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Large herbivore responses to surface water and land use in an East African savanna: implications for conservation and human-wildlife conflicts

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Abstract

Water, forage and predation constrain ungulate distributions in savannas. To understand these constraints, we characterized distributions of 15 herbivore species from water, locations of peak density and degree of clustering around the peaks using zero-inflated count data models and mapping census data collected in the Mara reserve and the adjoining pastoral ranches in Kenya during a wet and dry year. Herbivores followed a humped pattern (n = 46), suggesting constrained foraging in which they balance the benefits of proximity to water with the costs of foraging where food is depleted near water and travelling to more abundant food distant from water; an exponentially decreasing pattern (n = 11), indicating strong attraction to water or vegetation near water; or a uniform (n = 3) pattern. The details rather than the types of these patterns varied between years. Herbivores concentrated farther from water and more tightly around locations of their peak densities in the ranches than the reserve. Herbivores were more abundant and widely distributed from water in the wet than the dry year, and segregated along the distance-to-water gradient, presumably to minimize interspecific competition for food. Pastoralism compressed herbivore distributions and partially excluded some species (warthog, hartebeest, topi, wildebeest, zebra, eland, buffalo and elephant) from, while attracting others (Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelles, impala, giraffe) to the ranches, relative to the reserve. Regulating cultivation, fencing, settlements and livestock stocking levels in the ranches would allow continued wildlife access to water, reduce competition with, displacement or harassment of wildlife by people, livestock and dogs near water.

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Acknowledgments

The data were collected by 22 vehicle- and 3 aircraft-counting teams, 20 organisations and 84 individuals in 1999 and 2002 (see http://www.masaimaracount.org for details). We thank the Mara pastoral communities, Narok County Council, Mara Conservancy and Mara Wildlife Trusts for help and permission to conduct the counts. We also thank M. McCartney and Campfire Conservation, J. Rainy, K. Kimani and C. Wilson for scientific and logistical support. Drs. Norman Owen-Smith, Ian Gordon, Andrew Illius, John F. Wilmshurst and Jan de Leeuw made useful suggestions that helped improve this paper. This research was funded by ILRI’s 37 core donors, a grant from the US National Science Foundation (DEB 0342820) and the Belgian Government (DGIC BEL011). JO Ogutu was supported by an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship at the Institute of Crop Science, Bioinformatics Unit, University of Hohenheim, Germany. The field sampling complied with the current laws of Kenya.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Livestock Research Institute, P.O. Box 30709, Nairobi, 00100, Kenya

    Joseph O. Ogutu, Robin S. Reid, Russell L. Kruska, Jeffrey S. Worden & Meshack Nyabenge

  2. Institute of Crop Science, University of Hohenheim, Fruwirthstrasse 23, 70599, Stuttgart, Germany

    Joseph O. Ogutu & Hans-Peter Piepho

  3. Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA

    Robin S. Reid, Nicholas T. Hobbs & Jeffrey S. Worden

  4. Explore Mara Ltd, P.O. Box 56923, Nairobi, 00200, Kenya

    Michael E. Rainy

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  1. Joseph O. Ogutu
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Correspondence to Joseph O. Ogutu.

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Ogutu, J.O., Reid, R.S., Piepho, HP. et al. Large herbivore responses to surface water and land use in an East African savanna: implications for conservation and human-wildlife conflicts. Biodivers Conserv 23, 573–596 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-013-0617-y

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