document for the wildlife query

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 <p>
   KITENGELA, Kenya _ On a clear day, Agnes Patita can see the
tourists in vans inching along dirt roads, searching the plains for
antelope, zebra, giraffe and, if they are lucky, an elusive pride
of lions.
</p><p>
   But the majestic cats the tourists pay to see are dangerous
pests to Mrs. Patita. Lions have killed more than 20 cattle here in
the last two months. On a recent night, two lions broke into the
Patitas' corral and killed 10 goats and sheep.
</p><p>
   ``The problem is they kill the livestock we depend on for school
fees, for food, for everything,'' Mrs. Patita said. ``The tourists
don't understand. They travel in cars. They don't live the way we
live.''
</p><p>
   The clash between farmers and lions in Kitengela reflects a
growing conflict between people and wild animals in this East
African country that conservationists say poses a serious threat to
the survival of wildlife.
</p><p>
   Over the last 20 years, aerial surveys show, Kenya's wildlife
has been disappearing steadily as the country's human population
expands and farmers encroach on lands that were once wild. At the
same time, small-scale poaching for meat by Kenya's impoverished
rural people has also increased, conservationists say.
</p><p>
   Although Kenya sets aside 8 percent of its land for national
parks, the protected areas are not large enough to accommodate the
animals' migration.
</p><p>
   At any given time, most of the animals are not within the parks,
and so they trespass on increasingly crowded farmland.
</p><p>
   Since 1977, when hunting was made illegal here, at least 40
percent of the range animals have disappeared from Kenya's
savannahs _ a drop of at least 412,000 animals _ and they are
continuing to disappear at a rate of 2 percent to 3 percent a year,
according to an analysis of government surveys.
</p><p>
   For some species _ the Thomson's gazelle, the waterbuck, the
greater kudu, the oryx and the elephant _ the declines have been
steeper, far above 50 percent.
</p><p>
   Kenya's creeping ecological debacle has set off a strenuous
debate among ranchers, scientists, conservationists and small
farmers over how to reverse the trend.
</p><p>
   One camp, led by the current director of the Kenya Wildlife
Service, David Western, wants to find ways to make wildlife
profitable for local people and give them a reason to protect the
animals.
</p><p>
   Another, led by the former head of the wildlife service, Richard
Leakey, argues that Kenya should instead fence off wild lands, more
strictly enforce anti-poaching laws and, in essence, give up on
trying to stop the decline of wildlife elsewhere.
</p><p>
   Ranchers, meanwhile, argue that they have the right to use the
wildlife on their lands, so they will have a financial interest in
maintaining them. Under current Kenyan law, the state owns all
wildlife, and it is illegal to sell or hunt them without a permit.
Giving landowners custody would open the door to profitable
ventures like sport hunting and exporting animals to zoos and game
reserves.
</p><p>
   For Kenya the stakes in the debate are extremely high. The
country's beauty and picturesque wildlife are among its few natural
resources. Along with beaches and coral reefs on the coast, the
African wildlife attracts tourists who spend about $400 million a
year, the largest single earner of foreign exchange.
</p><p>
   But most of those earnings never find their way into the pockets
of small farmers and herders who must put up with the destruction
wild animals cause on their lands.
</p><p>
   Conservationists like Western are encouraging farmers and
ranchers to pool their lands, open private game parks and get into
the tourist business themselves. These projects are already
operating in a half-dozen Kenyan communities, and plans have been
drawn up for 30 more.
</p><p>
   ``If you want to preserve the wildlife, you have to find a way
to make money on it,'' said Nicholas Georgiadis, an ecologist who
heads the private Mpala Research Center in Laikipia. ``Can you
create a balance where the wildlife creates enough income so that
people want to maintain it?''
</p><p>
   nn
</p><p>
   The projects that have succeeded, like the Il Ngwezi Sanctuary
in Samburu district, have done so because a small number of
families have shared in the profits and because they have received
financial help and training from international conservation
organizations.
</p><p>
   In other places, though, the slim revenues from the sanctuaries
have been either spread too thinly among the owners of the land or
skimmed off by corrupt local officials. Some of the sanctuaries
also lack trained managers capable of running a successful tourist
resort.
</p><p>
   ``Patience will run out unless these newly introduced forms of
land use can see tangible benefits,'' said Nehemiah Rotich,
chairman of the East Africa Wildlife Society. ``They would like to
see wildlife making money.''
</p><p>
   But Leakey argues that such projects will never succeed on a
scale large enough to save wildlife. He and other conservationists
maintain it is a pipe dream to think such schemes can reverse the
underlying causes of the decline. Not only is there a human
population explosion coupled with little arable land, but Kenya has
no comprehensive land-use plan that would zone land for wildlife,
agriculture and cattle.
</p><p>
   ``We have to deal with the fact that we have islands of
wildlife,'' Leakey said. ``What we need is the political leadership
to say we need these parks intact. The antagonism to wildlife can
be dealt with as the antagonism to tax collectors is dealt with.''
</p><p>
   In 1946 when the first park, Nairobi National Park, was
established, there were only 5 million people living in Kenya.
</p><p>
   Now there are 30 million trying to eke out a living on the same
land, and only about a fifth of the country receives enough
rainfall to raise cash crops.
</p><p>
   In the last 20 years, tens of thousands of people have migrated
into lands not suitable for farming throughout Kenya. These farmers
have plowed under and overgrazed buffer zones around parks and
reserves that the animals must use as dispersal areas during wet
seasons, wildlife officials say. Wild lands in Kenya have been
disappearing at a rate of 2 percent a year, they said.
</p><p>
   Impoverished people, many facing extreme hunger because they are
trying to farm in arid regions not suitable for crops, have poached
thousands of animals for food.
</p><p>
   While the government's anti-poaching efforts, begun in the late
1980s, dramatically slowed down the wholesale slaughter of
elephants and rhinoceroses in the last eight years, the local
police have done little or nothing to stop a burgeoning underground
trade in bush meat, conservationists say.
</p><p>
   ``It's totally illegal, but everyone's doing it,'' said Rob
Barnett, of Traffic, an environmental organization that has just
completed a study showing the trade in bush meat is thriving in
Kenya. ``The law-enforcement people aren't enforcing the laws.''
</p><p>
   Perhaps the most extensive clash between man and beast has taken
place in the Taita Hills, a range of mountains sandwiched like a
peninsula of humanity between the western and eastern halves of the
Tsavo park.
</p><p>
   Competition for land over the last 25 years has forced tens of
thousands of Taita people, who in the past lived on the fertile
slopes of the mountains, to move down onto the rangelands below, an
arid savannah that was carved up into large communal ranches for
cattle grazing in the 1960s. These migrants have splintered much of
the ranchland into smaller farms, and they have run into constant
battles with elephants, lions and buffaloes.
</p><p>
   At the park headquarters near the town of Voi, Crisant Mueme is
a ranger whose job is smoothing out the park's ruffled relations
with farmers.
</p><p>
   He and his colleagues keep a dog-eared log book that reads like
a police blotter in a big city, except the criminals are all
animals. One night a lion takes 10 goats. On another an elephant
tramples a man coming home from a bar. Nine people are injured
chasing buffaloes from their fields. There are pages and pages of
entries about zebras, elephants and buffaloes destroying crops.
</p><p>
   In 1997 alone, there were 87 reports of elephants trampling
crops and two people were killed by the mammoth animals. Rangers
were forced to kill three rogue elephants over the same period.
</p><p>
   ``We are trying to educate the community about the importance of
wildlife and how we can benefit from it,'' Mueme said. ``They are
listening to us, but it takes time.''
</p><p>
   One place where animals have wreaked havoc is the Mramba Group
Ranch, a 30,000-acre piece of land right on the border of the
western half of Tsavo park.
</p><p>
   Last year, two people were trampled to death by elephants in
Mramba, Mueme said. Farmers there report constant problems, mostly
lions killing cattle and elephants eating crops. An electric fence
has been erected around the parts of the ranch under cultivation.
But the animals are already finding ways around it, local officials
say.
</p><p>
   Despite these problems, the governors of Mramba ranch have asked
permission from the wildlife service to set up a game sanctuary,
hoping to cash in on the tourists visiting Tsavo park and a second
private sanctuary in Taita run by Hilton Hotels.
</p><p>
   ``We have lived along with the wildlife, but we haven't
benefited from it,'' said Richard Mwambili, a member of the
governing committee of the ranch. Mwambili said the ranch does not
yet have the resources to build roads and lodges needed to attract
tourists. Though 15 camp scouts have been trained by the wildlife
service, they remain idle, he said.
</p><p>
   The delay has frustrated many residents. To overtake what the
ranch can now make from cattle, Mwambili said the sanctuary would
have to make more than $300,000 a year from tourism, and it will
take several years to build up a steady stream of tourists.
</p><p>
   ``I'm going to be the manager,'' he said. ``But I'm not managing
anything at the moment.''
</p><p>
   Still, many farmers in Mramba say they are willing to give the
sanctuary a chance, despite their long-running war with wildlife.
</p><p>
   Jacob Nzalu, 24, is typical of some of the young residents who
support the idea. He has been trying to squeeze a living out of 20
acres of arid land his father gave him four years ago, but now he
has signed up for a job as a scout in the future sanctuary. ``The
tourists are not coming to see us,'' he said. ``They are coming to
see the animals. They will be our business. In this region we can't
rely on rainfall. This is a semi-arid area.''
</p><p>
   Even some of the older farmers in Mramba support the idea.
Mwamburi Mwikamba, for instance, said he was staking his future on
the sanctuary, even though his pregnant wife was killed in 1991 as
she tried to scare elephants away from their cornfields. One of his
employees was killed by an elephant last year.
</p><p>
   ``The animals are not good, and they are not bad,'' Mwikamba
said. ``If the game sanctuary is put up at Mramba, some of my own
children might be employed there. If the tourists come, the money
from tourism might help sending our children to school.''
</p><p>
   Unfortunately for park officials, only three of the 28 community
ranches in Taita have accepted the notion of tourism as an
alternative to agriculture, wildlife officials say.
</p><p>
   More than half are considering parceling out the rangelands to
individual families for farms, despite the constant threat of
drought. It is a formula wildlife officials maintain would mean
losing more vital dispersal areas and migratory paths for animals.
</p><p>
   In all, 58 percent of the animal population of Tsavo, some
106,600 individual animals, vanished between 1973 and 1993, said
Mohammed Dhidha, the regional biodiversity coordinator in Tsavo.
Some species, like the black rhinoceros and the Hirola antelope,
are near extinction. Others, like the lesser kudu, have experienced
a 90 percent drop since the 1970s.
</p><p>
   ``Nothing short of a land-use policy by the government will stop
this,'' said James Ndungu, a wildlife official in charge of
community coordination.
</p>