Opening Insights
Pocket Wisdom Insights (PWI) invites you to explore the following Co-Lab Blog.
This blog features parts of an influential and insightful article featured outside of the PWI Co-Lab
by Jessica Hatcher, on , published by The Guradian.
We have republished this content in respect of the author’s vision, message and research.
Animal habitat is disappearing. On the banks of the Talek river, overlooking the National Reserve, you can get a room for only 300 shillings (£2.30) per night. Talek is an urban island in an expanse of protected land and the largest trading centre in the Mara. Filling stations open early, televisions blare out from restaurants and bars, and the sex workers open their doors at night. The abattoir does a roaring trade but its owner is nervous – he’s waiting for the first lion to steal a carcass. There is no public waste management system in Talek and the roads in the town aren’t really roads but rising layers of human detritus where there’s a tacit agreement not to build.
Informational Insights
North of Talek on the Narok road, an enterprising woman has set up an impromptu charcoal stall beneath the Mara North Conservanc sign. A 150-year-old acacia tree lies slain on its side, prey to the charcoal trade. Once you take out these trees, the land can go over to wheat. Wildlife pays around 3,000 shillings per hectare per year, but wheat farming pays 8,000-10,000. Maasai society is increasingly monetised, steered by electronic communications, motorised transport and imported food. These people and many more are trying to make a living, and although the National Reserve makes millions, they’re getting little from it. Without incentive to protect it, they are destroying it. A Japanese businessman has offered the council 42bn shillings (£235m) to relocate people on the edge of the reserve to 20km away, a consultant for the council says, which would mean more forced evictions and an uncomfortable new chapter in the battle for the Mara’s billions.
Wildlife pays around 3,000 shillings per hectare per year, but wheat farming pays 8,000-10,000. Maasai society is increasingly monetised, steered by electronic communications, motorised transport and imported food. These people and many more are trying to make a living, and although the National Reserve makes millions, they’re getting little from it. Without incentive to protect it, they are destroying it. A Japanese businessman has offered the council 42bn shillings (£235m) to relocate people on the edge of the reserve to 20km away, a consultant for the council says, which would mean more forced evictions and an uncomfortable new chapter in the battle for the Mara’s billions.
Jackson Looseyia, a veteran guide of 26 years and presenter of the BBC’s Big Cat Diaries, is between safaris. I have come to meet him in a private house owned by a wealthy Briton. Looseyia wears rubber sandals made from old tyres, a red-checked shuka, red dress and beaded belt. “I don’t normally eat like this,” he says, feigning embarrassment at the elegant meal laid on. I believe him. However much time he has spent around westerners, Looseyia is Maasai to the core. What concerns him most about the future of the Mara is the rocketing value of land. Africa is rising, the media proclaim, but it is doing so unequally. Wealthy investors in the former Maasai rangelands 30km south of Nairobi have driven land up to 12m shillings (£93,000) per acre. Both the Maasai, who “suffered big time”, Looseyia says, and the wildlife are gone. “It’s a threat to conservation, it’s a threat to the community. We are bordering the famous Maasai Mara National Reserve. That in itself is gold. It could easily go,” he says.
As well as the Serengeti wildebeest that convene every year in the National Reserve, around 300,000 wildebeest from Kenya’s Loita plains used to arrive concurrently and mingle with their Tanzanian counterparts – the “northern migration”. Calvin Cottar, whose family have been in the Mara for almost 100 years, has seen the Loita migration reduce by 90% to 30,000 animals in the past three decades. Wildlife populations crashed by up to 70% in that time, according to a Journal of Zoology study, while cows grazing illegally inside the reserve were up by 1,100%.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/aug/23/masai-mara-tourism-politics
Possibilities for Consideration
Take a moment and examine…
- As you reviewed the material above, what stood out to you?
- What is the potential impact, economically and/or socially?
- What action is needed to stop or support this idea?
- You may want to consider whether you:
- want to be aware of,
- should become supportive of,
- would want to be active in this topic?
Add Your Insight
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.
LEONARDO DA VINCI