Impacts Of Wild Animals To Communities Around Protected Areas. A Case Study Of Maasai Mara Game-Reserve Narok County Kenya

ABSTRACT

Wild animals in protected areas can have serious concerns to the livelihoods of communities

living in and around protected areas. The research investigated the impacts of the wild

animals on communities around Maasai Mara game reserve. The wild animals and the types

of destruction they cause, people’s attitudes towards wildlife conservation and their response

towards the negative impacts from wild animals were investigated. Several techniques of data

collection were used to gather the information for this study among which included

interviews, observation and questionnaires, secondary data sources were used, various

literatures that dealt with the topic, books, journals, reports and any un published, they were

of great importance to the researcher since they provided relevant information.

The findings reveal that dominant wild animals were elephants, lions, leopards, wild beast

and hyenas among others. These wild animals have various impacts to the community

livelihoods. These included attacking and killing of livestock and people, destruction of

agricultural land, crops and fences, competing for fodder with livestock hence overgrazing

and spread of wildlife diseases to livestock and humans. However the community derives

some positive impacts from these animals, for instance; wild meat and sport hunting, their

skins are used for making whips, community were compensated whenever their livestock are

attacked by the wild animals such as lions.

It was also revealed that a large number of communities preferred the game reserve to be

turned into a grazing land; this is because of their large heads of cattle which lacks adequate

grazing land because of high population growth rate which has led to over fragmentation of

grazing land. In this case therefore the communities have negative attitudes towards wildlife

conservation since they all compete for available resources. It is recommended that the

concerned stakeholders should implement the following recommendations: bottom-up

approach of management, community sensitization, compensation, revising the policies, controlling population growth rate , putting up buffer zones.