Lion / spotted hyena national strategy stakeholders workshop.

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) will host a national stakeholders’ workshop to formulate a national conservation strategy for lions and spotted hyenas from 18th to 20th February 2008 at KCCT, Mbagathi, and Nairobi.

The workshop will be attended by wildlife biologists (government and private), wildlife managers (government and private), local people, conservation NGO’s, IUCN chairs of Cat and Hyena Specialist Groups, lion experts, and others with a professional interest in lion management issues.

Threatened species need coordinated action to ensure their future survival. KWS identified the need for national species conservation strategies to ensure attention is focused especially on threatened species.

Consequently, the State agency established the Department of Species Conservation and Management to promote threatened species conservation planning and conservation initiatives.

Establishing capacity for participative conservation planning for threatened species is a vital step towards the wider goal to conserve wildlife in Kenya. Hence the need to need to mobilise stakeholders to assist in formulation of national species conservation strategies to guide efforts to conserve these species.

Workshop Rationale
Large carnivores are declining throughout the world and Kenya’s carnivores are no exception. Both globally and within Kenya, human encroachment is the major force driving these declines, restricting predators and their prey into smaller habitat fragments and driving people and predators into closer contact, hence, into conflict.

Despite their reduced populations, large carnivores still cause problems for pastoralists and farmers and, for conservation managers. Predation on livestock by large carnivores is a serious problem – first, because it can have a major impact upon the livelihoods of pastoralists and farmers, and, second, because it leads to the killing of large carnivores, many of which are species of local or international conservation concern.

Lions also play a critical role in Kenya’s tourism industry for lion presence in an area is considered an indicator of its wild and natural integrity. The lion is thus one of the flagship species of Kenya for research and tourism, and indeed one of the BIG FIVE.

However, the African lion is classified as vulnerable by IUCN. The world population is declining. Lions have been extirpated from at least 30 per cent of their historical range in Eastern and Southern Africa and Kenya’s lions are no exception. As often is the case in conservation, there is limited data on status, population trend, and ecology. However, Kenya’s national population of lions was estimated at 2,749 in 2002 and 2,280 in 2004.

Despite their declining numbers, lions are a serious threat to livestock, taking cattle as well as smaller stock. Their large size and aggressive demeanour allow them to stampede cattle out of bomas, and also make them difficult for people to chase away.

In Laikipia, for instance, lions are the most important predator of livestock on commercial ranches.

In addition, there is a small amount of indirect evidence to implicate lion predation in local declines of prey species of conservation concern, such as Grevy’s zebra, bongo and Lelwel hartebeest.

Spotted hyenas occur in most of Kenya’s parks. Spotted hyenas are disliked in community areas where they are often the most serious predators of livestock. They are very susceptible to poisoning and slow to recover in areas from which they have been extirpated. Hence, their numbers are severely depleted outside protected areas. Their limited ability to recover in areas where they have been extirpated makes spotted hyenas particularly reliant on conservation efforts.

Apparently, spotted hyena predation has also been blamed for declines of Lelwel hartebeest and also for low recruitment in some rhino populations, although there is currently no direct evidence for hyenas’ role in either decline.

The importance of these conservation challenges facing lions and spotted hyenas is increasingly recognized in conservation circles.

However, few solutions have been developed, and management policies are lacking in the vast majority of affected regions, Kenya included.
KWS recognises an urgent need to resolve these problems. In response, the KWS established a large carnivore task force to advice, among other issues, on the development and implementation of a new national strategy for large carnivore conservation.

The broad strategy has since been formulated and approved the KWS Board of Trustees to provide the philosophical background to large carnivore conservation and set the stage for the formulation of detailed national conservation strategies which address the needs of each of the species of large carnivores in Kenya.

This process has started with the development of a national strategy for cheetah and wild dog conservation which is currently undergoing peer review before it can be adopted for implementation.

The regional lion conservation strategy for Eastern and Southern Africa developed last year provides a baseline upon which we can domesticate it for Kenya, especially considering that lion range countries are obligated to formulate national lion strategies drawing from the regional one.

We lack a similar precedent for spotted hyenas, such that lions and spotted hyenas are at different stages in conservation planning.

But the invitation of stakeholders with vast experience in strategic planning for species to the workshop will be handy in this undertaking.

Expected outputs
The stakeholders are expected to engage in deliberations to develop a vision, goal and strategic objectives for the strategy.

The workshop will also provide an opportunity to update numbers and distribution of lions, and spotted hyenas as well as incorporate the inputs and views of stakeholders regarding the conservation of both species. Activities, indicators and timelines will be outlined against each strategic objective. Timelines for finalizing, launching and implementing the strategy and an implementation structure will also be developed.

In the final analysis, the strategy should aim to achieve:

1. numerically viable and ecologically functional populations of lions and spotted hyenas in Kenya
2. numerically viable and ecologically functional populations of key wild prey species
3. a declining proportion of livestock killed by lions and spotted hyenas
4. mechanisms for local people to receive benefits from hosting lions, spotted hyenas and their prey