We compile over 270 wildlife counts of Kenya's wildlife populations conducted over the last 30 years to compare trends in national parks and reserves with adjacent ecosystems and country-wide trends. The study shows the importance of discriminating human-induced changes from natural population oscillations related to rainfall and ecological factors. National park and reserve populations have declined sharply over the last 30 years, at a rate similar to non-protected areas and country-wide trends. The protected area losses reflect in part their poor coverage of seasonal ungulate migrations. The losses vary among parks. The largest parks, Tsavo East, Tsavo West and Meru, account for a disproportionate share of the losses due to habitat change and the difficulty of protecting large remote parks. The losses in Kenya's parks add to growing evidence for wildlife declines inside as well as outside African parks. The losses point to the need to quantify the performance of conservation policies and promote integrated landscape practices that combine parks with private and community-based measures.
The Status of Wildlife in Protected Areas Compared to Non-Protected Areas of Kenya
D. Western,S. Russell,I. Cuthill
Published 2009 in PLoS ONE
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- Publication year
2009
- Venue
PLoS ONE
- Publication date
2009-07-08
- Fields of study
Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science
- Identifiers
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- Source metadata
Semantic Scholar, PubMed
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