GAME PARK SECURITY
Over the past five years, KWS has been taking steps to establish an effective security machinery to stamp out incidents of attacks on tourists that caused great concern in the industry in the late 1980s.
In 1990, a select unit of young men, including rangers and their officers, underwent initial paramilitary training in combat, intelligence and investigations. Today, this 500-man strong unit forms the core of the KWS security machinery.
Men from this unit are currently distributed in functional companies throughout the country with special emphasis on key wildlife and tourism areas. To ensure the required level of skill and attitude is maintained, KWS has put into place a training and retraining programme.
For efficiency and effectiveness, the field units are provided with all the necessary equipment. These include well serviced combat gear, vehicles, and communication and navigational electronics. The unit is also backed up by an airwing: an aircraft is attached to every company. Rapid deployment helicopters and caravans are maintained at the headquarters' hangar ready for any emergency.
All these security arrangements ensure not only tourist security against any possible attacks, but also mobility and speedy evacuations from the field for any injured officers or visitors. The unit has been used on a number of occasions to rescue visitors attacked by wildlife, or who fall sick from natural causes, to hospitals.
To further enhance tourist security within the parks, a new electronic system known as Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) is currently under test at Tsavo National Park. If this meets the necessary requirements, the technology will enable the headquarters to monitor the movement of every tourist vehicle within the parks. In the event of a threat to security an early warning will be received, and rapid response deployed.
Preserving nature and at the same time generating income from it has always been a tricky balancing act, with nature always losing to human greed.
Still in its infancy and not yet considered a mainstream Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) conservation policy, ecotourism is expected to have a low impact on both the environment and local cultures, while helping to create jobs and enhancing the conservation of wildlife and biodiversity.
Being small-scale and sometimes family run, ecotourism facilities and infrastructure are small and less sophisticated than those of mainstream tourism.
In recent years, KWS has been actively involved in the sensitisation of communities coexisting with wildlife to get involved in its management so as to utilise their heritage sustainably. While the conservation of Kenyan biodiversity is the core mandate of KWS, the organisation long realised that without active community participation, resulting in their reaping of direct benefits from wildlife-based tourism, there could be no guarantee as to the survival of wildlife and nature for posterity.
For ecotourism to succeed, emphasis has to be on the rights of communities coexisting with wildlife. In (Kenya's) Coast Province's Arabuko-Sokoke Forest Reserve, for example, KWS realised that while it is her duty to preserve the rare plant species there, the community's interests in harvesting certain medicinal species had to be recognised. KWS allows limited and controlled harvesting by the community of these rare plants and trees in situ, but in order to fully satisfy the community's demand, the people are supplied with seedlings which they grow on their private lands outside the protected area.
Even without a clear policy, KWS is already injecting a lot of money into ecotourism through wildlife community projects.
Kenya is not the only country investing in ecotourism. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) says that of the US$ 55 billion grossed from tourism in 1988, a sizeable amount accrued from ecotourism. The World Travel Organization (WTO) says tourism was poised to gross US$ 3.4 trillion - accounting for 10 per cent of the global labour in 1994. WTO says ecotourism is growing globally at an annual rate of 3.5 per cent in the developed world and six per cent in the developing world. The USAID in partnership with the World Bank are providing a propelled multilateral funding to KWS for ecotourism in a number of projects.
A major problem facing ecotourism in Africa in general, and Kenya in particular, relates to the land rights of people in areas with tourism potential. In Kenya, demand for huge and immediate returns from tourism for people living around protected areas is a sensitive issue that both KWS and Kenyan authorities are grappling with.
Sustainable tourism in both protected and community areas demands the re-examination of the extent to which people are allowed access to and use of land for tourism purposes.
Dr. Chris Gakahu, a Kenyan ecotourism expert, says tapping the potential to the benefit of Kenyans and most other people in Africa is not going to be easy. He observes that while residents of the Nepalese villages on the slopes of Mt. Everest pocket as much as 60 per cent of the trekkers' dollars because they own the cottages, cook the food, and guide trekkers, in Kenya, the KWS finds it a gruesome and an unsustainable burden to share 20 per cent of its revenue with the communities. However, KWS scientists and others in the travel industry agree that the country's US$350 million tourism industry could gain greatly from increased investment and aggressive marketing of a people-oriented and eco-friendly package dubbed ecotourism.
COMMUNITY WILDLIFE SERVICE
In the past three years, KWS has established modalities for community partnership in the management of wildlife to help resolve the human-wildlife conflict. Among the measures taken was the launch in August 1995 of the Problem Animal Management Unit (PAMU). Some of the objectives of PAMU, include identifying and recording areas of significant human-wildlife conflicts as well as identifying seasons when such conflicts occur most.
The unit has now developed an early warning system for the management of problem animals. It has also introduced protective barrier designs which include fencing, and the use of trenches and moats. The communities are also encouraged under this programme to use traditional defence methods and adopt self-supporting fencing programmes.
To further contain the problem animals, KWS is intensifying ranger services and improving its telecommunications network.
One of the main achievements of KWS on the community wildlife programme has been the creation of awareness and the mobilisation of communities to such an extent that, at present, people in dispersal areas are proposing wildlife conservation and utilisation projects.
KWS provides training for selected community leaders and representatives after what is called Participatory Rural Appraisal has been carried out to establish their needs. Such training has already been carried out in Laikipia, Kajiado, Samburu, Meru, Isiolo and Nakuru. Similar activities are planned for other human-wildlife conflict areas.
Under the working partnership that has been established, communities identify those individuals they consider to be reliable, and KWS trains them as community conservation scouts. This has not only relieved pressure on the skeleton KWS field staff but more importantly, it has brought about community participation in conservation.
In the past, communities were used to receiving and sharing KWS funds put at their disposal. KWS is now moving away from this and encouraging communities to come up with income-generating projects.
The past one year or so has seen an encouraging increase in the number of such projects as opposed to social projects - a positive change from an earlier attitude of dependency on KWS.
Whereas the hunting ban is limiting consumptive use of wildlife in Kenya, KWS has authorised land owners to carry out experimental cropping and game farming. The rationale for allowing such cropping and game farming is to enable landowners who let wildlife flourish on their land, to reduce wildlife related costs and reap economic benefits. There is also the long-term consideration that for landowners to have maximum economic incentives to conserve wildlife, they should have a reasonably free hand in the choice of the most profitable form of land use.
Some of the species involved in the experimental game farming include snakes and other reptiles, frogs, crocodiles, ostriches, butterflies, elands and bees.
Under the Wildlife Development Fund Programme introduced by KWS in 1990, community and enterprise development projects totalling Ksh. 54 million (US$ 981,800) have been approved and disbursements totalling Ksh. 36,954,980 (US$ 671,909) made.
A number of community-run game sanctuaries have been proposed and with KWS's technical assistance, these projects, now at advanced implementation stages, will form the first ever community run game parks in Kenya. They include the Kshs. 7 million (US$127,273) Golini Mwaluganje Community Game Sanctuary at the foot of Shimba Hills in Kwale District. This is within a wildlife migration corridor that connects the KWS Shimba Hills Game Reserve and the Mwaluganje forest range. It is planned to open its doors to the public in a few month's time.
Another community project expected to be operational within a year is the Shimoni Nkwiro-Kibuvuni Fishermen Project estimated to cost Kshs. 5.3 million (US$ 96,364) upon completion. This is an artisan fishing project which will involve local communities in the preservation of the lagoon off Shimoni and Wasini Islands, as well as at the Mpunguti Marine Reserve south of Mombasa.
The Ilngwesi Tourist Bandas is a Ksh.15 million (US$ 272,727) community project to be constructed on an escarpment in Laikipia District in Central Kenya. When completed, this project will be linked to the northern Kenya tourist circuit - bringing the needed tourist dollars to the IIngwesi community.
Perhaps the most ambitious community wildlife project is the K es and water boreholes.
KENYA WILDLIFE SERVICE REVISES PARK ENTRY FEES
The fees will now vary from park to park as they have been grouped into four pricing categories based on environmental considerations, business volumes and potential development.
Environmentally fragile parks with an overload of visitors will now charge more while those with low volumes will charge less. Currently visitors to the parks pay a uniform fee of Ksh50. Nonresidents pay US$20 per adult and US$2 for children.
Announcing the new park fee structure, the KWS Director, Dr. David Western, said that the park fees had not been reviewed for the last two years. Despite the modest increase, KWS had deliberately made sure that Kenyans and residents continued to pay affordable fees to all categories of parks.
"It is the intention of KWS to attract more Kenyans to visit the parks and enjoy the unique beauty this country is blessed with", Dr. Western said.
At the same time, the wildlife chief emphasised that his organisation was committed to improving the parks' facilities and infrastructure to enhance tourist care and value.
Dr. Western explained that, the categorisation of parks was not necessarily significant to the quality of the parks and should not be viewed as rating of the overall importance of the respective parks.
"Rather, the categorisation is intended to rationalise visitor traffic to the parks by reducing crowding in some and encouraging better patronage in others, he explained.
Dr. Western disclosed that gate collection was the main source of revenue for KWS, and that even this covered only half of the conservation costs the organisation incurs.
"In order to continue to fulfil its mandate and mission of conservation of wildlife and biodiversity in the country, it has become necessary for KWS to adjust the entry fees into the park", he stated.
Under the new pricing structure, vehicle entry fees have also gone up depending on seating capacities as have the aircraft landing fees and boat entry fees to marine parks.
KWS is also introducing annual passes of exceptional value that will allow multiple entry into all parks.
WILLIAM MEDA
Media Relations Manager,
Kenya Wildlife Service