Ecosystem services of Hurri hills, a montane woodland ecosystem in the arid lands of northern Kenya

Abstract

Hurri hills (HH) is an ungazetted mountain range in the northern part of Kenya in Marsabit County, harbouring a diverse range of ecosystems. The mountain range has been experiencing land conversion for town expansion, agricultural production and settlements threatening ecosystem service (ES) provision. Sustaining ES provision under increasing anthropogenic pressures is one of the challenges of the HH community. We used focus group discussions (FGD) in seven locations targeting eighty-two participants to identify ES, their importance, perceived drivers of change and the potential impacts on these ES. Preference ranking and Content analysis were used to determine the frequency of ES and their threats. The Jaccard similarity coefficient (J) was used to compute the similarity in ES and their threats in different locations. The FGD identified over 40 ES categorised under provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services. The primary ES provided by HH includes water (both domestic and livestock), pasture, fuelwood, thatch grass, cultural sites, cultural material, wildlife habitat, agriculture /settlement, and climate regulation. The Jaccard index of similarity varied at 0.73 for ES, 0.27 for forage species, 0.52 for fuelwood species, 0.29 for medicinal species and 0.36 species for building purposes while the index for threats to ES provision was 0.91. The study established the presence of wildlife species of both local and international importance classified between, near threatened and endangered. Overgrazing, unsustainable utilisation of forest resources, deforestation and climate change were the main drivers impacting ES provision. These results underline the significance of HH as a biological and socio-economic system to the local population. These results further support the need for community centred participatory resource use planning that integrates the inherent threats to the provision of ES in the HH ecosystem. The study recommends undertaking a detailed baseline survey to establish the status and distribution of the main plant and animal taxa to advise the viability of establishing community conservancies in a bid to conserve the ecosystem.