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Coping with Uncertainty and Variability: The Influence of Protected Areas on Pastoral Herding Strategies in East Africa

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Abstract

A large number of East African pastoralists reside around protected areas (PAs). Over the last few decades pastoralists have been affected by the loss of grazing lands and increasing climatic variability. Many pastoralists who reside around PAs have resorted to grazing inside PAs to counter environmental variability. However, there is little information on how PAs influence the herding strategies of pastoralists. This case study from southern Kenya employs a spatially and temporally explicit mixed-methods approach to understand and evaluate the herding strategies of pastoralists around a PA. The results find that pastoralists access PAs on a regular basis, regardless of seasonality or herd size. Movement into PAs was partly driven by the loss of grazing land to conservancies. PAs affected pastoral herding by presenting differential opportunity costs to disparate groups. However, households with large herd sizes utilized the most flexible strategies to counter environmental variability and uncertainty.

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Notes

  1. For example, Wildlife Direct posted a blog on 8/24/2009 citing the warden of the Nairobi National Park who admitted that “tens of thousands of cattle are grazing in the Nairobi National Park as a result of the ongoing devastating drought.” http://baraza.wildlifedirect.org/2009/08/24/cattle-dying-in-nairobi-park/ Last Accessed May 29, 2010.

  2. Assessments of wealth have been categorized based on the number of Tropical Livestock Units (TLU) per active adult male equivalent (AAME), e.g., Grandin et al. (1991b: 57) define poor households as those with <5 TLU per AAME, medium wealth ≥5 and ≤13 TLU per AAME and, rich households >13 TLU per AAME, while other studies rely on TLU per household (Sieff 1997, 1999).

  3. Nagana is the common name for African Animal Trypanosomiasis, an infectious disease transmitted by the tsetse fly (Glossina spp.).

  4. Block 5 was annexed from the larger MMNR in 1984 primarily to provide Maasai and their livestock living around the reserve access to the perennial Talek River (Thompson et al. 2009: 81–82).

  5. See Butt et al. 2009: 317 for a more complete explanation and justification for the choice of these seasonal categories and the break points associated with these categories.

  6. All names have been changed to protect the privacy of research subjects.

  7. See Butt 2007, for a more detailed discussion of the etiology of grazing conflicts between pastoralists and protected area managers and of some of the political and economic dynamics of herder-ranger interactions.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the NSF (Award# 0525809 & 0706756), Compton Foundation and Michigan State University. Additional support for writing was provided by the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the International Livestock Research Institute. This study was conducted with the permission of the Government of Kenya (Permit No. MOEST 13/001/31 C 85). I would like to thank my research assistants for their hard work and dedication in the field, and Ting-Li Lin for help with the statistical tests. This manuscript also benefitted from comments by M. Turner, A. WinklerPrins, B. Derman, C. Duvall, A. Shortridge, R. Reid, J. Gruley, the editor, and two anonymous reviewers.

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    Bilal Butt

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Butt, B. Coping with Uncertainty and Variability: The Influence of Protected Areas on Pastoral Herding Strategies in East Africa. Hum Ecol 39, 289–307 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-011-9399-6

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