The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community
remain open through continued interaction between humans and their landscape. However, the
changes that are taking place suggest that new policies and mechanisms are required that
significantly alter the current approach to conservation on pastoralist land.
Limitations of existing conservation approaches
Although Maasai communities are able to benefit from tourism in their wildlife sanctuaries, in
the long-term these sanctuaries are likely to suffer from some of the same problems facing the
national park system. The sanctuaries exclude human settlement and use of resources (Okello
and Adams, 2002) by locals and livestock (especially when leased by tourism investors). As a
result some community members are against the wildlife sanctuaries, or if they support their
establishment, are against foreign investors leasing them for the tourism business (Okello and
Nippert, 2001). Local residents still want to have access to wildlife sanctuaries for water,
pasture, and plant resources. This confirms that even with emerging community wildlife
sanctuaries, the characteristics of working protected landscapes with community members
involved and benefiting economically are still strongly desired.
Furthermore, the community sanctuaries are usually too small in area to be viable con -
servation units. They represent a fragment of the entire ecosystem and violate good design
approaches based in principles of island biogeography (Soulé et al., 1979; Western and
Ssemakula, 1981; Young and McClanahan, 1996). The fragmentation and isolation of wildlife
populations in national parks is being replicated on the Maasai traditional land. The sanctuaries
do not appear to be appropriate ways to maintain wildlife dispersal areas and wildlife corridors
(Wishitemi and Okello, 2003).
Under current conservation policy in Kenya, there are no mechanisms for communities to
benefit directly from wildlife through controlled user rights or for them to gain the full benefits
from the wildlife-based tourism industry.
Putting the people back into the protected landscape
The national park system in Kenya has excluded pastoral people from their former land and cut
off their access to resources in the parks. National parks are becoming isolated islands and
wildlife dispersal areas and migration corridors are under threat or disappearing. This situation
is being replicated on Maasai land through the establishment of wildlife sanctuaries, the
sub-division of group ranches and the conversion of land to agriculture. There is an increasing
shift towards separation of culture and nature in the Maasai landscape. An alternative vision for
conservation and rural development is needed that can meet livelihood and cultural needs as
well as the maintenance of biodiversity. There is a need to put people back into the protected
landscape.
The protected landscape model can provide this vision because it incorporates cultures,
landscapes and biodiversity conservation. It does not involve displacement of people from their
land and they do not lose access to resources important for their livelihoods. In order for this
vision to be realized there needs to be formal recognition by the state of the Protected
Landscape model as a framework for linking conservation and development. Then the in -
centives can be introduced that can keep this landscape character intact. Such incentives
include the provision of controlled user rights over wildlife to local communities and the
mechanisms for them to benefit fully from tourism opportunities. Unless wildlife becomes an
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