The Wilder Interview: John Kamanga
Recent studies have shown a considerable decline in wildlife numbers in Kenya since the 1970s, driven by a multitude of pressures, from human population growth to land fragmentation and climate change. The findings have raised concerns about the future of the country’s wildlife, and the effectiveness of existing conservation policies and strategies. Many foreign visitors associate Kenya with its well-known national parks, but government-run protected areas only cover eight percent of its territory. In reality, nearly two thirds of its wildlife is dependent on open rangelands beyond park boundaries.
A man with a unique approach to conservation in Kenya’s South Rift Valley is John Kamanga, winner of the 2020 Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa. John is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the South Rift Association of Land Owners (SORALO) — a collective of Maasai-owned group ranches that have come together to protect the free movement of people and wildlife in southern Kenya. He is a strong advocate for the preservation of open, fence-free landscapes for wildlife and the pastoral communities that SORALO supports. As Kenya’s population increases, and space for wild animals shrinks, he is determined to show that pastoralism can offer a mutually-beneficial solution.
Wilder’s Editor, Jan Fox, spoke to John about his conservation journey, SORALO’s work and the future of Kenya’s wild spaces.
Firstly, congratulations for winning the 2020 Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa. Tell me what it means to win such a prestigious award, and its significance more broadly for community-driven conservation?
It was a very interesting moment for me, but a tough one too. When I first heard that I had been nominated for the award, I was with my dad who was sick in hospital. He sadly passed on soon after, so I wasn’t excited about the award initially. And I didn’t actually think at the time that it was anything out of the ordinary. But then I was told that the nominees would be talking to Prince William directly. I didn’t know whether what we were going to say would be used to determine who wins. When the day of the ceremony came, and he was talking to the other nominees, I could tell that he had done his research, and my adrenaline was pumping. He then came to me, and my mind nearly went blank. But after about five minutes he announced that I was the winner, and my heart nearly stopped!
What that win really represents is an appreciation around the world of the communities that I work with, and a recognition that they are conservators. We have this idea of conservation, but what actually is it? The Maasai communities don’t interpret conservation in the same way that most of us do. They have no specific word for it, just a unified concept of managing their family, their herds, and the wild. Conservation isn’t a separate entity — it forms an integral part of their lifestyle.
SORALO’s approach is very much ‘inside-out’, in that it promotes traditional Maasai values and practices to reinforce the coexistence of people and wildlife across connected landscapes. What is it about Maa culture, in particular, that makes it effective as a system for communal resource management?
The Maasai have developed their lifestyle because they have lived in areas of hardship. They have a complete connection with the environment, and one of their main responsibilities is to take care of it. They humanise nature. For example, before they had any other explanation for it, they saw the sap of trees as milk or blood. The natural world is everything to them. It provides their food, their medicine and their building materials. Their main source of food is the milk and meat of a cow. As long as the cow survives, they survive. They also see value in nature. They know if an elephant brings down trees, it creates grasslands, which they need for their livestock. The ceremonies that I witnessed growing up really showed how connected these communities were to wildlife. As youngsters in some of the ceremonies we attended, we were required to kill birds or other small wildlife as trophies. But then we were cleansed of our sins. They believed that killing wildlife was a sin, a taboo. We couldn’t kill an animal for no reason, especially a young one or a female. The Maasai have been criminalised for killing lions, but it was a good culture. The warriors killed lions because they wanted to be identified as a celebrity, and to achieve that they had to come back with the biggest mane. Old male lions have big manes. Male lions are also pathetic hunters, and they rely on the females to survive. Cows are easy targets for them, so they often become problem animals. So every 5 to 10 years, with each warrior cycle, the Maasai culled them — which is something that is done today scientifically. What other system did they have beyond that?
The communities should not be criminalised because they did not understand the timing of their actions. It was something that happened very infrequently. Things can get out of hand, but that is not the desire of these communities. Their ways have not been explained to the world — it’s a spoken culture between generations. From the outside you see them killing a lion, but you don’t understand why that lion was killed.
The Tusk Awards are a celebration of great conservation leaders in Africa. Were there any leaders in your past who guided you on your own conservation journey?
My dad was the first to push me outside, making sure that I took care of the goats. At the time, that was the length that I understood that landscape. Did it mean much to me then? No. It was only when I got into the conservation world, and started to read science, that I could make the connection. So, in a way, my dad was my first conservation champion — although I didn’t call it conservation. I was a herder. The person who really encouraged me on my journey of conservation, how it is talked about globally, was David Western. I had heard that he was the Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, and that he was very interested at the time in community conservation. I finally got the chance to meet him, and he was very excited. He said he hadn’t been approached by a person from the community before to talk about conservation, and he agreed to work with me. It was around that time that the Shompole and Olkirimatian conservancies were established. This sparked excitement in the neighbouring communities, and the leaders suggested that I work with them too. That’s how SORALO was born.
But conservation came to me in many different ways. At the Tusk Awards ceremony, you may have seen me holding butterflies. As a youngster, I joined researchers who worked with insects. I used to go out with a net and collect butterflies, just to understand their different colours, shapes and mimicry. I became hooked. That led me to different forest habitats around Kenya. So butterflies enabled me to get into the conservation world without actually thinking about conservation.
How do you see the future for Maasai culture and pastoralism, considering the pressures in the South Rift of land fragmentation, climate change, industrial development and rural to urban migration?
We have an opportunity now to have dialogue, and to make sure that these communities continue to talk. Together they are very strong, but divided they are weak. The culture of the Maasai with a divided society has no future. Every culture is dynamic, so we expect them to evolve. But this dynamism doesn’t have to be destructive. When we started our conservation work, we realised that the Maasai culture is actually the pillar of conservation. If we can preserve a big portion of that culture, then I think we have 80% of the conservation story done. Today we have a great capital in their population and culture. If you lose the human capital, you have to put in the dollar capital. The pressures they face, though, are from beyond the communities. Land subdivision is driven by the offices in Nairobi. We as a society have grown very selfish, and it’s a result of our modern education system. You go to school to be number one, and to get your certificate. It’s all about you. The training we got from our traditional systems were more about the collective — the age set, the clan, the family. But today the Maasai are taking this selfish ideology home with them. They want farms, cows, cars — everything for themselves. When they subdivide and fill those spaces, the land becomes unproductive. So one thing we are trying to do is to educate the masses.
Two thirds of Kenya’s wildlife relies on open rangelands outside of government-run parks. What steps should the government take to support the traditional control and protection of wildlife?
The more we can convince communities to live communally, the better for the management of wildlife. Communities are not managing wildlife because they have been told to do so by the government, but for their own sake. Retaliation cases, where people kill animals that kill livestock, are higher in government-run parks than in the South Rift, where there are no protected areas at all. SORALO is encouraging more open spaces. The government has encouraged subdivision, but they don’t help communities to plan properly. If you insist on subdividing, you should allow for pathways for wildlife. So the government has pushed for people to get titles, but with little understanding of the impact this has on the mobility that these communities and wildlife rely on. All it does it escalate human-wildlife conflict.
Studies suggest that, over the past 40 years, livestock numbers have increased dramatically in Kenya’s rangelands, while wildlife populations have been on a sharp decline. Critics of pastoralism argue that the increase in livestock is driving a range of ecological issues, including overgrazing and the loss of plant diversity. How does SORALO’s approach mitigate these issues?
As far as I’m concerned, livestock numbers haven’t been increasing. In certain areas, like in the Maasai Mara, it may seem like numbers are increasing, but they are not. Instead, new conservancies are pushing livestock into concentrated areas. The conservation models in those areas are in themselves creating part of the problem. If you fly over the Mara at 2 pm, you’ll see a lot of cows in their kraals. There is no pastoral cow that past 10 am is still at home. But in the Mara, their space has been taken, so they have to go into the park illegally at night to feed. Pastoralists will never drop livestock for conservation. Never. I think there is space in this country for livestock production. But in communal areas, we cannot have more space that is solely for wildlife.
Finally, what are the benefits of conserving wild spaces, and how do you see the future of our wild spaces in Kenya?
In some of the areas where we work, Shompole and Olkirimatian, we get very excited because we employ a lot of people and distribute USD 100,000 as an annual income from tourism. Is that enough to make conservation happen? From what I have seen in those areas, what makes conservation happen is the money generated from livestock. It’s a livestock-support economy, rather than a wildlife-support economy. On a single day at the weekly Shompole Market, USD 200,000 exchanges hands. So the future of wildlife and wild spaces is pastoral production. If we disconnect those two things, we are in for a big surprise. Wildlife may be a secondary beneficiary, but that’s fine. For me, this is the only way. The conservation industry has been driven by tourism and dollars from outside the country. But then you get leaders like Trump, who don’t care about conservation, and crises like the coronavirus pandemic, and the industry suffers. So we need home-grown solutions, and they have to be compatible with the pastoral system. Over time, I think we will start to convince the masses. The problem is, how fast can we change, before it’s too late?
Head to soralo.org to find out more about John Kamanga’s work.
Photos by Guy Western // SORALO
