Abstract
A large number of East African pastoralists reside around protected areas (PAs). Over the last few decades pastoralists have been affected by the loss of grazing lands and increasing climatic variability. Many pastoralists who reside around PAs have resorted to grazing inside PAs to counter environmental variability. However, there is little information on how PAs influence the herding strategies of pastoralists. This case study from southern Kenya employs a spatially and temporally explicit mixed-methods approach to understand and evaluate the herding strategies of pastoralists around a PA. The results find that pastoralists access PAs on a regular basis, regardless of seasonality or herd size. Movement into PAs was partly driven by the loss of grazing land to conservancies. PAs affected pastoral herding by presenting differential opportunity costs to disparate groups. However, households with large herd sizes utilized the most flexible strategies to counter environmental variability and uncertainty.
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Introduction
Pastoralists live in environmentally variable arid and semi-arid regions of the world where there is high degree of risk and uncertainty. Pastoralists traditionally cope with environmental variability by employing a variety of adaptive strategies (Scoones 1994). Livestock mobility forms the basis for many of these strategies and takes many different forms (Niamir-Fuller and Turner 1999). For example, in Sudano-Sahelian West Africa, Fulße pastoralists rely on long distance transhumance in order to take advantage of ecologically heterogeneous resources that are differentially distributed across the landscape (Turner 1999c), while in East Africa nomadic Maasai pastoralists depended upon cyclical movements between highland grazing areas and lowland wetlands and swamps (Little 1996).
Over the last half century, many of the traditional adaptive strategies of pastoralists in East Africa have been severely affected by two main exogenous forces. First, several political-economic structural policies have fragmented and reduced the spaces available for mobile pastoralism to occur and threatened the ability of pastoralists to effectively cope with environmental variability (Galvin 2009). These policies include restrictions on the movement of people and livestock (Kjekshus 1977) and the imposition of communal property regimes in the form of group ranches and the subsequent privatization of communal land (Rutten 1992). Second, recent findings in climate change science (e.g., Boko et al. 2007) and on the ground (e.g., Campbell 1999) suggest that arid lands in East Africa have experienced, and are likely to continue to experience, “more variable and less predictable rainfall” as well as “successive poor rains” and a shorter interval between drought periods (ODI 2009b: 2).
For many pastoralists who reside around protected areas (PAs) in East Africa, these constraints are worsened by formal legislation (Brockington 2002) and coercive resource management strategies (Peluso 1993) that prohibit pastoralists access to traditional key resource areas (KRAs). The presence of livestock inside PAs is thought to “degrade” grazing resources, endanger wildlife, and threaten income generated from wildlife viewing fees (Monbiot 1994; Brockington and Homewood 2001). In recent years, the lack of access to grazing resources has been compounded by an increase in the amount of land immediately outside PAs that has been leased to community conservancies (e.g., Ntiati 2001).
Despite restrictions on accessing KRAs which are located inside PAs, these areas have become increasingly important to pastoralists because they contain dry and drought season grazing reserves (Turner 1999b; Ngugi and Conant 2008). Additionally, PAs are thought to strongly influence the resource management strategies of pastoralists because of the increased likelihood of livestock depredation by wildlife (e.g., Ogada et al. 2003), epizootic disease transmissions (e.g., Ocaido et al. 2009) and harassment of herders by PA managers (e.g., Infield et al. 2009). The influences of PAs on pastoralists are also likely to disproportionally affect disparate social groups because herding strategies are highly variable between these groups (Sutter 1987). This variability is driven, in part, by the quantity and quality of herding labor (Turner 1999a).
Given the rapidly changing social, political and ecological conditions that pastoralists around PAs face today, there is the need for new environment, development and adaptation policies that consider the differentiated needs of resource users (Thomas and Twyman 2005). New knowledge is therefore needed on how PAs influence traditional pastoral herding strategies, as pastoralists adapt to increased variability and uncertainty (ODI 2009a). Given this brief background, my objective is to understand how PAs influence the ability of pastoralists to cope with environmental variability and uncertainty.
Using the case of Maasai pastoralists who reside around a unique PA in Kenya, this study uses a micro-scale approach—which is both spatially and temporally explicit—to understand and evaluate pastoral herding strategies. I identify a suite of variables that characterize herding strategies, and frame and test hypotheses to delineate the nature and directionality of the relationship between herding strategies and social groups across seasonal frames.
This paper is divided into five parts. First, I briefly describe the relationships between pastoral livelihoods and PAs and discuss the context-dependent factors that influence pastoral herding strategies. I then use this information to generate hypotheses to achieve the research objective. Third, I describe the study area and methods used to test the hypotheses. Fourth, I describe the results and discuss the multiple and situated factors influencing herding strategies. Finally, I provide some concluding comments on the synergies among social group, herding strategies and environmental variability for pastoralists who reside around PAs.
Pastoralists and PAs in East Africa
There is a near ecumenical literature on the complex relationships among people, conservation practices and PAs around the world (summarized in West et al. 2006) and in East Africa (Anderson and Grove 1987). I do not want to revisit this vast material here, I do, however, want to draw attention to three salient themes.
First, PAs are contentious political and environmental spaces with violent histories, beginning with the expulsion of indigenous peoples from ancestral lands during the colonial era (Neumann 1998; Brockington 2002). Several studies have also demonstrated how in the post-independence period states are willing to use ‘coercive-protective’ means, including violence, to ensure the conservation and management of biological diversity found within PAs (e.g., Peluso 1993). Many natural resource management approaches are predicated upon an ideal of ‘wilderness’ that is devoid of human settlement (e.g., Neumann 1998) and driven by the popular dichotomy associated with the representation of “nature” and “culture” as existing separately (West et al. 2006: 256). As a result, conflicts ensue when PA managers attempt to restrict pastoralists from accessing traditional KRAs that are today found deep inside PAs. Herders are often deliberately targeted when they attempt to access KRAs during periods of peak environmental stress and subjected to high financial fines, abuse, intimidation and coercion at the hands of rangers who control PAs (Igoe 2002; Infield et al. 2009).
Second, there has been a rapid increase in the amount of land designated as conservation areas (CAs) outside of legally gazetted PAs (i.e., national parks, national reserves and forest reserves) (Ntiati 2001; Kiss 2004). Many CAs are formed when private tourism and conservation groups lease land from pastoralists who have recently received individual title deeds from the privatization of former communal land (i.e., group ranches) (Rutten 1992). Conservation areas are often predicated on the assumption (implicit or explicit) that land is to be exclusively used for wildlife conservation and tourism purposes (Thompson et al. 2009). Payments are disbursed to pastoralists if the land is not used by domestic livestock. The presence of cattle is viewed as “unnatural” by conservationists and tourists (Neumann 1998) who pay high fees to visit CAs and stay at exclusive luxury tourist camps and lodges. Many CAs often border PAs and game drives occur on leased land and in the PA.
Third, PAs serve as vital reserves of dry season forage critical to sustain pastoral livelihoods (Lindsay 1987; Turner 1999b; Butt et al. 2009; Infield et al. 2009). Several reports have documented pastoral cattle movement into PAs during recent droughts. For example, Mworia and Kinyamario (2008: 11) found that most cattle from pastoral areas moved to CAs and PAs during the 1999–2000 La Niña-induced drought in Kenya. During the 2005–2006 droughts in southern Kenya, news organizations reported that tourists witnessed more pastoral cattle inside PAs than wildlife (e.g., Kemei 2006). During the 2009 drought, several conservation organizations wrote numerous blog posts about the presence of cattle inside PAs.Footnote 1 In one news report a Kenya Wildlife Service official was quoted as saying that almost 200,000 head of cattle had “invaded” the Tsavo National Park. Cattle were driven out of the park by helicopters and ground rangers in order to protect the biodiversity within the park (Ausseill 2009). These observations demonstrate the increasing importance of PAs for pastoralists as drought coping areas and how the PA institutions regard pastoralists and their livestock.
Collectively these literatures highlight that pastoralists around PAs are negotiating a new, indeed transformed, pastoral landscape. In many countries, like Kenya, where a substantial proportion of pastoralists reside around PAs, these transformations have led to concerns over how pastoralists are able to effectively cope with uncertainty and variability without (a) violating policies governing PAs and CAs and threatening the viability of these areas (which have experienced significant declines in wildlife numbers (Western et al. 2009)) and (b) avoiding retribution from PA managers and institutions for grazing inside PAs.
Pastoral Households, Herd Size and Wealth
Pastoralists rely on different herding strategies to cope with environmental variability and uncertainty. These strategies are the synergistic product of social, cultural, political, economic, and ecological factors (Sieff 1997; Turner 1999a) and sensitive to time and space (e.g., Adriansen and Nielsen 2005). Herding strategies are also highly variable between different social groups (Sutter 1987; Sieff 1997). Herd size has commonly been used as a surrogate to understand wealth differentials among pastoralists. Below, I discuss some of the co-dependent aspects of pastoral herd size and wealth and highlight how pastoral coping strategies differ across herd size groups.
Many studies have sought to understand pastoral livelihoods by categorizing the number of livestockFootnote 2 that are collectively owned and managed by the household (e.g., Grandin et al. 1991a) and have found herd size to be a useful surrogate for wealth (Ibid.). The advantages of wealth on herding strategies have been much debated by researchers (Sutter 1987; Sieff 1999). Wealth differentials among pastoral households are served and facilitated by both narrow self-interest that sustain the herd and household, and high interdependence between households that are not necessarily equal in wealth (Mulder 1999; Ruttan and Mulder 1999). There are numerous mechanisms by which wealth influences pastoral herding strategies.
First, wealth generally translates to power, and as a result, the wealthy may find it ‘advantageous to coerce others’ into practices that suit the wealthy (such as joint herding practices) (Ruttan and Mulder 1999; Waller 1999). Second, wealthier households have more people living in their homesteads (Grandin et al. 1991a: 75) and are likely to benefit from the cheap labor provided by poorer households (Ruttan and Mulder 1999). Mutual cooperation between wealthy and poor households is more likely when, “wealth inequalities are mild and costs are low, that is, when the payoffs to any given strategy are somewhat similar for wealthy and poor herders” (Ruttan and Mulder 1999: 628). In contrast, poorer households value the presence of wealthier families in their neighborhood, “since the latter not only commonly provide community defense (of land and livestock), but also offer quasi-patronage to households with insufficient livestock for subsistence” (Ruttan and Mulder 1999: 635). Additionally, wealthier households may be better able to afford investments that improve the quality of herding (Turner 1999a), as well as having sufficient financial reserves to purchase infrastructure or fodder that helps alleviate the effects of drought (Scoones 1992) .
Generally, these literatures suggest that wealthier households (i.e., large herd sizes) are more flexible in their selection of herding strategies that allow them to cope more effectively with environmental variability than less wealthy households (i.e., small herd sizes) (McCarthy and Di Gregorio 2007). However, the literature generally lacks detailed information on how coping mechanisms of different groups are selectively deployed in response to rapidly changing environmental and political conditions. In the following section I describe how household and non-household factors interact with decision-making strategies to produce a given herding strategy. My goal is to provide empirical evidence from within the literature for the selection of hypotheses used to test relationships between herding strategies of pastoralists around PAs and seasonality across herd size groups.
The Political Ecology of Pastoral Herding
In order to better understand how the herding strategies of pastoralists around PAs vary in response to environmental variability, I adopt Coppolillo’s (2000) approach and separate out two ‘place-based’ categories: household and non-household factors. Household factors (Table 1) include: the type and amount of labor dedicated to herding; and livestock health practices. Non-household factors (Table 2) include: natural resource conditions, avoidance of hazardous wildlife, prevalence of diseases affecting cattle (such as NaganaFootnote 3), and park patrols. However, on any given day, household factors combine with non-household factors based on certain decision-making strategies (Table 3) to produce a particular herding pattern. The way in which these two categories synergize is dependent upon the strength of each of the individual factors, the degree of interaction among different factors, and how herders and herd owners view these factors with respect to current and historical events. A more detailed discussion of how these factors synergize is therefore necessary in order to demonstrate the complexity of pastoral herding strategies.
The amount and type of labor dedicated to the herding process is tied to the pool of suitable herders, herder gender, age and availability, the composition of the household, its relative wealth status, as well as resource conditions (Turner 1999a). A less wealthy household may be unable to afford the services of a hired herder and must rely on their own members (Turner 1999a). Depending upon the age and gender composition of the household, a young male herder may be asked to conduct herding under instruction from the herd patriarch or an elder. During the dry and drought seasons, a young herder may not have the necessary experience and skills needed to lead a herd of cattle into unfamiliar areas, lowering the quality of herding.
If the size of the herd is small, which is likely to be the case with a less wealthy household, a herder may spend more time walking the herd long distances to areas of suitable pasture and if herding is conducted in areas that are unfamiliar to the herder the quality of herding is likely to be low (Turner and Hiernaux 2008). In contrast, a wealthier household with older and more experienced herders may direct cattle towards areas that they have come to be familiar with—areas where green flushes of vegetation are prevalent (Curtin and Western 2008)—even late in the dry season. Increased familiarity with the herding landscape allows the herder to direct cattle to areas of preferential forage and spend a maximum amount of time at green patches for a sustained grazing period, before returning straight back to the household. This strategy is demonstrative of higher quality herding.
Beyond the cultural and ecological factors that influence herding strategies, pastoralists who reside around PAs face the added dimension of acts of aggression by park rangers for grazing their cattle inside the PA (Igoe 2002: 86). Livestock movement into PAs occurs most often during the late dry and drought season (Turner 1999b; Butt et al. 2009) and the risks to herders are likely to be higher during this period. Wealthy households may be more inclined to take these risks as they are better able to cover the financial fines levied upon them by park officials, while poorer families are unable to pay these fines. In some cases, the quality and quantity of herding may be unimportant if seasonal constraints are not severe, such as during the early and late wet season when forage and water are generally abundant and located close to households (Butt 2010). Similarly, wealth or herd size may be relatively unimportant to the selection of a particular herding strategy. Instead other factors such as the prevalence of epizootic diseases (e.g., Grootenhuis and Olubayo 1993) and/or the potential for attacks by wildlife increase (e.g., Ogada et al. 2003).
Objective
To achieve the objective of this research, that is, to understand how PAs influence the herding strategies of pastoralists, I surveyed the literature on pastoral herding strategies and hypothesized how household (Table 1), non-household (Table 2) and decision-making strategies (Table 3)—the dependent variables—changed with respect to herd size—the independent variable—during each season.
Methods
Study Area
The northern border of the Maasai Mara National Reserve (MMNR) in southwestern Kenya (Fig. 1) was selected as a case study to understand how PAs influence the herding strategies of pastoralists. The PA forms the northernmost extension of the greater Serengeti-Mara ecosystem (Lamprey and Reid 2004). Immediately around the northern border of the PA is the former Koyake Group Ranch (KGR) where Maasai pastoralists reside (Ibid.). At the center of the study site is a small trading center that has numerous small shops and bars. There are an estimated 25,000 cattle within the larger region (Ibid.) and cattle movement into the PA has occurred since the late 1970s (Broten and Said 1995: 180). There is a high rate of human population and settlement growth (4.4% and 6.6% per annum respectively) within the study region (Lamprey and Reid 2004). There were an estimated 140 households within the study site in 2005.
The study area covers the northern border of the Maasai Mara National Reserve (Map 2) located in south-western Kenya, approximately 250 km south west of Nairobi (Map 1). There were approximately 140 households in 2005 in the Talek area (Map 3)
Towards the north of the study site is a community conservancy where land has been leased from the Maasai landowners with title deeds from the sub-division of the KGR. The community conservancy receives game viewing fees from tourists staying at campsites within the conservancy. Conservancy managers disburse payments to Maasai landowners who are members of the conservancy on an annual or bi-annual basis. Payments are based on the size of the area of land leased to the conservancy.
Many pastoral households within the study area are located within ‘block 5,’ which is an annexed portion of the PA.Footnote 4 These households maintain private title to land within the block and are also within a few kilometers of the conservancy. There was little or no fencing of individual land parcels at the time of the study and approximately half of the households were also members of the conservancy. Demographic and livelihood profiles of households in the Talek River area from approximately one year before the start of this study has been described extensively by Thompson et al. (2009: 86–88). The majority of households are dependent on livestock production and supplemented by income from conservation or tourism ventures.
The study area is bounded to the north by a thin belt of Acacia spp. where tsetse flies are prevalent and dissected by numerous seasonal streams. The PA contains some of the highest densities and distributions of wildlife in Africa (Waithaka 2004) and the annual wildebeest migration draws large numbers of tourists to the Mara. Rainfall is bi-modal corresponding to the north–south movement of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. There is a single long dry season between June and September, short rains between October and December and long rains between February and May (Lamprey and Reid 2004). In late 2005 and early 2006 the short rains failed, resulting in drought conditions (Allen 2006; Hastenrath et al. 2007). During this period Maasai herding practices within the study site transitioned to distinctive drought coping strategies (Butt et al. 2009).
The MMNR is both unique and representative of areas where pastoralists reside around PAs in East Africa. The uniqueness of the MMNR stems from the fact that the PA is managed by a local government authority—the Narok County Council (NCC) (Talbot and Olindo 1990). PAs managed by local government authorities are not uncommon in Kenya, but are fewer in number than PAs managed by the central government (through the Kenya Wildlife Service). A commonly cited reason for local government authorities managing PAs was that revenues derived from tourism and wildlife viewing fees could be more easily distributed to local communities (Talbot and Olindo 1990). The NCC is responsible for disbursing up to 19% of the revenue generated by the PA to local communities immediately around the park (Thompson et al. 2009). However, this process is highly contentious and fraught with political and logistical difficulties (Thompson et al. 2009: 101–103) and many land owners feel that they do not adequately benefit from the park.
However, the study site is also broadly representative of the contemporary relationships between pastoralists and PAs in East Africa. These generalities include: the large numbers of pastoralists who reside around PAs in East Africa; the semi-nomadic nature of herding strategies; the reliance on traditional mobile adaptive strategies and the absence of non-traditional adaptive strategies such as movement to urban areas and subsistence and commercial agriculture. Additionally, most PAs—whether they are managed by local authorities or not—are, as noted earlier, contentious political and environmental spaces where herders are often intimidated and threatened by PA managers when they graze their livestock inside PAs. Finally, as the trend towards community conservancies (designed to provide more equitable payments to land owners) grows, the MMNR provides an interesting and exciting opportunity to empirically evaluate how pastoral livelihood strategies are being reformulated in order to accommodate increased climatic variability coupled with changes in politics, institutions, and social relations associated with resource access strategies in drylands.
Collection
Data were collected from ten Maasai households (Swahili: bomas) and were selected on the basis on three broad criteria: willingness to participate in the study; located within close proximity (two kms) of park boundary and; representative variability in herding strategies and herd size/composition. Cattle were the main focus of this investigation because cattle remain at the forefront of debates surrounding the compatibility of pastoral livelihoods and PAs (Reid et al. 2009). Information on household characteristics that helped determine the selection of households was gathered from earlier studies beginning in 2001 and supplemented with subsequent field visits each year between 2002 and 2005. The sample size was restricted to ten because logistical constraints limited the number of households that could be reached before the cattle left in the morning, as detailed daily key informant interviews were conducted with the herders managing cattle each morning (see below). A larger sample would have limited the frequency of data collection and the level of detailed information acquired from interviews. In total, over 1,100 interviews were collected from ten households. Between two and six interviews were conducted each day and data collection occurred continuously between August 2005 and 2006. Each interview corresponded to an associated grazing orbit, described in greater detail below. The ten study households are assumed to adequately capture the representativeness and variability of Maasai herding strategies within the study site and across the duration of the study period. Many of these households are inter-related, as are the vast majority of pastoral households around the world. Hence the data are limited by the small sample size. Additionally, because repeated observations were derived for the same sample households, I relied on a statistical technique to account for this sampling strategy (see below).
Data Sets
Two datasets were used to analyze the herding strategies of Maasai pastoralists. The first contains quantitative spatial data based on the herding orbit—defined as: “the path that cattle circumnavigate from their enclosures to grazing and water resources and back” (Butt et al. 2009: 315). These data include: (1) the herd radius in kms (the distance between the enclosure and maximum Euclidian distance away from enclosure); (2) the total duration (in hours) of herding (the time between departure and return); and (3) the total distance (in kms) traveled by the herd. These data were recorded for each household on a daily basis. These measures were obtained from spatially and temporally explicit sampling of animal locations throughout their daily movement and are described more fully in Butt et al. 2009.
Spatial data from each herding orbit were then integrated with the second dataset involving twice-daily key informant interviews. Both open and closed ended interviews were conducted with the herder(s) before cattle left their enclosures in the morning (the pre-herding orbit report) as well as a second interview conducted when cattle returned in the evening (post-herding orbit report). Pre-herding orbit questions focused on the age, gender, and number of herders who were responsible for selecting the grazing location, as well as the resource conditions influencing the choice of grazing location. Post-herding orbit questions focused on the number of herds and cattle encountered along the orbit, whether joint herding took place, how many cattle were diagnosed with diseases, whether park or ranger patrols affected herding, and how and whether any animal health inputs were administered to cattle. Participant observation was also used to understand the contexts under which herding decisions were made. Open ended interviews were conducted with various shopkeepers who stock animal health products to understand and verify trends in animal health practices (Table 1).
Processing
The processing steps for determining herd radius and associated spatial data are described in Butt et al. 2009. Data from the orbit report forms were coded and merged with the spatial data for the herding orbit into MS Access ™. Data were then categorized by season (wet, dry and drought).Footnote 5
As noted previously, herd size has commonly been used to understand the differential herding strategies of pastoralists. Here, I aggregate pastoralists into groups based on three herd sizes: small (<60 cattle), medium (60–150 cattle), and large (>150 cattle). While the distinction between the three can be subjective, my categorization is informed by the literature and a decade’s worth of field experience with Maasai pastoralists in Kenya. The categories are chosen to best encompass the variability observed in herd sizes documented during preparatory fieldwork, as well as to maintain consistency with similar studies on Maasai pastoral herding strategies. Mean herd size from all households involved in the study is approximately 201 head of cattle (± SD 206). Three households were classified as small, and four each as medium and large.
In order to aid statistical analyses, data from the pre- and post-herding report interviews were recoded into a binary form: 1 if the herder was <22 years old and 0 otherwise. Similarly data were coded as 1 if there is one herder and 0 if there are 2 or more herders responsible for managing cattle. The selection of these and other categorical breaks was informed through participant observation and multiple interviews conducted over the field period.
Analysis
An ANOVA was used in Stata 7/SE™ (StataCorp 2005, College Station, TX.) to analyze cattle mobility (herding duration, herding distance, herd radius). Separate analyses were conducted for each season, where the three parameters are the response variables and herd size is the factor variable. A generalized linear model (GLM) was developed in SAS 9.1 ™ (SAS Institute Inc. 2000–2004, Cary, NC.) to test hypotheses on herding strategies (Tables 1–3). The model was comprised of a repeated measures binomial logistic regression using a cumulative link function. A repeated measures regression was used to account for data derived from the same households. The model estimated the probability of each level of the response variable (e.g., herder = male) for a given herd size (i.e., the predictor variables), while controlling for repeated observations from the same household. This process was repeated for each season. Qualitative data in the form of narratives were collated by season and household and transcribed to create a searchable, text-based digital document from which representative narrative data could be extracted and presented in the same context.
Results
Cattle Mobility and Use of the PA
How Does Cattle Mobility Differ Across Herd Size Groups and Seasonality?
Herd size was a significant predictor of herding duration, herding distance and herd radius during the wet and drought seasons (Table 4). As herd size increases, herd distance and herd radius also increases during the wet season. Herd distance and herd radius parameters are lower for small herd sizes than they are for medium and large herd sizes during the dry season. Counter intuitively herding duration and herding distance are higher for small and medium herd sizes than they are for large herd sizes during the drought; however herd radius was lower for small or medium herd sizes than large herd sizes during this period.
How Common is Movement Into PA?
Herd size was a significant predictor (p = 0.0151) of cattle movement into the PA during the wet season but not during the dry or drought periods. The likelihood of movement into the PA was high in all three seasons with the highest likelihood occurring during the drought (Fig. 3). The decision to graze cattle inside the PA was related to the presence of rangers who are on patrol. Movement into the community conservation area was rare during drought. Herd managers suggested that they were more willing to risk the one-time fines associated with herding inside the PA rather than losing a whole year’s worth of payments from land leased to the conservancy if they were caught grazing inside the CA. Herders also suggested that forage and water were preferable in the PA during the dry and drought periods because the conservancy has more areas that are infested with tsetse and fewer permanent rivers and streams.
Variability of Herding Strategies by Herd Size
In this section, I discuss some of the socio-ecological components related to herding, and how they vary with respect to seasonality and herd size. Statistical results for each of the hypothesized relationships related to herding strategies are listed in Tables 1–3. Table 5 presents a summary of the hypothesis tests.
Who Manages the Herding Process?
Three variables were used to answer this question: whether herding was conducted by a young herder (less than 22 years of age); whether one herder was used; and herder gender. Across all three seasons, herd size was a significant predictor of whether a young herder is responsible for managing cattle (but at α = 0.05 during the wet season). The likelihood of younger herders managing cattle is higher during the wet season and lowest during the drought (Table 6). Herding is mostly conducted by males and significant across herd size groups (dry season p = <0.0001, wet season p = 0.026) while 100% of the herding was conducted by males during the drought across all herd size groups. Some herding is conducted by female herders across herd size groups during the wet and the dry season. The lowest likelihood of a male herder was documented for small herd sizes during the dry season (86%). Herd size was not a significant predictor of whether one herder managed cattle during the wet season, but was significant during the dry and drought seasons. During the drought the likelihood that one herder would manage cattle was only 36% for large herd sizes and 72% for small herd sizes.
How Often Do Elders Make Grazing Decisions and When are Decisions on the Grazing Location Made?
The likelihood that elders made grazing decisions during the wet and dry seasons was low but significant across herd size groups (Table 7). During the drought, herd size was not a significant predictor of whether grazing decisions were made by elders, despite the relatively high likelihood of these decisions (small, medium, large = 23%, 26%, 16%). Small and medium sized herds have 29% and 30% respectively of the herding decisions being made by elders during the dry season. In cases where elders did not make herding decisions (see Box 1), it is usually the herders themselves, or the herder in consultation with older herders and other non-elder family members who make grazing decisions. Herd size significantly predicted whether herding decisions were made at least 12 h before herding in all three seasons (wet season p = 0.033, dry and drought season p = <0.001). The likelihood of early decision making is highest for medium and large herd sizes during the drought. During these periods herders informed elders of where suitable grazing conditions could be found as soon as they returned from the days herding (see Box 2). Collective decisions on the grazing location for the next day are made as early as possible.
To What Extent is the Selection of a Grazing Location Related to Natural Resource Conditions?
Herd size was not a significant predictor of whether herding was primarily related to natural resource conditions during either the wet or dry season (Table 8), but was a significant factor during the drought, where between 77% and 87% of the selection of a grazing location was influenced by resource conditions. Where natural resources were not the primary factor, herders suggested that factors such as staying close to the household if younger herders undertake herding, avoiding areas of where wildebeest were grazing, avoiding areas with large herds of cattle, and where rangers patrol, became salient.
How Often Does Joint Herding Occur?
Herd size was a significant predictor of joint herding practices and was frequent during the wet and dry seasons (Table 7). Joint herding took place across all seasons, but the highest likelihood of joint herding practices occurred during the drought. Herders narrated that joint herding practices vary according to the size of herd that they encounter while herding. Herders suggested that during the course of the grazing day a herder might join up with three different herds, of different sizes, but for short periods (usually an hour or less). Herders also stated that joint herding for more than half of the grazing day would occur with only one herd. This herd is more likely to be of the same size (Fig. 2).
A spatial example of joint herding practices. Three sample herding orbits (B1, B7 and B9) from December 06, 2005 are shown. B1 and B9 are herding orbits from large herd sizes with familial linkages, while B9 is a herding orbit from a small herd size and unrelated to either B1 or B7. At point A (9:21 AM) cattle from B1 join cattle from B7 and jointly herded until point B (3:19 PM) when they spit. Cattle from B9 continue to graze in the same locality before proceeded back on the path that they were grazing previously. Cattle from B1 are herded north before again joining cattle from B9 at point C (5:01 PM). They graze between point C and D for 15 min (which is the same area that cattle from B7 had utilized 3 h earlier. Cattle from B7 and B1 are then herded back to their households and arrive at 6:46 PM and 6:50 PM respectively
How Often Do Depredation Events By Wildlife on Livestock Occur?
Herd size was not a significant predictor of the likelihood that wildlife would attack cattle (Table 8) when there was sufficient data on the attack (dry season). In the rare event of an attack by wildlife on cattle, the most likely outcome was that the herd was scattered, but subsequently herded back together when the threat has passed. There was only one occasion when a cow was killed by wildlife.
What is the Likelihood That Park Rangers Disrupt the Herding Process?
Herd size significantly predicted the likelihood of park rangers disrupting the herding process during the drought (Table 7)—approximately 15% for small and large herd sizes and 29% for medium herd sizes. When rangers disrupted herding, herders ran away and abandoned the herd. In some cases herders apprehended by rangers were taken to the park gate where cattle were locked in an enclosure until hefty fines (~150$US) were paid to the park authorities. Many herders suggested that rangers were prompted to crack down on herding because tourists had complained about seeing cattle inside the MMNR while on game drives. Herders also said that some tourists had tried to chase cattle out of the park themselves before they reported the news to rangers stationed at the park gates and at the hotels and camps.
How Do Animal Health Practices Vary?
The frequency of cattle returning to their enclosures infected with Nagana did not vary greatly between seasons (Table 8). The likelihood of at least one cow infected increased with herd size (wet season p = 0.050). Across seasons, the likelihood of infection is one in four days for small herds and once every other day for large herds. The frequency of animal health inputs is highest, and statistically significant, during the drought when there is a 53% chance of injecting animals from large herds. This frequency is marginally lower for medium herds (51%) and lowest (23%) for small herds. Interviews with herders suggested that other animal diseases, such as foot and mouth disease, were rare in comparison to Nagana.
Discussion
Herding strategies of pastoralists around PAs, much like those of pastoralists across East Africa, vary both seasonally and across herd size groups (Coppolillo 2000). However, the most important finding of this study is that movement into the PA occurred at all times, regardless of seasonality, or herd size (Fig. 3). Here, I synthesize the remainder of the findings by discussing the variability between and among household, non-household and decision making related factors by examining herding strategies at three separate times and spaces: before cattle depart their enclosures, while herding, and once they return. I conclude with a summary of the effects of PAs on herding strategies and discuss the implications for the larger dryland east African region where pastoralists reside around PAs.
Likelihood of cattle movement into the PA. Herd size is not a significant predictor of movement into the PA during the dry season (Wald z = 1.00, p = 0.605) or the drought
Strategies Before Cattle Leave
Herding strategies employed by herders of small, medium and large herd sizes are similar across the wet and dry seasons when unaccompanied younger males conduct most of the herding (Table 6). During the drought older herders manage cattle regardless of herd size. However, households with medium and large herds often have the additional advantage of having two or more herders managing cattle, which small herd households do not.
There are two possible explanations for this. First, small herds are associated with less wealth and it is likely that herd owners are engaged in full or part-time salaried employment in the tourism sector (Thompson et al. 2009). Children who do not attend school are the primary herders during the wet and dry seasons. During the drought the herd owner is forced to hire, often at great financial expense, an older herder because younger children are unable to effectively supervise the cattle, as herding distance and duration are longer (Table 4). In some cases, a herd owner who cannot afford a hired herder may actively participate in herding during the drought (see Box 1). Conversely, wealthier households with large herds can afford hiring older, more experienced herders, while also providing incentives for quality herding (see Box 2), and the herd patriarch maintains a supervisory role ensuring livestock health during the drought. In some cases older family herders often accompanied hired herders (Box 1). These findings echo research which suggests that the likelihood of hired herding is greater for wealthier households (Turner 1999a) and in response to drought conditions (Scoones 1992). Additionally, the shorter distances traveled by small herds could also be a function of their lower forage requirements compared to medium and large herds (Coppolillo 2000).
Box 1: Herding strategies employed by a household with small herd sizes during the drought |
|---|
Mzee Ole Kasoe,Footnote 6 wizened by half a century of political, economic and ecological changes, sensed that the drought was about to come. The short rains had failed and being a former ranger for the park, he knew that it wasn’t going to be too long before rangers started cracking down on herders, as the numbers of tourists were increasing over the Christmas period. One of his wives, who sells curios at one of the nearby lodges, had told him of the increase in American and German tourists. |
Two months ago his schoolboy son Kenneth (12) was caught herding inside the park and was held at one of the park gates until he paid a fine of 10,000 Shillings (US$150). He could not afford this amount again as the next payment for land he had leased to the community conservancy would not be available until next year. Mzee Kasoe asked his friend Mzee Kayiok, with whom he shared clan affiliation, if he could move his herd of 58 cattle to his friend’s boma until the rains arrived as there was insufficient forage within a day’s grazing range near his own boma. Mzee Kayiok, along with his family, helped to prepare a temporary boma for the herders to stay at night and provide them with food and water. |
During the first few weeks of the drought, most of the herding was conducted by either Duncan (15), or David (16) - two of Mzee Kasoe’s children who alternated herding every three days. The herd was managed separately from Mzee Kayiok’s herd, which was already being managed jointly with Mzee Kayiok’s brother. After a week he noticed that some of steers were beginning to get weaker. He unilaterally decided to take responsibility for the herding for a week in order to ensure that the cattle would access higher quality forage in a rapidly desiccating landscape. |
After a short meal of chai (tea) and uji (a thin porridge), he left the boma at 7:00am each morning and returned 12 hrs later - an amazing feat for a 75 year old man in 90°F temperatures. He was forced to do this to ensure that his livestock would not perish as they did during the droughts of 1962 and 1984, and because his younger children, while knowledgeable of grazing niches closer to their permanent boma, were in unfamiliar surroundings here. |
One night during the drought Mzee Kasoe lost five sheep which had been trampled to death when a leopard attacked the poorly built temporary enclosure. The herders were tired and less vigilant and did not hear the commotion until it was too late. For the next few nights he made his eight year old son sleep in the sheep pen and alert him whenever he suspected attacks were about to occur. |
A second possible explanation for the greater number of herders used in the dry and drought season is related to the level of experience needed to conduct herding during these periods (Table 6). The age and number of herders affects the frequency of herder rotation and quality of herding during the drought (Turner and Hiernaux 2008). As the distance and duration that cattle travel increase significantly compared to the dry season (Table 4), so does the frequency of movement into the PA (Fig. 3). Wealthier households with large herds chose to minimize the risks to individual herders and herds by rotating a greater number of experienced herders less frequently (Box 2). As a result, herders are able to rest for an entire day between “shifts” allowing them to remain vigilant. Households with small herds may rest their herders only every fourth or fifth day because they do not have a sufficient pool of herders. The impacts of drought on small-herd households are therefore greater than large-herd households. In households where most of the herding is conducted by younger members, this strategy may not only adversely affect the number of children already attending primary school and reduce incentives for poor households to send their children to school (Grandin et al. 1991a), but also increase the susceptibility of the herd to attacks by wildlife (see Box 1).
A second strategy used to cope with drought, regardless of herd size, is to make grazing decisions earlier (Table 7). This strategy allows pastoralists to better weigh advantages and disadvantages of grazing at a specific location, and facilitates information sharing between herders and herd managers in advance (Niamir-Fuller and Turner 1999; Turner 1999c). A large factor influencing earlier decision making is the avoidance of park patrols and areas that tourists are known to frequent on their morning and evening game drives. Informant interviews suggest that even when the likelihood of encountering rangers is low, avoiding them is very important for small-herd households because of the high financial, physical and emotional costs associated with being caught (Box 1). Thus, making grazing decisions at shorter (i.e. daily) time scales may be as important to the herding process and drought coping strategies as long-term (weekly or monthly) decision making. These findings are consistent with research showing that herding decisions are timed to coincide with green flushes, wildlife densities in certain areas or intense rainfall events (Westoby et al. 1989).
A third strategy to cope with drought is to move the livestock enclosure closer to areas of suitable forage (see Butt et al. 2009 and Box 2). Temporary enclosures are often found on the borders of the PA. This strategy is used most often by households with large herds and results in shorter herding duration and distance and higher herd radius (Table 4) indicating more linear orbits (Fig. 4). These spatial patterns suggest that herders from these households preselect grazing locations that are easily accessible from their temporary enclosures. The pre-selection of grazing locations is associated with preferred forage and water conditions during the drought, which is significantly different across herd size groups (Table 8).
Sample drought herding orbits for households with small (B6) and large (B3) herd sizes on February 17, 2006. Household B3 relocated from an area off the map to a temporary location near the river that borders the PA, while B6 continued herding strategies from the permanent location. Both households exhibit linear herding orbits, but the strategy relied on by B3 results in better forage conditions because the move to a temporary enclosure ensured that cattle forage could be accessed within 12 to 15 h from the temporary enclosure. The selection of an intended grazing location occurs earlier for both types of households
Strategies While Herding
An important component of the herding process is the joint herding of cattle from different families for some portion of the grazing day. Joint herding is prevalent throughout the year and most frequent during the drought. However, qualitative data suggest that joint herding occurs more frequently and for longer periods of time between herds of similar sizes (Box 2). These findings reinforce existing studies on the decline of joint herding arrangements across different groups (Grandin 1991: 37) and increasing cooperation between similar groups. Households with larger herds undertook joint herding more frequently during the drought (Fig. 2). This trend is likely to be attributed to the increasing intensification of pastoral cattle production practices among wealthy herd owners - a trend that has been documented in East Africa (BurnSilver 2009) and elsewhere (Davies et al. 2009). The decline in joint herding among different groups is likely to be a response to the unwillingness of poor households to purchase shared inputs (Grandin 1991: 58), and the desire for greater autonomy over herd management on the part of large herd size managers.
Box 2: Herding strategies employed by a household with large herd sizes during the drought |
|---|
Before the onset of the drought, Mzee Karkarr and his brother had decided that the time had come to jointly move their herds closer to the Posse plains inside the park. The grasses were beginning to desiccate like everywhere else, but they were taller and still greener in key areas within Posse. The two households pooled their herders and moved their 600 cattle to a temporary camp at the edge of the park. Two days before the move, Mzee Karkarr asked his nephew, who owns a pick-up truck, to ferry water from the Talek River near their home to the temporary camp in 60-gallon containers. A day before the move, the women and children from the two households walked to the temporary camp carrying only essential items such as clothing, bedding and cooking utensils, as well as a few young calves that were still being weaned. Older calves and sheep were left behind at their permanent settlements. The schoolchildren and the elderly would manage them. On the day of the move cattle were taken down to the river and watered for longer than usual. The two herds then split for the day’s herding and merged just before they arrived at the temporary camp. |
The herding was conducted by two hired herders that Mzee Karkarr employs at a wage of 2,000 Shillings (US$30) a month. In order to ensure that the herders have a vested interest in the well-being of the cattle, they are each given a cow and three calves after a year of employment. |
On arrival at the temporary camps later that evening, the cows were hurriedly milked to prepare tea for the herders. They have only a short rest before they move the herd again. The move resulted in decreasing the distance to the Posse plains and cleaner water along the Ol-Keju Ronkai River located deep inside the park. At 6:00am the next morning, the silence of dawn was broken by the sound of cow-bells as the herd was milked before setting off for the days grazing. The reason for the early departure, Mzee Karkarr explained, as I carried him a cup of steaming tea while he maneuvered between the cattle, was so they could reach the plains before the tourists arrived on their game drives and complained about the cattle. |
This daily pattern continued for the next three weeks. The elder sons of the Karkarr brothers and hired herders rotated herding duties. The sons, of the Iseuri age set (ages 25–40), had temporarily given up their usual task of purely ‘supervising’ the hired herders and drinking muratina (the local brew). Armed with two spears and a short panga (machete), they departed the temporary boma every morning with vigor and vitality, and returned exhausted, parched and covered in dust, but brimming with the satisfaction that the cattle had eaten well and were, for the moment, surviving the drought. |
Depredation rates by wildlife while cattle are away from pastoral households are low (Table 8). These findings are consistent with studies of pastoralists around PAs in Kenya (Ogada et al. 2003). However, this study does not examine depredation on sheep and goats, which is common throughout the year (Kolowski and Holekamp 2006). Poor households have weakly constructed enclosures that are prone to attacks by wild carnivores at night (Ibid.), and as a result face additional stress by having to increase vigilance over sheep and goats at night, as well as cattle herds during the day (Box 1).
Herding disruptions by rangers were common during the drought as cattle ventured deeper into the PA to access critical forage located in KRAs (Table 8) (Butt et al. 2009). The higher likelihood of rangers disrupting herding among medium herds during the drought can be attributed to a sequence of ranger patrols that intermittently disrupted herding among the same group households during the height of the drought in January 2006.Footnote 7
Strategies Employed Once Cattle Return
The high rates of cattle infected with Nagana throughout the year (Table 8) does not support the hypothesis that infections are higher during drier periods (Dayo et al. 2010). However, this may be attributed to complex spatial and temporal heterogeneity associated with the ecology of the tsetse fly (Knight 1971). More importantly, the frequency with which cattle are injected with trypanocides is higher during the drought due to the different strategies used by households to treat infected animals. Key informant interviews and participant observation at veterinary shops reveal that herd managers of small herds use a single dose of Veriben® (administered intravenously) for two cattle, instead of the recommended single dose per infected animal. Herd managers of medium and large herds use Veriben® and occasionally Samorin® (a stronger and more effective trypanocide administered intramuscularly (Münstermann et al. 1992)) at the recommended dosage. Veriben® is sold as a single dose packet for 50 shillings (69 US cents) each, while Samorin® is sold as a single packet of 10 doses costing 500 shillings. Herd managers of medium and large herds purchase Samorin® and share the entire packet among other large-herd households. The increasing reliance on more expensive veterinary care may be yet another trend highlighting the intensification of pastoral livestock production practices.
Effects of PAs on Herding Strategies
PAs affect herding strategies in multiple ways. First, PAs have become increasingly important for pastoralists who reside around them. While previous research suggests that parks have in the past been important to pastoralists during periods of peak stress, such as droughts (e.g., Lindsay 1987), my research indicates that PAs are regularly accessed by pastoralists at all times of the year and that the likelihood of movement into parks is not a factor of herd size during dry and drought periods. Pastoralists who reside around both PAs and community conservancies, while accepting the risks associated with being caught, prefer to graze cattle inside PAs not only because of the preferential forage and water available in KRAs within the PA, but also to avoid the risk of non-payment by community conservancy to leaseholders. This suggests that conservation approaches which seek to advance the community conservancy model should recognize some of the unanticipated effects of CAs on the herding strategies of pastoralists, where they border larger PAs. While greater participation by local land owners in community conservation strategies is a welcome change from the more coercive approaches of the past, CAs can disproportionally increase the risks to pastoralists who elect to graze inside the PA instead of CAs, because of the more regular payments offered to them by conservancy managers.
Second, PAs present differential opportunity costs to disparate social groups. These opportunity costs influence the selection of herding strategies and the ability of herd managers to counter environmental variability and uncertainty. Pastoral households with large herds have greater flexibility in coping with drought as they are able to make decisions on grazing strategies earlier, graze cattle deeper inside the PA, build temporary enclosures at the borders of the PA to facilitate this, and can rely on a greater number of more experienced herders. Additionally, households with large herds have the resources to risk potential penalties for grazing inside the PA and pay for increased animal health inputs. While households with smaller herds also use some of these strategies, they represent greater costs and thereby increase their vulnerability to drought. Findings also suggest that there is increasing cooperation in herding practices between similar groups, especially between groups with larger herds. This suggests that there may be a trend towards increasing intensification of pastoral livestock production practices among wealthy herd owners around PAs.
Third, the biophysical effects of PAs on pastoral herding strategies were mixed. The risk of Nagana from tsetse flies increases with herd size, but does not increase as the landscape become drier (Table 8). Attacks by wildlife on cattle were negligible. Cattle deaths during the drought were also low and do not seem to suggest “starvation” because of the lack of forage as has been reported for pastoralists around other PAs in East Africa (e.g., Ocaido et al. 2009). However, this is unsurprising given the relatively short duration of the 2005/2006 drought in comparison to previous and subsequent droughts.
These findings have several implications for the vast spaces where pastoralists border PAs in East Africa. First, the rise in the number of community conservancies partly facilitates increased movement of pastoralists inside PAs because of the greater financial rewards offered to them. However, these rewards come at the expense of the increased personal and financial risk that herders face for grazing their livestock inside PAs. As a result there should be greater discussion among pastoralists and conservancy and PA managers on how to better integrate their goals. The increased representation of pastoral groups is critical to the governance of natural resources and essential for the autonomous adaptation to climate change (ODI 2009b). Second, while grazing inside the PA occurs at all times of year and across all social groups, resource managers should be acutely aware that continued use of the ‘fences and fines’ approach to conservation that is still widely practiced in East Africa (Brockington 2002) does not necessarily deter pastoralists from grazing their livestock inside PAs. Instead, there needs to be greater recognition of the larger structural political and economic policies related to land tenure and access rights which have reduced the spaces available for mobile pastoralism to occur. Additionally resource managers should recognize that maintaining and enhancing pastoral livestock mobility in semi-arid Africa is critical to the development of flexible responses to environmental variability and environmental change (Galvin 2009). Third, the primary reason cited by both CA and PA managers for preventing pastoralists grazing their livestock inside these areas is that tourists often complain about seeing cattle inside supposedly “pristine” natural areas (Infield et al. 2009). While the issue of pastoral livestock grazing inside PAs is a highly contentious topic across a range of different groups, these finding suggests that there should be a move towards discussing the relative advantages and disadvantages of such a move, given the historical and contemporary use of PAs as grazing areas that contain key resource areas.
Conclusions
Over the last half-century, pastoralists around PAs have been affected by both increased climatic variability and a series of political and economic policies that have seen their grazing lands decrease. These exogenous forces have altered the ability of pastoralists to ability to effectively cope with changing social and ecological conditions. This study examined the herding strategies of pastoralists residing on the borders of a PA in Kenya and found that while different social groups rely on similar strategies during the drought the realized effects of these strategies play out differently among these groups. Decision-making strategies are largely influenced by the ability to cover financial and other costs associated with grazing herds inside the PA. Generally, the biophysical effects of PAs on pastoral herding strategies were mixed. Collectively these finding suggest that PAs influence pastoral herding strategies in a myriad of different ways. Pastoral households with large herd sizes are better suited to coping with variability and uncertainty because of their flexibility to adapt to changing environmental and social conditions. Flexibility is achieved by investing in strategies that allow them to cope better with drought conditions.
The evidence presented here suggests that pastoralists who reside around PAs rely on adaptive strategies that are based largely on movement into PAs where they present different opportunity costs to disparate social groups. Movement into the PA was preferred over movement into community conservation areas so as not to jeopardize payments for land leased to conservation purposes, despite the social costs associated with grazing inside the PA. This has implications for the ways in which conservancies are managed and highlights how pastoralists are negotiating a transformed pastoral landscape where the loss of grazing land to community conservancies drives livestock movement into PAs. Greater recognition of the complex landscapes that pastoralists navigate within and around PAs and CAs is needed alongside an appreciation of the varied social and ecological dynamics of pastoral coping strategies. Despite the uniqueness of the MMNR, these findings suggest that efforts to reconcile between mobility as a traditional adaptive strategy that is critical to sustain pastoral livelihoods, and the supposed integrity of PA spaces, which are free of human presence, may be incompatible. This is particular true for the larger dryland east Africa region where pastoralists and their livestock reside around the many PAs, and given the reported increase in the use of PAs as drought coping strategies. The dominant model of PA spaces as ‘livestock free’ spaces should be debated given the realization of how important PAs are for traditional pastoral coping strategies.
Notes
For example, Wildlife Direct posted a blog on 8/24/2009 citing the warden of the Nairobi National Park who admitted that “tens of thousands of cattle are grazing in the Nairobi National Park as a result of the ongoing devastating drought.” http://baraza.wildlifedirect.org/2009/08/24/cattle-dying-in-nairobi-park/ Last Accessed May 29, 2010.
Assessments of wealth have been categorized based on the number of Tropical Livestock Units (TLU) per active adult male equivalent (AAME), e.g., Grandin et al. (1991b: 57) define poor households as those with <5 TLU per AAME, medium wealth ≥5 and ≤13 TLU per AAME and, rich households >13 TLU per AAME, while other studies rely on TLU per household (Sieff 1997, 1999).
Nagana is the common name for African Animal Trypanosomiasis, an infectious disease transmitted by the tsetse fly (Glossina spp.).
Block 5 was annexed from the larger MMNR in 1984 primarily to provide Maasai and their livestock living around the reserve access to the perennial Talek River (Thompson et al. 2009: 81–82).
See Butt et al. 2009: 317 for a more complete explanation and justification for the choice of these seasonal categories and the break points associated with these categories.
All names have been changed to protect the privacy of research subjects.
See Butt 2007, for a more detailed discussion of the etiology of grazing conflicts between pastoralists and protected area managers and of some of the political and economic dynamics of herder-ranger interactions.
References
Adriansen, H. K., and Nielsen, T. T. (2005). The Geography of Pastoral Mobility: A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of GPS Data from Sahelian Senegal. GeoJournal 64(3): 177–88.
Allen, K. (2006) Drought threat to Kenya’s parks. BBC News Online, 17 February Last Accessed 4 April 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/4725152.stm.
Anderson, D., and Grove, R. (eds.) (1987). Conservation in Africa: People, Policies, and Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Ausseill, R. (2009) Kenya’s Hippos Hard Hit by Drought Last Accessed May 29, 2010. http://www.physorg.com/news170833518.html.
Bassett, T. J. (1994). Hired Herders and Herd Management in Fulani Pastoralism (Northern Cote d’Ivoire). Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 133–135: 147–73.
Boko, M., Niang, I., Nyong, A., Vogel, C., Githeko, A., Medany, M., Osman-Elasha, B., Tabo, R., and Yanda, P. (2007). Africa. Climate Change. In Parry, M. L., Canziani, O. F., Palutikof, J. P., van der Linden, P. J., and Hanson, C. E. (eds.), Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 433–67.
Brockington, D. (2002). Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve. Tanzania, James Currey, Oxford.
Brockington, D., and Homewood, K. (2001). Degradation Debates and Data Deficiencies: The Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania. Africa 71(3): 449–80.
Broten, M., and Said, M. (1995). Population trends of ungulates in and around Kenya’s Masai Mara Reserve. In Sinclair, A. R. E., and Arcese, P. (eds.), Serengeti II: Dynamics. Management and Conservation of an Ecosystem. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 169–93.
BurnSilver, S. B. (2009). Pathways of Continuity and Change: Maasai Livelihoods in Amboseli, Kajiado District, Kenya. In Homewood, K., Kristjanson, P., and Trench, P. (eds.), Staying Maasai? Livelihoods. Conservation and Development in East African Rangelands. Springer, New York, pp. 161–207.
Butt, B. (2007). Grazing on the Edge: Cattle Mobility, Ecology and Maasai Herding in Southern Kenya. PhD Dissertation, Michigan State University. Dept. of Geography, 2007.
Butt, B. (2010). Pastoral Resource Access and Utilization: Quantifying the Spatial and Temporal Relationships Between Livestock Mobility, Density And Biomass Availability in Southern Kenya. Land Degradation and Development 21(6): 520–39.
Butt, B., Shortridge, A., and WinklerPrins, A. M. G. A. (2009). Pastoral Herd Management, Drought Coping Strategies, and Cattle Mobility in Southern Kenya. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99(2): 309–34.
Campbell, D. (1999). Response to Drought Among Farmers and Herders in Southern Kajiado District, Kenya: A Comparison of 1972–1976 and 1994–1995. Human Ecology 27(3): 377–416.
Coppolillo, P. B. (2000). The Landscape Ecology of Pastoral Herding: Spatial Analysis of Land Use and Livestock Production in East Africa. Human Ecology 28(4): 527–60.
Curtin, C., and Western, D. (2008). Grasslands, People, and Conservation: Over-the-Horizon Learning Exchanges between African and American Pastoralists. Conservation Biology 22(4): 870–77.
Davies, J., Niamir-Fuller, M., Kerven, C., and Bauer, K. (2009). Extensive Livestock Production in Transition: The Future of Sustainable Pastoralism. In Steinfeld, H., Mooney, H. A., Schneider, F., and Neville, L. (eds.), Livestock in a Changing Landscape: Drivers, Consequences, and Responses. Island, Washington, pp. 285–308.
Dayo, G.-K., Bengaly, Z., Messad, S., Bucheton, B., Sidibe, I., Cene, B., Cuny, G., and Thevenon, S. (2010). Prevalence and Incidence of Bovine Trypanosomosis in An Agro-Pastoral Area of Southwestern Burkina Faso. Research in Veterinary Science 88(3): 470–77.
de Leeuw, P. N., P. P. Semenye, C. P. Peacock, and B. E. Grandin. (1991). Productivity of cattle and smallstock. In S. Bekure, P. N. de Leeuw, B. E. Grandin and P. J. H. Neate (eds.), Maasai herding: An Analysis Of The Livestock Production System of Maasai Pastoralists in Eastern Kajiado District, Kenya. ILCA Systems Study 4. ILCA (International Livestock Centre for Africa), Addis Ababa, pp. 83–100
Galvin, K. A. (2009). Transitions: Pastoralists Living with Change. Annual Review Of Anthropology 38(1): 185–98.
Grandin, B. E. (1991). The Maasai: Socio-historical context and group ranches. In S. Bekure, P. N. De Leeuw, B. E. Grandin and P. J. H. Neate (eds.), Maasai herding: An analysis of the livestock production system of Maasai pastoralists in eastern Kajiado District, Kenya. ILCA Systems Study 4. International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA), Addis Ababa, pp. 21–39
Grandin, B. E., de Leeuw, P. N., and de Souza, M. (1991a). Labor and Livestock Management. In Bekure, S., de Leeuw, P. N., Grandin, B. E., and Neate, P. J. H. (eds.), Maasai herding: An analysis of the livestock production system of Maasai pastoralists in eastern Kajiado district, Kenya. International Livestock Center for Africa (ILCA), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, pp. 71–82.
Grandin, B. E., de Leeuw, P. N., and Ole Pasha, I. (1991b). The study area: Socio-spatial organization and land use. In Bekure, S., de Leeuw, P. N., Grandin, B. E., and Neate, P. J. H. (eds.), Maasai Herding: An Analysis of the Livestock Production System of Maasai Pastoralists in Eastern Kajiado District, Kenya. International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA). ILCA Systems Study 4, Addis Ababa, pp. 57–70.
Grootenhuis, J. G., and Olubayo, R. O. (1993). Disease Research in the Wildlife-Livestock Interface in Kenya. The Veterinary Quarterly 15(2): 55–59.
Hastenrath, S., Polzin, D., and Mutai, C. (2007). Diagnosing the 2005 Drought in Equatorial East Africa. Journal of Climate 20(18): 4628–37.
Igoe, J. (2002). National Parks and Human Ecosystems: The Challenge to Community Conservation. A Case Study from Simanjiro, Tanzania. In Chatty, D., and Colchester, M. (eds.), Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement, and Sustainable Development. Berghan Books, London, pp. 77–96.
Infield, M., Duli, E. M., Mugisha, A. R., and Rubagyema, P. (2009). How protection took the beauty from the land; conflicting values and meanings of Lake Mburo National Park, Uganda. In Mallarach, J.-M. (ed.), Vol. 2 in the Series on Protected Landscapes and Cultural And Spiritual Values. Kasparek Verlag, Heidelberg, pp. 132–45.
Kemei, K. (2006). Tourists Miss Animals at Maasai Mara. East African Standard, Tuesday January 3, 2006:28.
Kiss, A. (2004). Is Community-Based Ecotourism a Good use of Biodiversity Conservation Funds? Trends in Ecology & Evolution 19(5): 232–37.
Kjekshus, H. (1977). Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African history: The Case Of Tanganyika, 1850–1950. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Knight, C. G. (1971). The Ecology of African Sleeping Sickness. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 61(1): 23–44.
Kolowski, J. M., and Holekamp, K. E. (2006). Spatial, Temporal, and Physical Characteristics of Livestock Depredations by Large Carnivores Along a Kenyan Reserve Border. Biological Conservation 128(4): 529–41.
Lamprey, R. H., and Reid, R. S. (2004). Expansion of Human Settlement in Kenya’s Maasai Mara: What Future for Pastoralism and Wildlife? Journal of Biogeography 31(6): 997–1032.
Lindsay, W. (1987). Integrating parks and pastoralists: some lessons from Amboseli. In Anderson, D., and Grove, R. (eds.), Conservation in Africa: People, Policies, and Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 149–67.
Little, P. D. (1996). Pastoralism, Biodiversity, and the Shaping of Savanna Landscapes in East Africa. Africa 66(1): 37–51.
McCarthy, N., and Di Gregorio, M. (2007). Climate Variability and Flexibility in Resource Access: The Case of Pastoral Mobility in Northern Kenya. Environment And Development Economics 12(3): 403–21.
Monbiot, G. (1994). Keepers of the Artificial Wilderness. BBC Wildlife Magazine.
Mulder, M. B. (1999). On Pastoralism and Inequality. Current Anthropology 40(3): 366–67.
Münstermann, S., Mbura, R., Maloo, S., and Löhr, K. (1992). Trypanosomiasis Control in Boran Cattle in Kenya: A Comparison Between Chemoprophylaxis and a Parasite Detection and Intravenous Treatment Method Using Isometamidium Chloride. Tropical Animal Health and Production 24(1): 17–27.
Mworia, J. K., and Kinyamario, J. I. (2008). Traditional Strategies Used by Pastoralists to Cope with La Nina Induced Drought in Kajiado, Kenya. African Journal of Environmental Science and Technology 2(1): 10–14.
Neumann, R. (1998). Imposing Wilderness: Struggles Over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Ngugi, M. K., and Conant, R. T. (2008). Ecological and Social Characterization of Key Resource Areas in Kenyan Rangelands. Journal of Arid Environments 72(5): 820–35.
Niamir-Fuller, M., and Turner, M. D. (1999). A review of recent literature on pastoralism and transhumance in Africa. In Niamir-Fuller, M. (ed.), Managing Mobility in African Rangelands: The Legitimization of Transhumance. Intermediate Technology Publications, London, pp. 18–46.
Ntiati, P. (2001). Group Ranches Subdivision Study in Loitokitok Division of Kajiado District Kenya.Land Use Change Impacts and Dynamics (LUCID) Project Working Paper # 7, International Livestock Research Institute. Nairobi, Kenya.
Ocaido, M., Muwazi, R., and Opuda, J. (2009). Disease incidence in Ranch and Pastoral Livestock Herds Around Lake Mburo National Park, in South Western Uganda. Tropical Animal Health and Production 41(7): 1299–308.
ODI. (2009a). Getting it Right: Understanding Livelihoods to Reduce the Vulnerability of Pastoral Communities. In Humanitarian Policy Group, 4. Overseas Development Institute, London.
ODI. (2009b). Pastoralism and Climate Change: Enabling Adaptive Capacity. In Humanitarian Policy Group, 4. Overseas Development Institute, London.
Ogada, M. O., Woodroffe, R., Oguge, N. O., and Frank, L. G. (2003). Limiting Depredation by African Carnivores: The Role of Livestock Husbandry. Conservation Biology 17(6): 1521–30.
Peluso, N. L. (1993). Coercing Conservation: The Politics of State Resource Control. Global Environmental Change 3(2): 199–217.
Reid, R. S., Bedelian, C., Said, M. Y., Kruska, R. L., Mauricio, R. M., Castel, V., Olson, J., and Thornton, P. K. (2009). Livestock in a changing landscape: global livestock impacts on biodiversity. In Livestock in a changing landscape: Drivers, consequences, and responses. Island, Washington DC, pp. 111–38.
Ruttan, L. M., and Mulder, M. B. (1999). Are East African Pastoralists Truly Conservationists? Current Anthropology 40(5): 621–52.
Rutten, M. M. E. M. (1992). Selling Wealth To Buy Poverty—The Process of the Individualization of Landownership Among the Maasai Pastoralists of Kajiado District Kenya, 1890–1990. Verlag Breitenbach, Saarbrucken - Fort Lauderdale.
SAS 9.1.3. SAS Institute Inc (2000–2004) Cary, NC.
Scoones, I. (1992). Coping with Drought—Responses of Herders and Livestock in Contrasting Savanna Environments in Southern Zimbabwe. Human Ecology 20(3): 293–314.
Scoones, I. (ed.) (1994). Living with Uncertainty: New Directions in Pastoral Development in Africa. Intermediate Technology Publications, London.
Sieff, D. F. (1997). Herding Strategies of the Datoga Pastoralists of Tanzania: Is Household Labor a Limiting Factor. Human Ecology 25(4): 519–44.
Sieff, D. F. (1999). The Effects of Wealth on Livestock Dynamics Among the Datoga Pastoralists of Tanzania. Agricultural Systems 59(1): 1–25.
Stata Statistical Software: Release 9, (2005). College Station, TX.
Sutter, J. W. (1987). Cattle and Inequality: Herd Size Differences and Pastoral Production among the Fulani of Northeastern Senegal. Africa 57(2): 196–218.
Talbot, L., and P. Olindo. (1990). The Maasai Mara and Amboseli Reserves. In A. Kiss (ed.), Living with Wildlife: Wildlife Resource Management with Local Participation in Africa. World Bank Technical Series paper No. 130., Washington DC, pp. 67–74.
Thomas, D. S. G., and Twyman, C. (2005). Equity and Justice in Climate Change Adaptation Amongst Natural-Resource-Dependent Societies. Global Environmental Change Part A 15(2): 115–24.
Thompson, M., Serneels, S., Ole Kaelo, D., and Trench, P. (2009). Maasai Mara—Land Privatization and Wildlife Decline: Can Conservation Pay Its Way? In Homewood, K., Kristjanson, P., and Trench, P. (eds.), Staying Maasai? Livelihoods, Conservation and Development in East African Rangelands. Springer, London, pp. 77–114.
Torr, S. J., H. M. Kindness, V. Obsomer, J. W. Hargrove, T. N. C. Mangwiro, B. V. Munster, C. Kulanga, E. L. Mbessere, L. Schoonman, A. Samata, H. Heile, and E. O. Osir. (2000). Final Technical Report: Cattle management practices in tsetse-affected areas: R7173 (C1068). In DFID Animal Health Programme, 105. Department for International Development, London, UK.
Turner, M. D. (1999a). Labor Process and the Environment: The Effects of Labor Availability and Compensation on the Quality of Herding in the Sahel. Human Ecology 27(2): 267–96.
Turner, M. D. (1999b). No Space for Participation: Pastoralist Narratives and the Etiology of Park-Herder Conflict in Southeastern Niger. Land Degradation and Development 10(4): 345–63.
Turner, M. D. (1999c). The role of social networks, indefinite boundaries and political bargaining in maintaining the ecological and economic resilience of the transhumance systems of Sudano-Sahelian West Africa. In Niamir-Fuller, M. (ed.), Managing Mobility in African Rangelands: The Legitimization of Transhumance. Intermediate Technology Publications, London, pp. 97–123.
Turner, M., and Hiernaux, P. (2008). Changing Access to Labor, Pastures, and Knowledge: The Extensification of Grazing Management in Sudano-Sahelian West Africa. Human Ecology 36(1): 59–80.
Waithaka, J. (2004). Maasai Mara—An Ecosystem Under Siege: An African Case Study on the Societal Dimension of Rangeland Conservation. African Journal of Range and Forage Science 21(2): 79–88.
Waller, R. (1999). Pastoral Poverty in Historical Perspective. In Anderson, D., and Broch-Due, V. (eds.), The Poor are Not Us: Poverty & Pastoralism in East Africa. James Currey, Oxford, pp. 20–49.
Wangui, E. (2008). Development Interventions, Changing Livelihoods, and the Making of Female Maasai Pastoralists. Agriculture and Human Values 25(3): 365–78.
West, P., Igoe, J. I. M., and Brockington, D. (2006). Parks and Peoples: The Social Impact of Protected Areas. Annual Review Of Anthropology 35: 251–77.
Western, D., Russell, S., and Cuthill, I. (2009). The Status of Wildlife in Protected Areas Compared to Non-Protected Areas of Kenya. PLoS ONE 4(7): 1–6.
Westoby, M., Walker, B., and Noymeir, I. (1989). Opportunistic management for rangelands not at equilibrium. Journal of Range Management 42(4): 266–74.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the NSF (Award# 0525809 & 0706756), Compton Foundation and Michigan State University. Additional support for writing was provided by the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the International Livestock Research Institute. This study was conducted with the permission of the Government of Kenya (Permit No. MOEST 13/001/31 C 85). I would like to thank my research assistants for their hard work and dedication in the field, and Ting-Li Lin for help with the statistical tests. This manuscript also benefitted from comments by M. Turner, A. WinklerPrins, B. Derman, C. Duvall, A. Shortridge, R. Reid, J. Gruley, the editor, and two anonymous reviewers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Butt, B. Coping with Uncertainty and Variability: The Influence of Protected Areas on Pastoral Herding Strategies in East Africa. Hum Ecol 39, 289–307 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-011-9399-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-011-9399-6