By GAKUU MATHENGE

There are few places in rural Kenya where income, lifestyles, and cultural disparities are as pronounced as in Laikipia District.

Any comparison with Nairobi's upmarket Karen and Langata suburbs and their Kibera slum neighbours pales against the stark situation in this semi-arid 92,000 square kilometre district with a population of nearly 300,000 people.

Consider this: One fellow owns 100,000 acres of land. When travelling to Nairobi, he flies out of a private airstrip to the Wilson Airport. He not only owns several light aircraft, he also employs several hundred servants and other workers. He also rears several thousand head of cattle, and the entire land is hedged with an electric fence. 

And home is a palatial complex that can house presidents, kings, princes and princesses. But his immediate neighbour snorts snuff for entertainment, chews herbs for medicine, and walks barefoot for several days to reach Nanyuki Town, the district headquarters. He also sleeps on a hide spread on the floor of a makeshift mud and grass-thatched hovel.

He must always carry a spear, club, and a sword to keep away hyenas and other predators out to feast not only on his children, but also to devour his ‘wealth’ of few goats. For a long time, these two neighbours have been a headache to each other, for their world is also infested with wildlife.

On many occasions, especially during the dry seasons, the poor man is accused of starting wild fires with his carelessness, never mind that he would be scrounging for honey to sell and earn a little money feed his family, when he is not breaking the electric fence to sneak his goats to the other side.

He may also have appeared in court several times for a variety of reasons, among them trespass, poaching, charcoal-burning, and illegal grazing. But all this is changing, in some areas more drastically. The neighbours have finally found a common ground to bridge their different worlds and wildlife has become the bridge.

The recent killing of lions in the Kitengela area of Kajiado has only served to bring to the fore the seemingly endless but intense debate about wildlife management outside national parks and national reserves.

Unlike the Maasai of Kitengela, who can point fingers at the Nairobi National Park and the Kenya Wildlife Service for failure to keep the lions within the park boundaries, there is no one to blame in Laikipia.

Here, all the wildlife is in private lands. And following progressive subdivision of former White Highland settler farms, the space available to wildlife has diminished at an alarming rate. And human/wildlife conflicts increased as game animals found themselves stranded in newly created settlements.

For a long time, the peasants, in their wisdom, have blamed their large-scale commercial ranches. This overlooked the fact the wildlife is deemed a national resource with overall responsibility vested in government.

In the course of their long-drawn conflicts, accusations and counter accusations, the Laikipia Wildlife Forum Ð a grouping of both the large-scale commercial and small-scale land owners Ð emerged. Among other things, the lobby has been mobilising support for both environmental and wildlife conservation besides devising ways of enhancing income generation from wildlife to promote its acceptance as an asset, and not vermin.

To achieve this, the poor locals, who are predominantly nomadic herders, were persuaded to set aside portions of their communal group ranches for game conservation. Eco-lodges have been built on some these and are now world famous tourist attractions.

The very first of the eco-lodges were the Il-ng’wesi Bandas, established in 1992 and now an exclusive destination for the rich and famous, including the British Royalty.

In the past 10 years, the commercial, communal group ranches and reserves run by the local authorities have now set up wildlife and tourism conservancies, totalling 37,968 square kilometres. They extend from Central Division around Nanyuki in Laikipia to Sera Springs on the Isiolo, Marsabit, Samburu districts boundaries. And all are privately managed. The Nairobi National Park is only 11 square kilometres, while the Meru National Park is 870 square kilometres.

Among the most exciting accomplishments, the involvement of local communities in wildlife conservation has done is that it has drastically helped to reduce poaching, and greatly boosted the local people's earnings. It has also helped to subsidise the Government’s budget in providing the security for both people and wildlife in this formerly highly volatile region.

But perhaps the most important of all is the slow but steady cultural revolution that is transforming formerly mutually suspicious neighbours into mutually respecting neighbours, friends and business partners.

Comments\Views about this article