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Laikipia

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Kenya | Sunday, October 17, 2010 | 5 photos


These photos are the story of Laikipia district and its remarkable conservation success story. I worked in Laikipia for two years and in the process came to know the district, its people, and its story. Laikipia lies in central Kenya nestled in the foothills of Mount Kenya. It has the 2nd highest concentration of wildlife in all of East Africa, behind only the renowned Serengeti, and supports Kenya's second largest elephant population, its largest black rhino population, and Africa’s highest density of endangered African wild dogs and Grevy's zebra. What makes Laikipia truly remarkable, however, is that this has been accomplished with virtually no formal protection for wildlife or habitat. Conservation in the district is entirely driven by private ranchers, who see wildlife not as competitors with livestock but as a revenue base for a thriving ecotourism economy.

In many ways, Laikipia represents one of the best models for conservation to be found. Conservation is a grassroots effort driven by an economic model that values wildlife and the intact ecosystems required to support it. This is not to say that Laikipia has no conservation challenges: it faces numerous challenges to wildlife and a host of socio-economic problems, which at core stem from a vastly inequitable distribution of ecotourism revenues. Nonetheless Laikipia is the very opposite of 'fortress conservation' imposed from above, which often leads to conflicts with local communities and severe habitat degradation outside of protected areas. Laikipia's model is instead a mutualism between wildlife and local communities, both of whom prosper in the presence of the other. To be in Laikipia is to experience a true conservation success; it is to see what a world looks like when it values its wildlife.

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