{"id":7255,"date":"2019-12-19T08:37:05","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T05:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=7255"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:46","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:46","slug":"kenyan-wildlife-policies-must-extend-beyond-protected-areas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/12\/19\/kenyan-wildlife-policies-must-extend-beyond-protected-areas\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenyan Wildlife Policies Must Extend Beyond Protected Areas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By Peter Tyrrell <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.protectedplanet.net\/target-11-dashboard\">least 15%<\/a>\u00a0of the world\u2019s surface is governed by laws to protect its living species, including plants, animals and fungi. But this is not enough. The most recent estimates\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/839977v1\">suggest that<\/a>\u00a0an additional 30% of the planet\u2019s surface needs further conservation attention. Without this additional protection, the world will\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nature09678\">continue to<\/a>\u00a0lose large numbers of species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What does this look like when we scale down to the country level?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/full\/10.1111\/csp2.136\">research<\/a>\u00a0focuses on Kenya \u2013 a country renowned for its natural environment, in particular, its large mammals such as elephants, rhinos and lions. We looked into whether Kenya\u2019s protected areas and policies adequately conserve its less well-known mammals, birds, and amphibians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We examined a total of 1,535 species. We used this snapshot of the country\u2019s biodiversity&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/345\/6195\/401\">because of<\/a>&nbsp;the availability of data for these groups and because many are under threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Kenya, protected areas that are governed by wildlife laws fall under three categories. These are national parks (managed by the Kenya Wildlife Service), national reserves (managed by county governments) and conservancies. National parks and reserves cover about 8% of the country\u2019s land surface. About 160 conservancies protect about 11% of Kenya\u2019s land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These protected areas were&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/extwprlegs1.fao.org\/docs\/pdf\/ken134375.pdf\">generally established<\/a>&nbsp;in areas with large populations of big mammals and are the focus of the current wildlife policy. This policy aims to protect these species inside national parks and reserves and help landowners coexist with wildlife in conservancies. It gives landowners the right to benefit from wildlife, for example through revenue from eco-toursim and compensation for the costs of living with wildlife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The number of wildlife conservancies has grown to protect\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosone\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pone.0006140\">many of the large mammals<\/a>\u00a0which are found outside government-protected areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/kenyan-wildlife-policies-must-extend-beyond-protected-areas-127821\">Read more&#8230; <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Peter Tyrrell At\u00a0least 15%\u00a0of the world\u2019s surface is governed by laws to protect its living species, including plants, animals and fungi. But this is not enough. The most recent&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7256,"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-7255","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\/7255","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=7255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}