Nairobi National Park - Conservation

Conservation

Mervyn Cowie oversaw the development of several of Kenya's national parks and designed them with human visitors in mind. This emphasis helped to make tourism Kenya's primary industry. However, it exacerbated problems between the human population and wildlife. Farmers living next to the parks did not have input into the establishment of the parks. Locals received very little benefit from the game animals. Livestock is threatened by lions, and some landowners think that Kenya's wildlife is not good for them. In 1948 188,976 people lived in Nairobi, and by 1997 the city's population had grown to 1.5 million. The park is under pressure from the city's growing population and need for farmland. People live right next to the park's boundaries, which creates human-animal conflicts. The human population also creates pollution and garbage. Effluent and industrial waste from factories located along the park's northern boundary contaminate the park's surface and ground water systems.

Treaties with the Maasai in 1904 and 1911 forced them to give up all of their northern grazing lands on the Laikipia escarpment near Mount Kenya. Some of the people that lost land there were resettled in the Kitengela area. The Maasai's pastoral life did not create any conflicts with the wildlife. Today the Kitengela has been divided into group ranches and some of the land has been sold to Kikuyu farmers. Houses, cultivated plots, schools, shops, and bars are found on the Kitengela plains. People living here suffer from the presence of predators. Some of the park's revenues have been used for community projects in order for the people living on the Kitengela to benefit from the presence of the national park. Many Maasai landowners have formed the Kitengela Landowners Association, which works with the Kenyan Wildlife Service to both protect the wildlife and find benefits for the locals.

The park and the Athi-Kapiti Plains are linked by the migrations of wild herbivore populations. The plains to the south of the park are important feeding areas during the wet season. Before the city was established, herds of animals followed the rains and moved across the plains from Mount Kilimanjaro to Mount Kenya, a migration as great as the migration that takes place on the Serengeti. However, as the city grew the park became the northernmost limit of the animal's migration. Migrating animals can reach their southern pastures by travelling through the part of the Athi plains called the Kitengela. This land is very important to their migration routes, but growth in the human population and the accompanying need for land threaten to cut off this traditional migration route from the park to land further south. The park's migratory species are also threatened by changing settlement patterns, fencing, and their closeness to Nairobi and other industrial towns. These activities fragment their ecosystems and occupy their habitat.