The ecological viability of wildlife conservancies in the Greater Mara Ecosystem

Wildlife conservancies are being promoted as a potential mechanism for both increasing the overall amount of land available for wildlife conservation and for reducing human-wildlife conflict/competition with domestic livestock. This is achieved by creating a protected area buffer on privately owned land around the gazetted boundary of a designated area - in this research the Maasai Mara National Reserve. As a newly emerging wildlife management initiative it is imperative that their viability be demonstrated and that that empirical evidence emerging from existing wildlife conservancies be applied to future conservancy initiatives. In particular, the development of a predictive tool for future conservancy site selection which ensures the ecological and economic viability of future wildlife conservancies is increasingly being sought by all stakeholders in the Greater Mara Ecosystem (GME). This research demonstrates that high wild ungulate densities and distributions have been maintained and enhanced in an existing conservancy (OK1), with similar levels of success mirrored in a newly designated conservancy (OK2). Over a three year study period results revealed that for all seven study species (Thompson’s gazelles, wildebeest, zebra, topi, impala, Grant’s gazelles and giraffe) a positive response in terms of recruitment and distribution has been experienced as a consequence of conservancy creation. Population estimates for all species were obtained using DISTANCE® sampling, with results indicating substantial population increases – impala and zebra doubled in number, while wildebeest more than trebled. Accordingly, ungulate distributions increased significantly in the newly designated conservancy area (OK2), with topi, zebra and Grant’s gazelles rapidly establishing significant aggregations, despite being sparsely distributed in OK2 in the first year of study. Increases in habitat heterogeneity and productivity (from remotely sensed data), and analyses of the herbaceous layer, further confirmed that regeneration of vegetation was occurring as a result of the new management regime. These results were combined along with a range of landscape attributes to create a site selection tool that identified 11 areas in the GME as having suitable biotic properties to support additional conservancies. Additionally, large tracts of the GME were identified as potential wildlife corridors and a large proportion of the south of the GME was identified as an important area that, with additional finer scales analyses, could also support suitable conservancy areas. This study ultimately authenticates wildlife conservancies as a sustainable wildlife conservation model that has the potential to contribute significantly to reversing the declines in wildlife populations experienced in the GME over the last 40 years, particularly if the conservancy network were to be extended on those sites identified in this research via the site selection model