Why our national parks have become dinosaurs

Legions of wildebeest and zebra migrate between Kenya’s Nairobi National Park, Maasai Mara Game Reserve and Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro conservancy.

Hence, formulating and implementing trans-boundary management plans for the parks and reserves of northern Tanzania and southwest Kenya would be an excellent and exciting place to start.

When recent declines in wildlife populations are examined in the context of patterns of human settlement, the natural dynamics of ecosystems and climate change, it becomes obvious that we must rethink the design and management of parks and reserves.

However, this is not to suggest that existing parks and reserves be eliminated.

The point is that parks and reserves need not be isolated safe havens of biodiversity.

So, there is a need for a paradigm shift toward spatially connected, interdependent parks and reserves if the goal of long-term biodiversity conservation is to be achieved.

Connectivity will enable dynamic interactions among species and diverse ecological resources across space and time to ensure the long-term ecological integrity and viability of wildlife populations.

The bigger challenge lies in negotiating access to or acquiring portions of wildlife migration corridors currently under private ownership.

However, there is a great opportunity here to create the largest and most lucrative ecosystem service markets in Africa.

Landowners can be persuaded by financial incentives through ecosystem service payments to lease their land for use as wildlife corridors.

Indeed, the ecosystem service market could be developed further to enable trading of such leases in the region’s stockmarkets.

Implementing trans-boundary management of parks and reserves will require novel policy, legal and institutional regimes to co-ordinate multiple stakeholders, including governments, national wildlife authorities and private/communal interests such as pastoralists, agriculturalists and game ranchers.

The East African integration process through the EAC Secretariat provides a legitimate platform for an earnest negotiation of a protocol for joint management of trans-boundary wildlife corridors.