Natural Resources Management

Success Story

Il Ngwesi Lodge:

Linking Business and Nature

Il Ngwesi Lodge--small but successful--is proving that switching from cattle herding to conservation can be good business for local communities; it is becoming a model for conservation-based enterprise throughout East Africa . Launched with the assistance of USAID's COBRA project in 1996, this community project has inspired a number of similar ventures throughout Kenya - as well as USAID's current CORE project.

Previously overgrazed and badly degraded, today Il Ngwesi Group Ranch hosts an 8,700 ha conservation area surrounding a 12-bed, luxury lodge. Cattle are prohibited from the conservation area except during severe drought. From the lodge, visitors can spot elephant, buffalo, bushbuck, kudu, and the occasional big cat.

The majority of these earnings fund community development some are disbursed as dividends to group ranch members, and wages to employees. About 50 community members work at the lodge: For these individuals and their families, wages are secure and consistent; earners spend them on such activities as building, savings, and investment into micro-enterprises.

Cultural tourism - one another source of income

Residents say, though, that indirect and non-cash benefits are at least as important as wages; they are also spread more widely. Hundreds of households are now benefiting from increased security, improved grazing management, access to transport, and access to education. Opportunities for empowerment of women have been created, particularly through growing handcraft businesses. Previously the main source of income was pastoralism, an economic activity that is regularly affected by drought.

Revolutionising Attitudes

Historically, the main economic activity for the people of Il Ngwesi has been ranching. In many parts of the ranch, usable land has been decreasing because of overgrazing. Land degradation was reducing incomes and back-up systems for times of drought-as well as creating stiff competition between wildlife and livestock.

Il Ngwesi's Natural Resource Management Committee now oversees water and grazing resources, and enforces the by-laws governing these resources and the conservation area. Group ranch by-laws now ban routine grazing from the conservation area.

Leaving the area alone has enabled it to regenerate and attract wildlife - but also to serve as emergency grazing land. In the drought year of 2000, the management committee allowed cattle in the area when they were at risk of starvation. Grazing was still prohibited within a kilometer around the lodge.

In 2000, the ranch launched a project to reseed areas that have historically been overgrazed - another initiative that could have sweeping benefits.

The conservation impacts of the lodge have come from both the direct benefits - improved livelihoods such as education, security - and indirect benefits like empowerment. This has illustrated that conservation can and does pay, creating a change in individual behavior and on-going change in Group Ranch capacity. It has an important demonstration, both locally and nationally and is helping to change attitudes positively in favor of conservation.

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