For ten years, Dixon Parmuya has guided tourists on bush walks around Amboseli National Park in Southern Kenya. But since COVID-19 swept through Kenya in mid-March, the country\u2019s tourism industry has dwindled, leaving many locals without jobs and animals without protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coronavirus pandemic is creating what experts are calling a brewing conservation crisis in Kenya, a country home to some of Africa\u2019s most iconic animals. Most of Kenya\u2019s programs to protect wildlife are funded directly by tourist dollars and with visitor numbers down<\/a>, money for conservation is drying up, say experts. There are also fears that poaching will rise, leaving wildlife protection hanging in the balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If there is no tourism, there is no conservation,” says Parmuya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the pandemic is encouraging countries to change that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTourism can be fickle,\u201d says Doreen Robinson, Chief of Wildlife at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). \u201cWe have to be more creative to expand revenue streams that can directly support local communities and protect natural assets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Africa, UNEP is working closely with governments and partners to encourage\u00a0wildlife-based economies<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 where local communities are central to protecting the wildlife areas they inhabit, for mutual benefit of both. This includes going beyond tourism to attract other kinds of green investment in wildlife areas, like using natural resources to produce consumer goods in a sustainable way.\u00a0Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For ten years, Dixon Parmuya has guided tourists on bush walks around Amboseli National Park in Southern Kenya. But since COVID-19 swept through Kenya in mid-March, the country\u2019s tourism industry…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}