Natural Resources Management

Success Story

From Lions to Leases: Kitengela Community

The Kitengela conservation area, situated south of the Nairobi National Park, covers an area of approximately 450 square Kilometres, and embodies an important wildlife dispersal area for the Nairobi National Park. The wildlife in the park depends heavily on the area during the wet season especially for dispersal and calving.

The Nairobi National Park is one of USAID/Kenya’s Conservation of Resources through Enterprise (CORE) program focal areas. CORE’s main intervention in this area is human-wildlife conflict and community education and awareness programs.

For many years, the communities living adjacent to Nairobi National Park have been coexisting with the wildlife. However, the last decade has seen the area land tenure change from group ranching to individual holdings. The historically nomadic Kitengela communities have also experienced a change in traditional pastoral life: more sedentary paddock grazing, leading to high rates of land sale for cash and construction of permanent structures. Although sale of land has increased the cash income of local communities, the utilization of the resulting land has posed serious threats to conservation along the Nairobi National park wildlife corridor.

Aggravating this situation further was the severe drought of 2000, which prompted the Nairobi National Park herbivores to wander south of the park and into the Kitengela area in search of pasture. As a result, the lions and other carnivores were left devoid of adequate prey, and therefore began to move out in search of food as well, stirring increased human-wildlife conflict. In response to the dwindling numbers of livestock and a rise in injuries of community members, Kitengela residents resolved to kill animals indiscriminately.

The Kitengela Wildlife Conservation Lease program was born from various consultative meetings between the KWS park management and Kitengela stakeholders. At the onset, a total of 704 acres from 18 landowners were leased. Each landowner received USD$4 per acre per year.

Narianto Oiputa Likam, a 60 year old widow heard about the Kitengela Wildlife Conservation Lease program in 2002, during a community outreach initiative by the KWS. She was attracted to the program because she had witnessed the benefits her neighbours who had joined the program in 2000 had enjoyed. Narianto leased 80 acres of her land to KWS and in December 2003, Narianto had received a total of USD$ 320 from the program. Previously, her only source of income was proceeds from the sale of milk, which barely sustained her family of eight children, three of who are old enough to attend school. Of her eight children, three daughters had been married off at 16 years due to lack of school fees.

With the supplemental income from the Kitengela lease program, Narianto can now send her two sons and one daughter to school. Evelyn Kesilai, Narianto’s youngest daughter is a paramount testimony to the Kitengela Wildlife Conservation Lease Program contribution to female education in a community that has traditionally attached little value to female education. While Evelyn’s three elder sisters were married by the age of sixteen, Evelyn is a Form II student at Muindi Bingu High school in Nairobi, and is 18 years old. Most girls in this age group (17 years-18 years) countrywide took their national high school examination at the close of 2004 and will be joining college and university in mid 2005. For Evelyn however, lack of school fees in previous years compelled her to postpone high school until funds were available, and as Narianto says, ‘better late to secure an education, than an early marriage and illiteracy for my youngest daughter’. She also adds that young girls whose parents lack funds to educate them are the most susceptible to early pregnancy and HIV/AIDS.

Narianto, now among 117 landowners benefiting directly from the fund, is thankful to the USAID/CORE program for initiating the Kitengela Wildlife Conservation Lease Program.

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