Animal numbers fall in Kenya's Maasai Mara: report

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Numbers of wild grazing animals in Kenya's world-renowned Maasai Mara National Reserve have fallen substantially in 15 years as wildlife competes with neighboring human settlements, researchers said on Wednesday.

The Maasai Mara is best known for its spectacular annual wildebeest migration, which was named seventh "New Wonder" of the world by a U.S. TV network and newspaper in 2006. Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit every year.

A study published today in the British Journal of Zoology found six species -- giraffes, hartebeest, impala, warthogs, topis and waterbuck -- had declined "markedly and persistently" throughout the 1,500 square km (580 square mile) reserve.

"The situation we documented paints a bleak picture and requires urgent and decisive action if we want to save this treasure from disaster," said Joseph Ogutu, the lead author of the report and a statistical ecologist at the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

"Our study offers the best evidence to date that wildlife losses in the reserve are widespread and substantial, and that these trends are likely linked to the steady increase in human settlements on lands adjacent to the reserve."

Researchers found the growing human population in the area had cut wild animal numbers by taking over wildlife grazing land for crop and livestock production to support their families.

The report said some traditional farming communities to the west and southwest of the Mara were continuing to hunt wildlife inside the reserve, which is illegal, for food and profit. Ogutu and his colleagues focused much of their attention on the Mara ranchlands around the reserve, which are home to the Maasai.

INCREASING COMPETITION

Until recently, most Maasai were semi-nomadic herders. But in recent decades some have quit traditional homesteads for more permanent settlements on the reserve's borders.

The study found the "abundance of all species but waterbuck and zebra decreased significantly" as settlements increased.

"Wildlife are constantly moving between the reserve and surrounding ranchlands and they are increasingly competing for habitat with livestock and with large-scale crop cultivation around the human settlements," Ogutu said in a statement.

"In particular, our analysis found that more and more people in the ranchlands are allowing their livestock to graze in the reserve, an illegal activity the impoverished Maasai resort to when faced with prolonged drought and other problems."

The researchers said the Maasai's move to a more sedentary lifestyle had been driven in part by decades of policy neglect that forced many to abandon the more environmentally friendly practice of grazing livestock over wide expanses of grasslands.

Some Maasai landowners are now working with tourism firms to set up conservancies where they manage the number of settlements and livestock herds to maintain a sustainable balance. The local community then receives a share of the tourism profits.

"We know from thousands of years of history that pastoral livestock-keeping can co-exist with east Africa's renowned concentrations of big mammals," said ILRI boss Carlos Sere.

(Editing by David Clarke)