General
We continued to have heavy and destructive storms in the first five days of February, we then had a slight respite for two weeks, with beautiful sunny days, before the rains returned with a vengeance. The continual and heavy rain in the first few days of February did more damage than all the other rain combined. Thereafter, the Triangle had a chance to dry out a bit and we had the opportunity to fix the very badly damaged road to Little Governors. All the traffic was being diverted that way because of a gully that had formed across the main road. There is no doubt that balloon vehicles contributed greatly to the road damage. The balloon companies insist on flying, even after the heaviest rainstorms and the chase, breakfast and recovery vehicles do more harm to the roads and environment than all the other vehicles put together.
We reviewed the damage to the main road near Oloololo Gate with Mr A Plackett, an engineer with the British Army on the 7th, he has since written a report and proposed a design to bridge the gully. We are budgeting Ksh 8.7 million (US$ 87,000) to rehabilitate this section of road, in the meantime we have made a detour.
The Firearms Licensing Board (FLB) visited the Triangle on the 18th to inspect all the firearms. We were also visited by a delegation headed by the officer in-charge of the Kenya Police Reserve and we hope that our rangers will be registered as such.
Mr Eric Becker came with a team from WWF on the 18th, to repair one of our Flir cameras that has not been working for several months. He was unable to repair it and took it away, hopefully he will return with it in April.
The Chief Executive met with Mr George Orr of TWOCAN (TALK) on the 27th to discuss the new generation radios. These are set to replace both VHF and HF systems and can double up as mobile phones. They are only limited by WiFi or GSM coverage and have numerous features which would be of great interest to us. I have asked for a demonstration.
A large meeting involving the Ministry of Tourism Wildlife, attended by the Principal Secretary; Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) – attended by the Chairman and Director General and other very senior members of KWS; UNESCO; Narok County and other stakeholders on establishing the Mara as a World Heritage Site was held at Mara Serena 29th to 1st March. It is too early to report on the meeting but a draft proposal needs to be submitted by September and the final by February 2021. However, it would appear that the County has a great deal to do in terms of management plans, actual management and budget allocation before we could submit an acceptable proposal. The County will also need to determine whether we link it to the existing site in the Serengeti, a fairly easy option or whether they want to get World Heritage status for the Mara in its own right.
Tourism
Tourist numbers were remarkably high throughout the month, despite the exceptional rain and the Coronavirus. We will almost certainly see a drop in tourism as a result of the virus, it seems to be spreading quickly, with hotspots now in Italy and Iran and travel from China severely curtailed. There is absolutely no doubt that this virus will affect global travel and we should prepare for the worst – we can expect a serious drop in tourist numbers in the foreseeable future.
Staff
We held a farewell party for Liaram Molai on the 28th, he was promoted to the position of Director of Environment in the County Government.
The Chief Executive will take a week off in early March.
Research
Pastoralist livelihoods and wildlife revenues in East Africa: a case for coexistence?
K M Homewood, P Chenevix Trench and D Brockington. Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 2012, 2:19 http://www.pastoralismjournal.com/content/2/1/19
The paper above looks at the case for coexistence between livestock and wildlife in rural Maasai households. The authors recognize that almost all pastoralist households compliment their livestock husbandry with complimentary activities such as farming, fishing, hunting and
gathering, processing natural resources for sale, artisanal work, wage labor, salaried
employment and/or investment in non-pastoral trade and businesses. They also report that many Maasai communities live in comparative poverty. There is no doubt that individually Maasai households have fewer livestock now than they did even 40 years ago, and that shoats (sheep and goats) are replacing cattle as the rangeland gets degraded. It is also reported in the paper that the richer segment of society own a disproportionate number of livestock – the top 10 -20% members of society own half to two thirds of all livestock.
Diversification is an important part of a pastoralist’s coping mechanism but land fragmentation is making pastoralism much harder and of course is largely incompatible with wildlife. They note that Kenyan and Tanzanian governments see pastoralist livestock management (mobile transhumance on unfenced, unmodified rangelands) as unproductive and environmentally damaging.
The authors note that Conservation in East Africa is big business (a point that I disagree with – Tourism is big business, conservation is a very poor relative. There is little, or no connection between conservation, the foundation, and it’s importance to Kenya’s tourism industry). However, this has not stopped the decline in wildlife numbers, as reported in this and numerous other papers. The authors cite habitat loss as the single most salient cause of species decline. Large-scale agriculture and more recently the erection of fences around private property have had a major impact.
Their analysis suggests that the relatively poor economic return from wildlife and the greater returns from fencing or agriculture are contributing to these declines – things that we know. What the authors have done is to try and calculate the returns from wildlife on pastoral lands and come up with a range of 5-20% , with 20% being the return to landowners in the conservancies surrounding the Mara. Does even 20% of your income from wildlife make it sufficient to promote conservation and the protection of wildlife? I doubt it.
As with livestock ownership, the top 25% of Mara households by wealth consistently capture 60% to 70% of conservation income. The bottom 25%, by contrast, captured around 5%, rising to 15% if all forms of associated conservation-related employment are included. The middle 50% took around 25% of conservation-related income across the board. The poorest 20% of households are consistently more likely to be engaged in cultivation and/or off-farm work and significantly less likely to receive wildlife income than other households.
Wildlife
At least seven vultures and three hyena were poisoned on Lerai Conservancy on the Mara ecosystem around the 7th.
An elephant was found dead near Ol Donyo Olpaek, along the Kenya/Tanzania border, on the 22nd, it appeared to have died from natural causes.
One lioness was found dead on the 28th near Kampi ya Mungi, we presume she is from the pride that has become well known for killing buffalo in that area. There were no visible signs of injury.
Security
A total of seven people were arrested for poaching during the month, fourteen snares were recovered. At least two hippo, two topi and one zebra are known to have been killed.
Our TANAPA counterparts received a report of people hunting hippo along Lugga ys Ngiri in the Lemai Wedge. A joint patrol found the hippo, only partially butchered. They set up an ambush and saw one person approach at around 7.00 pm.
On the 5th our rangers found an abandoned camp at Watu Kumi in the Lemai Wedge, the poachers had obviously killed a zebra and there were four wire snares hidden there. The next day the Ngiro-are rangers arrested one person from a group of four at Olaro Nyioke. They were hunting gazelle with dogs during the day, very unusual.
Five people were arrested in the Lemai Wedge on the 14th, four were arrested in the morning when our teams re-visited the poacher’s camp found on the 5th. Six people had returned, had set snares and had killed a topi. Ten snares were recovered. The six had arrived the previous day and were set to stay up to 10 days. That night the rangers set an ambush in the same site and one of the two who had escaped that morning was arrested at 8.00 pm, as he returned to try and recover his belongings. Two days later the rangers found another dead topi in a snare and recovered two snares – obviously missed on the 14th.
One person was arrested on the 18th on the Bologonja/Mara River junction. Tourists on the other side of the river saw him and directed our rangers to the place he was hiding – he weighed up his options and decided that the best thing to do was cross the river and face the tourists – he was unarmed and was caught by the guides and tourists on the other side of the river. He was then handed over to the rangers at Kogatende.
The new Warden in-charge of the Northern Serengeti, Mr Jackson Leimo, visited on the 25th with senior NCOs to discuss and reaffirm the collaboration between us and TANAPA.
Our rangers came across a poachers’ camp along the BBC lugga in the Triangle on the 25th, the poachers had departed but also left a large quantity of hippo meat. We laid ambushes for several days, but no one returned.
Revenue and Accounts
We had another case of fraud on Park tickets on the 3rd, a driver from Africa Keys had been given cash to pay for tickets, he somehow managed to get a Safari Trails voucher and tried to pay with that and pocket the cash. The voucher was issued from the KATO office, indicating that there was possible collusion between a KATO staff member and Africa Keys. Safari Trails confirmed that they had never authorised a voucher from their account and the matter taken up with KATO management.
As expected, we had an eight percent drop in revenue compared to January last year, the equivalent of Ksh 42 million against Ksh 45 million last year. The number of non-paying visitors increased to 57%, 4,975 out of a total of 8,663 – largely as a result of the damage to roads outside the Reserve and the fact that the bridge at Mara Rianta was un-crossable for days on end.
We received our Tax Clearance Certificate on the 16th February – indicating that we have filed all the relevant returns and paid all taxes due to that date.
Repairs and maintenance
The rainstorms at the beginning of the month did immense damage to the roads around Oloololo and all along the escarpment. We put all our effort into keeping the roads open so that Oloololo was not cut off from the rest of the Triangle and our main roads were at least passable. This included:
· Repairing the bridge by the Kichwa airstrip;
· Moving thousands of tons of rock and murram to open the roads to Little Governors. Large sections were completely washed away and both roads became impassable;
· Finding a detour around the gully at Naisukut and making it passable;
· Employing casuals to channel water off the road to Nigro-are;
· Repairing badly damaged drifts on the lower road to Mara Bridge.
We have received a quotation to repair the gully at Naisukut: KSh 8.7 million. We have sufficient approval from Board members to proceed with awarding a contract and would like to start work ion March.
We graded damaged sections of the main road between Oloololo and Mara Bridge. We alkso graded the road to Kilo 2 and the lower road between Serena and Mara Bridge.
We graded the new road from Naisukut to Little Governors and then touched up the roads in that area.
We replaced the tray on the Nigro-are Land Cruiser KCR 695Z, it kept cracking under the weight of the spare tyres and front strip-light.
We mapped all the tracks and roads to be upgraded or maintained on Oloololo Game Ranch, work will start on this once we have got our roads in order.
We uprooted and burnt the Parthenium around Mara Bridge, it is actually now getting out of hand and the best we can hope for is to limit its distribution.
We completed the new housing at Iseiya, we just need to complete the toilet and bathroom.
The fan on the new grader started cracking, with four blades damaged. The agents came and had a look and we had to order a new fan from overseas. This has meant that the new grader was out of action for three weeks – the whole reason for buying a new machine was that we did not have this down time. It was finally repaired on the 25th.
We repaired the windsock, the bearing that allowed the sock to swivel had completely disintegrated and it was jamming, causing the sock to get entangled.
Report on focus for February
Focus for March 2020
· Conclude World Heritage Site meeting;
· Hold Board meeting on the 20th;
· Start on Naisukut gully;
· Complete contract with the County;
· Complete toilet and bathroom for staff;
· Tile the floors in new staff housing and paint the rooms;
· Install more culverts;
· Work on roads where possible; and
· Remove Lantana;