Tusinder af danske turister har besøgt verdenskendt nationalpark i det sydvestlige Kenya – men nu er der ikke så meget at komme efter mere
Populations of wildlife species in the world-renowned Masai Mara reserve in Kenya have crashed in the past three decades, according to research published in the Journal of Zoology, reports BBC online Tuesday.
Numbers of impala, warthog (vortesvin), giraffe, topi and Coke’s hartebeest have declined by over 70 per cent, say scientists.
Even fewer survive beyond the reserve in the wider Mara, where buffalo and wild dogs have all but disappeared, while huge numbers of wildebeest (gnuer) no longer pass through the region on their epic migration.
However, numbers of cattle grazing in the reserve have increased by more than 1.100 per cent, although it is illegal for them to so do.
– The status of Masai Mara as a prime conservation area and premier tourist draw card in Kenya may soon be in jeopardy, said Dr Joseph Ogutu, Senior statistician in the Bioinformatics unit of the University of Hohenheim, Germany.
He conducted the study with colleagues there and at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya.
This covered 12 species of large mammal, ostriches and livestock, and allowed the team to calculate trends in wildlife numbers over a 33-year period across the entire reserve, and in the Masai pastoral ranches adjoining the reserve.
Of the large species studied, only ostriches (strudse) and elephants had not fared badly outside of the reserve, while inside the Masai Mara only eland, Grant’s gazelle and ostrich showed any signs of population recovery in the past decade.
The declines are particularly surprising, say the scientists, as they had expected animal populations to have recovered since 2000-2001. That is when major conservancy efforts, and an increase in local policing, began in an attempt to protect the wildlife there.
– The great wildebeest migration now involves 64 per cent fewer animals than it did in the early 1980s, says Dr Ogutu.
That is despite numbers of wildebeest on the Serengeti, where the migratory animals that cross the Mara come from, staying relatively unchanged.
There appear to be three main causes of these dramatic declines: the activities of poachers (krybskytter), changing land use patterns in ranches within the Mara, and an increase in the number and range of livestock held on these ranches.
According to Dr Ogutu, over 1.500 poachers have been arrested within the Mara conservancy between 2001 and 2010, with more than 17.300 snares (vildtfælder) collected by rangers in the same period.
