Why our national parks have become dinosaurs

A study published in the Journal of Zoology in 2008, revealed that the numbers of six major ungulates in the Maasai Mara National Reserve declined markedly and persistently between 1989 and 2003.

Ecologists believe that these declines in wildlife populations are attributable to habitat deterioration owing to recurrent drought, increasing human population and changing land use in pastoral lands contiguous to the reserve.

Similar patterns of decline have been reported by the Kenya Wildlife Service in Amboseli National Park.

In 2007, there were an estimated 10,000 zebras.

Early this year, only 982 zebra were counted.

Similarly in 2007, there were 7,100 wildebeest compared with the 143 recorded in 2010. This massive die-off left lions without prey.

In response to this unprecedented decimation of large ungulates, KWS relocated 7,000 zebra and wildebeest to Amboseli National Park in an attempt to restore the predator–prey balance.

This relocation was estimated to cost $1.3 million dollars.

Meanwhile, many of Tanzania’s national parks and reserves, especially in the north, are becoming increasingly insulated due to human settlement, agricultural cultivation, and the active elimination of wildlife on lands adjacent to the parks.

Recent studies have shown that insularisation of the national parks and reserves have been an important contributory factor in large mammal extinctions in six northern Tanzania parks over the past 35-83 years.

Again, according to figures published in the Uganda Wildlife Policy of 1999, between 1960 and 1998, Uganda lost 97 per cent of its elephants, 85 per cent of its impala, 57 per cent of its buffalo and 57 per cent of its very own Uganda Kob.

The evidence that national parks and reserves are no longer an effective means for maintenance of viable populations of wildlife is thus compelling.

But why is the attitude of preservation of wildlife and unimpaired nature through national parks and reserves so entrenched among wildlife and conservation authorities in East Africa?

At the time of their establishment by the colonialists, parks were seen as primarily as “vignettes of primitive Africa.”

Their mission — “to preserve wildness, and as much as possible of the rich biological and cultural heritage of this planet, in a manner that will allow for the sustained, respectful, and non-consumptive enjoyment of these resources by the present and future generations ” – is problematic and largely unattainable in the context of contemporary East Africa.