An Assessment Of The Impact Of Land Use Changes On Human Elephant Conflict In Laikipia West District, Kenya

Farmers in Laikipia West district like many other farmers living in wildlife dispersal areas have continued to suffer huge losses resulting from wildlife menace without adequate compensation. Land use has been changing with time making the area prone to crop destruction by elephants. While it is known that land use change contributes to human -wildlife conflict, it has never been quantified over time for Laikipia West District. The objective of the study was to assess changes in land use/land cover between 1973 and 2008 in Laikipia West district of Kenya and their impact of human-elephant conflict. Land use and land cover mapping and change detection were done using satellite images of January 1973, January 1986, January 2000, March 2003 and April 2008. Supervised classification and on screen delineation approach were used for feature extraction. Geo-referencing and ground verification surveys were done after preliminary photo interpretation. Human-elephant conflict data was obtained from Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). Study villages and farmers interviewed were selected using stratified random sampling and systemic sampling procedures respectively. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Spearson‟s Coefficient of Correlation and Chi square statistics were used to test data. Results showed an overall decrease in farms (-34.70%), settlements (-98.00%) and indigenous forests (-49.04%) while there was an increase in human population. Over the same period elephant‟s population and human-elephant conflicts were increasing. Analysis of Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) between January 1973 and April 2008 showed that intensity of conflict was low when the level of vegetation was high. Human-elephant conflict was a major cause of increasing poverty levels and lowering of socio economic status of the community.