Transfer
Nyeri residents have cautioned the National government against transferring the Amboseli National park to Kajiado county government.
Terming it a big mistake, the residents have said that the move might set precedence for other counties hosting heritage sites and other national treasures to start the clamour for their control.
They also say that releasing such resources to counties governments might also block other Kenyans from enjoying revenue and other benefits from the national assets.
“Handing a national park to the county is a big mistake because it will deny other Kenyans resources from the Amboseli. Once Amboseli is transferred, counties like ours will definitely start demanding for Aberdare and Mount Kenya which are both parks and water towers. What do you think will happen when other counties want to share the water resource?” posed Veronica Maina.
The residents further told member of the Advisory Committee on the transfer of the Amboseli National Park that county governments have demonstrated their inability to manage devolved functions and as such, transferring the Amboseli would expose it to the financial and management challenges being experienced by the devolved units.
Additionally, the residents noted that counties lacked both human and financial resource capacity to manage a park of national status.
“Kenya Wildlife Service have the best management capacity in terms of conservation, security, human resource and also infrastructure because they are trained for that specific purpose. As we speak, the county government of Narok has not repaired roads that were damaged by the recent floods in the Maasai Mara game reserve which is a clear demonstration of the lack of capacity to effectively manage a national resource,” stated Peterson Maina.
According to KWS, Amboseli, formerly the Maasai Amboseli Game Reserve, is a national park, which occupies 392.06 square kilometres of land. The park is at the core of an 8,000 square kilometres ecosystem that spreads across the Kenya-Tanzania border. It is currently managed by KWS with assistance from other global wildlife organizations.
In August last year, President William Ruto while attending the Maa cultural festival in Narok County, announced that the national government would be returning the management of Amboseli National Park to the Kajiado County government.
The President acknowledged the efforts of conserving Maasai Mara Game reserve by the local community and announced that the Kajiado government would donate more land for the conservation of wildlife as a way of increasing land under tourism thereby boosting proceeds that come from the park.
But for John Gaheru, the move risks exposing the national reserve to increased cases of human-wildlife conflict, exposure of wildlife to harmful cultural practices, biodiversity loss and endless cases of land disputes by members of the community.
According to Gacheru, once the community cedes their land for conservation, it would be an uphill task for the government to regulate its use.
“We might lose Amboseli forever. Human-wildlife conflict is likely to increase because KWS will exit the park. KWS’s work is to protect our wildlife and the park ecosystem but in their absence it will be impossible to tame the local community from encroaching the national reserve to graze or even burn charcoal because they believe the land belongs to them and they are at liberty to do as they please,” argued Gacheru.
Josephat Gikonyo also expressed fears that the transfer would have a negative implication on the tourism sector.
Gikonyo said that the transfer risked exposing both local and foreign tourists to arbitrary price hikes and other punitive rules which would eventually send tourists to our neighbouring countries.
“If we are to borrow from Narok County which recently hiked their charges and also banned certain vehicles from accessing the Maasai Mara, you realize that we could be exposing our tourists to punitive laws from a county government. The decision to transfer the park needs to be thoroughly thought through because we are losing our tourists to our neighbours Uganda and Tanzania who are closely watching us and using our mistakes to improve their tourism sector,” he said.