Abstract
AbstractConservation in eastern and southern Africa has historically centered on megafauna and protected areas (PAs), yet, in the face of rapid change, biodiversity outside of PAs is under threat. With policy changes underway in Kenya, we have performed an analysis that (a) quantifies how inclusive the current PA network is of the country's vertebrate diversity, and (b) identifies wildlife policy areas that need reform to achieve conservation targets. We found that species richness of mammals, birds, and amphibians is highest in areas of intermediate human pressures, whereas Kenya's current wildlife conservation policy focuses on land use (LU) types with the least human pressure. Percentage of range overlap for amphibians, mammals, and birds were all highest in rangelands followed by agricultural (cultivated) areas and then national PAs. Out of 1,535 terrestrial vertebrate species, 80 had no range overlap with national PAs. The current wildlife PA network adequately covers only 16% of amphibians, 45% of birds, and 41% of mammals. In addition, we used a biodiversity importance score which demonstrated the importance of rangelands and agricultural areas for biodiversity conservation. Finally, we observed that the distribution of current PAs, and the focus of Kenya's wildlife policy in general, is in areas of lowest human pressure, often with the highest large mammal densities. However, other biodiversity indicators ‐ such as bird and plant species richness ‐ show that areas under human‐dominated LU currently support substantial biodiversity. Overall, our analysis demonstrates that formal PAs and wildlife policy presently cover only a small fraction of national biodiversity, which resides mainly in human‐dominated landscapes that are undergoing rapid change. These findings echo global calls for a landscape‐based approach to conservation policy and practice that promotes the coexistence of people and wildlife within social‐ecological systems.
Highlights
Conservation, globally, and in eastern and southern Africa, has historically centered on the protection of landscapes that provide habitat for charismatic megafauna (Adams & McShane, 1992; Watson, Dudley, Segan, & Hockings, 2014)
We explore the scope for conservation in human-dominated landscapes using a biodiversity-rich country, Kenya, as a case study
Our Kenyan case study demonstrates that effective wildlife conservation at the national scale requires the development of new wildlife policy for human-dominated landscapes, extending way beyond the scope of the current protected areas (PAs) and Community-based conservation (CBC) network
Summary
Conservation, globally, and in eastern and southern Africa, has historically centered on the protection of landscapes that provide habitat for charismatic megafauna (Adams & McShane, 1992; Watson, Dudley, Segan, & Hockings, 2014). Building on the conservancy movement and the associated policy direction, Kenya is developing a new wildlife policy and conservation master plan based on the national wildlife strategy, with the vision that: “Kenya's wildlife is healthy, resilient and valued by Kenyans”, which is incorporating both biodiversity and development targets Under this strategy, wildlife is defined broadly as: “any wild and indigenous animal, plant or microorganism or parts thereof within its constituent habitat or ecosystem on land or in water, as well as species that have been introduced into or established in Kenya” (Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, 2018). We used local data to ground-truth the assumptions made from these broad-scale datasets This exercise enables us to present a discussion on which policy areas still need reform to achieve broad conservation goals through the inclusion of human-dominated landscapes across eastern and southern Africa, and doubtless more widely
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