In the mid 19th century the Ahwahneechee,
a Native American tribe, was forcefully expelled from the Yosemite Valley a
landscape, which they had inhabited for over 200 generations. In October 1890,
Yosemite became a national park. This was the birth of the Yosemite model of
wildlife conservation. Like other American inventions, the Yosemite model has
been promoted with zeal across the world.
Over the past century African governments, often
enabled by European and North American wilderness romantics, have established over
1100 enclaves of protected areas; national parks and reserves, which play an
essential role in sequestering wildlife and core habitat components from grubby
human hands.
It is phenomenally admirable that total protected-area
coverage in Africa has increased nearly two-fold since 1970, and now cover circa
3.1 million square kilometers. Although the expansion of protected areas over
the last four decades is heartening their ability to maintain viable
populations of diverse wildlife species, over the long-term, is now threatened
by a combination of human-induced or anthropogenic factors, including naked
greed and natural factors, including climate change.
The effect of reserve isolation and
insularization on wildlife diversity and abundance is now grabbing significant
attention. Across Africa agriculture
land, urbanization and roads have chocked dispersal areas and migratory
corridors that hitherto enabled seasonal dispersal of wildlife across
contiguous requisite habitats. Today wildlife is sequestered and trapped in islands,
parks and reserves, which lack the requisite habitat resources – water,
vegetation, prey and refugia – to support viable populations, especially of
large mammals and associated predators.
Long-term data for 69 large mammal species
from 78 protected areas in Africa revealed a 59 percent decline in large mammal
population between 1970 and 2005. The impact of habitat loss on wildlife
populations is well documented in the Maasai Mara ecosystem. When wheat
cultivation in the Mara ecosystem expanded from about 4,900 hectares to over
50,000 hectares between 1970 and 19990, the total population of migratory large
mammals declined by circa 58 percent.
A recent study by J. Ogutu et al., published
in the Journal of Zoology analyzed trends in populations of seven ungulate
species in Maasai Mara between 1989 and 2003 based on monthly monitoring using
vehicle ground counts. The study revealed that the abundance of six of the
seven ungulate species declined markedly and persistently in the reserve over
the fifteen-year period. According to the study the declines happened
simultaneously with habitat degradation, land use change in adjacent pastoral
ranches, recurrent severe droughts and an exceptional El Nino flood in 1997/1998.
Are the chickens coming home to roost? Is
the paradox at the heart of the Yosemite model of conservation unraveling? In the face of irrevocable human induced land
use transformation and greed – urbanization, agricultural expansion, infrastructure
development and poaching as well the impact of climate change on habitat
quality – I am persuaded that a model of conservation based on the romantic
pre-human wilderness model has run its course. We must re-imagine a new conservation
model for a crowded planet, where majestic parks of yesteryears have become
glorified zoos.
I argue that a post-modern construct of
conservation must re-examine the Yosemite model of conservation predicated on
the bizarre notion of isolated patches of undisturbed wilderness, apart from
humans. Such a notion has no basis in sound ecosystem science. Conservation
must embrace a whole landscape based approach in which diverse wildlife species
and natural habitats are interconnected, resilient and integrated with
compatible human land use.
Connectivity among protected areas will enable
and sustain dynamic interactions among species and enable utilization of
ecological resources across large spatial scales, taking advantage of seasonal
variability of habitat resources. The challenge lies in negotiating access and incentivizing
change of user or buying back wildlife migration corridors or dispersal areas currently
under private ownership and incompatible use.
There is a great opportunity here to create the
largest and most lucrative ecosystem service market on the planet. Landowners
could be persuaded using financial incentives to individuals or associations of
landowners to offer their land for use as wildlife migration corridors. The
ecosystem service market could be developed further to enable trading of such
leases in national and international stock markets.
For the large and wide ranging mammals like the
elephant, which are already under intense human predation pressure, range
constriction and decline in habitat quality could trigger catastrophic
population collapse and extinction. Lack of good ecosystem science, not
poaching, is the greatest long-term threat to our wildlife.
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