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from entering the park. We had a classic example of environmental 

 stress, in this case a growing human population and inadequate 

 space or resources for dry-season grazing, forcing people, people 

 who were living on the edge of survival anyway, into critical wild- 

 life habitat. A good percentage of the locally available graze for 

 wildlife species was instead consumed by domestic animals. If I 

 could combine all of the environmental problems of Africa into one 

 case, this would come very close. 



We initially addressed the problem by appointing a Maasai 

 project officer to identify, along with the Kenyan Wildlife Conserva- 

 tion and Management Department, exactly who was grazing in the 

 park and how to encourage them to go elsewhere. Far from grand 

 schemes to share park receipts or the like, the first few years of 

 this involved sitting under a lot of trees and attending a lot of com- 

 munity meetings. We knew that without this gradual building of 

 a solid foundation, without gaining credibility and the confidence 

 of the Maasai, and showing them that the Kenyan Government 

 was committed to finding solutions, we had no hope of accomplish- 

 ing this program. We found, of course, as you always do that the 

 problem centered around much deeper issues, like the lack of ac- 

 cess to markets for Maasai sheep and goats, and government land- 

 use policies that threatened the traditional, community-oriented 

 ownership pattern. 



After establishing stable links with the community, through 

 Community Conservation Committees and key leaders, solutions 

 became easier to implement. It became possible to talk about tour- 

 ism in the area and to share the benefits. It became easier to find 

 markets for the livestock and to develop them. In the end, herders 

 in the park made a decision based on their own interest to move 

 their livestock. With the exception of an extremely dry season in 

 1991 and this past dry season, there have been no further problems 

 with livestock in the park. 



Now this was all before the current COBRA project began. These 

 simple, but profound, changes made it possible to think about 

 broader, policy-level issues and about how we could integrate them 

 into the Kenyan Government. With money from USAID, AWF, and 

 several other organizations, the Kenya Wildlife Service began a 5- 

 year push to create a community wildlife program. This came into 

 existence with the promise to share revenues with the neighboring 

 people to parks. How to accomplish this goal within a stable infra- 

 structure, with competing claims and rivalries between commu- 

 nities, were among the many hurdles that had to be met. Merely 

 distributing cash made little sense, since it would have been pro- 

 hibitively expensive to administer, and would have raised false and 

 conflicting hopes. In the end, with the assistance of a Maasai 

 project officer employed by AWF, all sides agreed to put the money 

 into community-suggested projects. Basic community development 

 work became tied to the success of the park. 



Now, with the new Community Wildlife Service, known as 

 Cobra, institutionalized within the Kenya Wildlife Service, we are 

 free to think about better revenue-sharing arrangements. We can 

 address the human issues behind wildlife decline as a matter of 

 routine business now. This is where we hoped we would be when 

 we started. 



