National Geographic

Kenyans and visitors are getting used to seeing fewerand fewer lions. It’s not hard to imagine a time whenpesticides are not a concern: NO WILDLIFE, NO CONFLICT.Edwin Dobb’s previous stories include “Alaska’sChoice,” about a controversial mine, in the Decem-ber 2010 issue. Charlie Hamilton James coversconservation issues in Africa and the Amazon.This is his seventh story for the magazine.else, the species will survive as a symbol.ONE DAY THE ANTI-POACHING PATROL of the AnneKent Taylor Fund escorted me on a behind-the-scenes safari into Nyakweri Forest, atop the SiriaEscarpment, outside Masai Mara. Patrol leaderElias Kamande, a young Kenyan conservationist,showed me a wooded area that until recently hadbeen an elephant nursery.“Two hundred females giving birth at onetime,” Kamande said. Today the refuge isbeing decimated by charcoal producers. Wheremonths before had stood large, leafy hardwoodtrees was now a clear-cut area the size of fourfootball fields—one of hundreds such tree-less scars scattered throughout the remainingpatches of escarpment forest. The lucrative butillicit charcoal industry is a by-product of landsubdivision. Maasai here and outside otherprotected areas have been dividing up groupranches, with every male age 18 or older receiv-ing a share—essentially privatizing the landwhile transitioning to sedentary life.“Five years from now,” Kamande said, refer-ring to the Nyakweri Forest, “all this will begone.” What will replace it? Settlements, herds,crops, and fences, lots of fences. That’s likely tolead to the elimination of animals—elephants,lions, giraffes, hyenas, buffalo—that havemoved freely between the Mara Triangle andthe escarpment, both of which are part of thelarger Mara ecosystem.Kenya still has time to save crucial dispersalareas and migration corridors. Doing so hingesin large part on areas called conservancies thatare managed to make it attractive, by providinglocal people with income from tourist lodges, aswell as other incentives, for landowners outsideprotected areas to set aside habitat for wildlife.When conservancies are established—fromthe regions of Masai Mara and Amboseli to theTsavos— poisoning tends to decrease, at least inthe short term. “It’s still an experiment,” Heathsays, noting that drought, population growth,or government policy could undo everything.Around Amboseli, Big Life recently startedanother experiment on neighboring groupranches: purchasing conservation easements,which are agreements not to put up fences,construct new buildings, or otherwise disruptwildlife habitat.What will happen if the easements and con-servancies fail?“The park is dead,” Big Life’s Bonham says.During certain times of the year, almost all ofAmboseli’s roughly 200 lions, like the two roguebrothers near Osewan, live outside the protectedarea, in the greater Amboseli ecosystem. As longas big animals such as lions and elephants havesafe access to the overall ecosystem, which attwo million acres is more than 10 times as largeas the park, they’ll likely remain resilient. Bothpopulations have crashed before, in the case oflions mostly because of retaliatory spearingsby Maasai. But they’d never have reboundedto today’s numbers (about 1,600 elephants) ifthey’d been confined to the “island” known as``````Amboseli National Park. Managing the livestockranches for the benefit of wildlife as well as agri-culture would keep alive the possibility of lionsand elephants surviving in Kenya.Either way people are adept at living withoutthings once deemed indispensable, a phenome-non Peter Beard described in terms of elephants.The animal’s “ability to destroy its habitat whileadapting with great cunning to that destruc-tion,” he wrote, is also a trait of Homo sapiens.Kenyans and visitors to Kenya are growingaccustomed to seeing fewer and fewer lions—so few now that each lion has its own name, likea domestic pet, and an online fan club. It’s nothard to imagine a time when pesticides are nolonger a concern: no wildlife, no conflict. Or asSimon Thomsett says, “There will be nothingleft to poison. Game over.” jPOISONING AFRICA 101