COMMUNITY CONSERVANCIES

maasai

The Wildlife Foundation supports the Naretunoi Community Conservancy (NCC) south of Nairobi National Park (NNP) to preserve the Kitengela Dispersal Area. As critical stakeholders to the NCC, the local Maasai community receives benefits in exchange for keeping their land open to wildlife. Such benefits include the following:

  • Lease Programme;

    offers conservancy members a per-acre financial benefit. These payments allow members to maintain their traditional lifestyle without pressure to sell their land.

  • Bursary Programme;

    covers high school and/or university fees for high-achieving student community members.

  • Employment Opportunity;

    Game Scouts, TWF Centre staff, and many of the TWF employees are from the area.

We are currently working to expand the NCC at a sustainable rate. In the future we hope to establish more conservancies in critical wildlife dispersal areas using this model.

CONFLICT MITIGATION

  • Our most successful strategy for preventing human-wildlife conflict is the installation of Lion Lights, which flash throughout the night and prevent predators from attacking livestock.
  • With the help of WWF, we equipped 90 bomas with Lion Lights, which saw a reduction in night-time predation of nearly 100%. More are still needed for other community members.
  • Students participating in our Residential Programmes at the TWF Centre help install Lion Lights as an educational activity. Individual donors can also sponsor a set of Lion Lights.
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GAME SCOUTS

The Game Scouts conservation programme employs local youth to monitor wildlife in and around community conservancies. Scouts also track instances of human-wildlife conflict and conservancy agreement compliance. This programme collects data on the effectiveness of our work and offers professional development and employment to the local community.

Our scouts monitor and report:

  • Wildlife movement, diversity, and density
  • Human-wildlife conflict
  • Compliance to Lease Programme agreement
  • Poaching and criminal activity against wildlife

TWF CENTRE