystem. (2017).   Løvschal M, Bøcher P K,  Pilgaard J, Amoke I,Odingo A, Thuo A, & Svenning J.  Scientific Reports. www.nature.com/scientificreports

Fencing is our last stronghold before we lose it all. A political ecology of fencing around the maasai Mara national reserve, Kenya (2019).  T G Weldemichel, H Lein.  Land Use Policy 87.  104075.   www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol

As long ago as 1970, land tenure was formalized across the entire Greater Mara with the establishment of group ranches which have subsequently been subject to subdivision into smaller land parcels, a process which is still ongoing in some parts of the Greater Mara.  The second paper talks of the corruption in the sub-division process – “ Although by law the land should have been distributed equally among the members of group ranches, it has been well documented that the subdivision processes generally favoured powerful and wealthy members of the ranch committees, as well as local influential leaders and politicians.”  Some people ended up with four or five time the amount of land they should have had, much of it in prime areas.

The fences – shown in figure 1 - appear in a range of different constructions (most of them using cedar or olive posts – in itself a contributor to the destruction of  forest and the decimation of the cedar and olive forests in the Mau and Loita), the majority of which are enclosures protecting individual plots. In the Greater Mara, it has been suggested that the main drivers of fencing are related to increased livestock densities (livestock biomass within the reserve has increased from 2% of total livestock and wildlife biomass in the 1970s to 23% in the 2000s), wheat and maize cultivation plus human population growth and settlement expansion, sedenterization, climate changes, poaching and the desire to eliminate any uncertainty over how the collective holdings were historically shared.

Between the 1980s and 2000s, these trends led to a more than 70% decline in resident wildlife populations in the Mara – well documented by Veldhuis et al in 2019.  Figure 2 shows the effect on wildebeest when they hit a fence-line.  The fences are increasing at an exponential rate, despite efforts to reduce them in areas like the Pardamats (in my opinion an exercise in futility and a waste of time and money.  People are being paid to take down fences and are then building them at a faster rate in the hunt for more compensation.  This is well documented).

Figure 1:  Fences surrounding the National Reserve

Figure 2:  The effect of fencing on the movement of wildebeest

Source:  T G Weldemichel, H Lein

Wildlife

One of the collared hyena from the North Clan was killed for livestock predation by members of the community near Kawai on the 2nd. 

An old elephant carcass was found near the Salt-lick on the 6th, the tusks were still intact and removed by our rangers.

Dr Limo removed a snare from a giraffe on the 12th near Kishanga.  The giraffe fell onto one of our anti-harassment vehicles, damaging the front bumper and passenger door.

Security

The Nigro-are rangers managed to arrest one poacher near Lugga ya Ngiri in the Lemai Wedge, from a group of four, on the evening of the 17th.  They were probably on their way to hunt hippo.

The rangers saw tracks of suspected poachers near Purungat on the 20th, they were joined by s team from the Main Reserve and spent two days looking for the poachers before they found a camp near Sala’s along Sand River.  There was no one in the camp but it was obviously occupied, as all the belongings were there.  

Revenue and Accounts

Our management accounts for the first eight months of the year were reasonably positive, a 7% increase in revenue over budget – despite three straight months of reduced income.  See Table 2.  Our expenditure was up by 16% largely as a result of the repair costs in trying to maintain roads and infrastructure after four months of unrelenting rain.   

Table 3:  Income and expenditure for 8 months July 2019 to Feb 2020

Repairs and maintenance

We completed the staff housing and washrooms for mid-level staff and people have moved in.

Our main emphasis in March was to keep our roads open, very difficult given the constant rain, much of which was in the form of large storms.  We managed to ensure that the detour around the gully near Oloololo was in good order.  We concentrated on culverts and managed to install:

·       Two on the lower road between Serena and Purungat;

·       Five on the road between Sankuria and Little Governors.

Grade A have started on repair work at the gully, it will probably take at least two months.

We have a new gully forming along the main road, this will have to be repaired before it cuts across the road, weather permitting.

We completed a new toilet at Oloololo and also replaced broken windows – over 30 window panes.

We have implemented drastic measures to reduce vehicle use, this includes:

·       Grounding two patrol vehicles;

·       Grounding two anti-harassment vehicles;

·       Restricting remaining anti-harassment vehicles;

·       Reducing shopping trips to once a month.

Report on focus for March

Focus for April 2020 

·       Continue with Naisukut gully;

·       Implement cost-cutting measures;

·       Send people home on off-days;

·       Seek donor support;

·       Complete contract with the County; and

·       Repair roads where possible;