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Track: Natural Resources and Conservation
John Waithaka
Kenya Wildlife Service
PO Box 40421
Nairobi,
KENYA
Telephone: 254-2-506169
Fax: 254-2-505866
E-mail: kenyawildlif@mail.att.net
Lucy Chege
Using GIS to Resolve Human-Elephant Conflict in Kenya
Conflict between people and elephants in Kenya exists in most of the elephant range, particularly where cropland borders forested national parks. This conflict manifests itself in a number of ways. Direct costs to humans include crop depredation and injury and killing of humans and livestock. Material losses cause unbearable financial suffering. In high-conflict areas, farmers have abandoned good cropland because of the sheer futility of trying to raise a crop to maturity in the presence of elephants. As a result, farmers have to rely on relief food. Many people have been trampled by elephants on their way home from social gatherings and some schools start late and end early to reduce chances of children being attacked by elephants. Data available from Kenya Wildlife Service shows that elephants kill more people per year than all the other wildlife species put together. Their huge size, tremendous strength, intelligence, great feeding capacity, and loss of fear of people are a hindrance while
undertaking control measures. The intervention management for conflict mitigation includes shooting problem elephants, enlisting community support through formation of community wildlife associations in areas outside parks, development of social and income generating projects, establishing community wildlife sanctuaries, education programs, establishing corridors to other dispersal areas creating psychological and physical barriers, relocations, and monitoring elephant movement and distribution patterns, among others. Elephants also have a very strong impact on biodiversity in Kenya which has far reaching consequences both on ecosystem functions and dynamics and on landuse and other sectors of the economy. Many elephants in Kenya are confined in relatively small areas after losing their capacity to migrate due to the blockage of their migratory routes or fragmentation of their habitats. Elephants in these areas occur in very high densities and have converted forests into grasslands. Considerable
biodiversity has been lost in this way and increasingly more is at great risk. Some of the highly impacted areas harbor nearly all of 265 species endemic to Kenya and are the most important water catchment areas for the republic. Various studies show a very close link between species extinction and high elephant densities. The only possible solutions to this problem are either to increase space for elephants or reduce their densities through some form of management. We will use GIS to map out elephant numbers and their distribution, establish the interaction of elephants with people and with the environment, identify and quantify various forms of conflict, and then assess the effectiveness of different intervention methods used thus far to address these conflicts. Our goal is to design criteria for measuring the success and effectiveness of the various intervention methods and develop a model that can be used to make efficient management decisions in the various game parks and reserves in Kenya. A specific
game park with a good historical database has been selected for the pilot project.
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