18 - People and predators in Laikipia District, Kenya

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In this century, only in Africa do substantial numbers of people and livestock still live alongside sizeable populations of large carnivores. Predators are rarely a threat to humans in modern Africa, but they are a significant source of livestock losses to both commercial and subsistence livestock producers. Killing of predators has been documented for as long as there has been literature (see Homer, The Iliad), but a small human population would have had an insignificant effect on total carnivore numbers. However, the press of a very large human population well equipped with firearms and poison has seriously reduced predators even in Africa, a relatively sparsely populated continent (Nowell and Jackson 1996; Woodroffe et al. 1997; Mills and Hofer 1998). Few protected areas are large enough to guarantee long-term survival of wide-ranging carnivores (Woodroffe and Ginsberg 1998), as most parks are small and widely separated.

In much of Kenya, wildlife has been eliminated as habitat is converted to cultivation. A growing bushmeat trade has eliminated wildlife from vast regions of southeast Kenya that are unsuitable for agriculture (World Wildlife Fund 2000a). Even the semi-arid northern half of the country, sparsely populated and once rich in wildlife, has been nearly cleared of large mammals by over-grazing, poison and the ubiquitous assault rifle. Outside protected areas, substantial predator populations persist only in the rangelands north of Mount Kenya (particularly Laikipia District), and in the south close to the border with Tanzania.