Discussion has begun on how best to improve the economic, social and environmental outcomes of the recently launched Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor to make it a success and support the delivery of Vision 2030.

A meeting of interested stakeholders convened to discuss the LAPSSET corridor: preliminary analysis of risks and opportunities noted that “ …ninety percent of the LAPSSET corridor goes through arid and semi-arid lands, which are important areas for livestock production, tourism, biodiversity conservation, and cultural heritage. However, the feasibility study doesn’t give the full impact of the LAPSSET corridor on livestock and wildlife mobility or on water and pasture competition despite the fact that these issues already trigger deadly clashes between various communities….”

Due to a focus on a single component of Vision 2030, the LAPSSET corridor is currently undermining other objectives of Vision 2030. For example, it lays emphasize in promoting tourism in Kenya therefore it requires the improvement of tourism infrastructure and demands the securing of migratory corridors., The LAPSSET corridor traverses wildlife corridors which Vision 2030 is striving to achieve. It should attempt to balance the infrastructural objectives and tourism growth while minimizing impact on biodiversity. Such a multi-faceted approach to increasing Kenya’s economic growth ideally starts with an informed debate on the economic, social and environmental risks and opportunities related to the LAPSSET.

The LAPSSET corridor is one of the flagship projects of Kenya’s Vision 2030 whose objectives are “to improve access and connectivity between Kenya, Southern Sudan and Ethiopia as well as to stimulate economic activity in the Northern and Eastern parts of Kenya”.

The new Constitution of Kenya provides the legal framework for ensuring informed and participatory decision-making around development infrastructure like the LAPSSET corridor. In addition, Kenya has the data and expertise to inform discussions about the LAPSSET with its regular economic survey conducted by Kenya Bureau of Statistics or the thirty (30) years of information on region gathered by the Department of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing (DRSRS).

So far, however, the lack of meaningful stakeholder engagement has already resulted in court actions and the feasibility study hasn’t demonstrated an understanding of the context in which the LAPSSET is taking place.

The corridor presents a unique opportunity for the Northern and Eastern parts of Kenya to lay the ground for sustainable development. It will rectify a lack of accessibility to local, regional and international markets and will bring much needed investment in these regions. To be successful in the long-term, however, a project of such magnitude requires relevant information to be made available and debated by the various stakeholders.

The meeting was attended by stakeholder organisations involved in promoting rangeland livelihoods and conservation, among others the Kenya Rangeland Coalition, the International Livestock Research Institute and the East African Wildlife Society. These organisations are looking forward to collaborating with others and the project developers to realize the potential of the LAPSSET corridor.

Filed under: Africa, Article, Biodiversity, CRP11, Drought, Drylands, Event, ILRI, Kenya, Livestock, Pastoralism, PLE, Vulnerability Tagged: Biodiversity, drought, East Africa, environment, ILRI, Kenya, Maasai, natural resource management, pastoral communities, PLE, rangelands

Ninety six dairy farmers (96) among them 44 females have been trained on “Feeding strategies to improve dairy production in Samastipur District of Bihar”. The one-day training programme was organised by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners of Bihar, India.

The main purpose of the training held March 30, 2012 was to create awareness among milk producing communities about the importance of a balanced ration feeding to dairy cattle. The farmers were introduced to the nutritive quality of locally available feeds and fodders and the proper utilization to improve the production of dairy cattle.

Most of the dairy farmers of this region have been utilizing one or two home-made feed ingredients as concentrate to feed dairy cattle along with wheat bhusa/chaffed paddy straw and green fodder to some extent. Only farmers with a strong financial background are using commercial marketed concentrate mixture.

Dr. S. P. Sahu, Consultant of ILRI discussed the protein, energy, minerals, salt and vitamins requirements of dairy cows so as achieve an adequate amount for efficient milk production and better reproductive efficiency. He stressed that high quality forage complemented with balanced concentrate mixtures made of locally available feed ingredients helps improve the quality of milk.

Many dairy farmers who took part in previous feeding trials shared their experiences and benefits with the participants. A demonstration session following the training helped the dairy farmers to learn how to prepare the balanced concentrate mixture manually using locally available feed ingredients at cheapest cost without compromising the nutritive quality of concentrate mixtures.

The training was oganised under the Cereal System Initiative South Asia (CSISA) project which seeks to decrease hunger and malnutrition and to increase food and income security of resource-poor farm families in South Asia through the accelerated development and inclusive deployment of new varieties, sustainable management technologies, and policies.

The projects’ key objectives are the widespread delivery and adaptation of production and post-harvest technologies to increase cereal production and raise incomes; crop and resource management practices for sustainable future cereal-based systems and introduction of high-yielding, abiotic stress-tolerant, and disease- and insect-resistant rice and wheat varieties and hybrids for current and future cereal and mixed crop-livestock systems.

Other aims include introduction of high-yielding, heat-tolerant and disease-resistant maize inbred lines and hybrids for current and future cereal and mixed crop-livestock systems, technology targeting and improved policies for inclusive agricultural growth and the creation of a new generation of scientists and professional agronomists for cereal systems research and management.

Partners in the project are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development and the International Rice Research Institute.

Filed under: Animal Feeding, Article, Asia, Crop Residues, CRP37, Dairying, Event, ILRI, PLE, South Asia Tagged: environment, ILRI, livestock, PLE

The Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa (ASARECA) leads several of its partners in a two day meeting to discuss how best to engage with policy making in its member countries.

The two day consultative meeting which starts in Entebbe today brings together people of varying backgrounds ranging from policy makers to researchers and communicators who interface with policy makers and recipients of policy.

“As part of our continuous growth, ASARECA is considering how to be more effective at influencing policy implementation at the national and regional levels…. This is based on the track record to date and projected increase in number of technologies and innovations that are already available and also under development, which will only be useful to end users if they adopt them”, said Michael Waithaka, ASARECA’S Manager, Policy Analysis and Advocacy Programme (PAAP).

He said recent reviews of ASARECA’s work had recommended more policy engagement and that the present effort was aimed at delivering a strategic note on how ASARECA will operationalize its advocacy strategy to get more engaged with implementation of policy agreements by member countries.
The PAAP project is expected to deliver policy options and advocacy strategies for enhancing the performance of the agricultural sector, strengthen capacity for carrying out policy research and enhance the availability of policy information on agricultural sector performance.

These results require the programme to work towards ensuring such outputs actually result in policy reform. To this end, PAAP has several projects organised around its four thematic areas which are: Rationalisation and harmonisation of policies, laws and regulations in key agricultural commodity and input sectors in the Eastern and Central Africa region; Trends analysis; Policy issues for natural resource management and Options and opportunities for small-scale agricultural growth.

Some of the questions that participants will discuss include how can ASARECA communicate to high level policy makers to ensure the message is understood and implemented? what can be done differently in order to get that level of attention so that the policy options can be adopted and implemented by countries?

Filed under: Africa, Article, East Africa, Ethiopia, ILRI, Kenya, PLE, Tanzania Tagged: ASARECA, ecosystem, environment, ILRI, natural resource management

On behalf of the CGIAR, ILRI will host a technical consortium to support a new initiativesseeking to develop long-term resilience to drought in the arid and semi-arid zones of the Horn of Africa. This initiative has been recently launched by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and its member states.

The technical consortium brings together all CGIAR centres plus other research and non-governmental organization partners. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Investment Centre provides support on developing investment plans.  They will over a one and a half year period draw up a program of work that will support technical and investment support to IGAD and the national governments in the greater horn of Africa.

‘The objective of the interventions at both regional and national levels is to sustainably improve livelihoods and enhance resilience to external shocks within the pastoral communities in the drylands and stimulate economic transformation’, said Polly Ericksen ILRI’s representative in the discussions.

Dedicated teams will be established in each country and for the IGAD secretariat to ensure continuity and consistency in the investment design process. These teams will contribute to the preparation, pre-appraisal and appraisal processes to ensure technical quality of proposed investment programmes. The technical consortium will promote collective and harmonized approaches to the different country and regional investment programmes.

The research and technical centres will contribute to action-oriented research analyses and implementation plans for development interventions while the FAO Investment Centre will provide assistance in investment programming work. The work will also support the development of the IGAD Regional the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which is itself a program of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

The Horn of Africa is known for its harsh and often prolonged droughts that threaten the lives of millions including children, women and the livestock on which the people are dependent for their livelihoods. ILRI through the People, livestock and environment theme has invested heavily in drylands research especially through the team Reducing vulnerability of livestock-based livelihoods, ecosystem goods & services in pastoral and agropastoral Systems. 

Filed under: Africa, Article, Drought, Drylands, East Africa, Ethiopia, ILRI, Kenya, PLE, Tanzania Tagged: East Africa, environment, livelihoods, natural resource management, pastoral communities, PLE

Shem Kifugo; ILRI's Geographic information systems analyst, facilitated water users workshop

As the world celebrates World Water Day today, soil erosion, siltation and planting of eucalyptus trees near rivers remain some of the pressing issues affecting water users in Northern Kenya.

At a workshop of Water Resource Users Associations (WRUA’s) of the Ewaso N’giro catchment area, held in March 2012, water users outlined these as some of the critical issues affecting them. The main aim of the workshop was to bring together all the officials of WRUA’s in the area to discuss water management and sharing because all the WRUA’s are inter-related geographically. The workshop was organised by the Centre for Training and Integrated Research in ASAL Development (CETRAD), one of ILRI’s partners in the Arid and Semi arid (ASALs) districts.

Other issues that threaten water users are practicing agriculture and fish farming in the common water intake areas of Ewaso N’giro catchment area in northern Kenya. This is compounded by political interference such as people invading natural swamps for purposes of farming with the help of local administrators. As is often the case in such situations, those lower downstream experience the greatest effects of the activities taking place upstream.

The Ewaso N’giro catchment, the largest in Kenya, covers two thirds of the country and is subdivided into 5 sub-catchment areas namely Upper Ewaso, Middle Ewaso, North Ewaso Laggas, Engare Narok Meighis and Ewaso Daua. It consists of 61 WRUA’s.

During the workshop ILRI’s Shem Kifugo, a GIS analyst, distributed the report and maps of the project entitled: Mapping and Valuing Ecosystem Services in the Ewaso Ng’iro Watershed. The project compiled and mapped existing data regarding key inter-related ASAL ecosystem services (water, biomass, livestock, wildlife, irrigated crops). The economic value of these services was then estimated based on their quantity and demand and finally the impact of climate change predictions on crop conditions and surface water hydrology was assessed.

This project was undertaken in realisation of the fact that the Ministry of Development of Nothern Kenya and other Arid Lands (MDNKOAL) faces a big challenge in managing the use of land and water in the ASALs. Both are the major limiting factors in in improving standards of living in the ASALs.

The report, Mapping and Valuing Ecosystem Services in the Ewaso Ng’iro Watershed is authored by Ericksen, P.J.; Said,M.Y.; De Leeuw,J.; Silvestri, S.; Zaibet, L.; Kifugo,S.C.; Sijmons,K.; Kinoti,J.; Ng’ang’a, L.; F. Lansberg, F.; Stickler, M.  Partners in the project were  World Resources Institute, CETRAD and Danida.  Read the report here

Filed under: Biodiversity, Climate Change, CRP11, CRP7, Drylands, ILRI, Kenya, Livestock, PLE Tagged: East Africa, ecosystem, environment, ILRI, natural resource management, PLE

As part of an inter-regional study ‘optimizing benefits from crop residues in smallholder crop-livestock systems in Africa and South Asia’ sponsored by the CGIAR Systemwide Livestock Programme, the International Livestock Research Institute recently published a project report from the Ethiopia site.

Entitled ‘Optimizing livelihood and environmental benefits from crop residues in smallholder crop–livestock systems in western Oromia’, it reports from a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) study to assess overall trends and prospects for crop–livestock production, characterize crop residue transactions, and identify major determinants of crop residue use.

The authors conclude that almost all farmers in the study areas follow crop–livestock mixed farming. Results indicate that crop residues are becoming an increasingly important production component and play an important role mainly as feed, fuel, sources of income and for soil nutrient management. However, the current trend towards increased feeding of crop residues to livestock has long term implications for soil fertility and hence local livelihoods.

Download the paper

Filed under: Africa, Animal Feeding, Crop Residues, Crop-Livestock, East Africa, Ethiopia, ILRI, Intensification, PLE Tagged: SLP

Peter Thorne has joined ILRI as a crop livestock systems scientist. He is part of the People Livestock and Environment theme based in Addis Ababa and is expected to relocate to Zimbabwe in mid-2012.

Peter was until his appointment with ILRI, responsible for the national dairy benchmarking service in Britain. He has had a long career in international agriculture since conducting his Ph.D research at the Universities of Nottingham and in the Philippines at Los Banos.

He has been involved in livestock production systems research, particularly in the areas of crop livestock interactions, feed evaluation and the development of novel approaches to information delivery.

‘ We are working with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and national partners to develop a project that will contribute to improved food security in Zimbabwe. The project aims to promote more efficient crop-livestock integration’, he said in an interview.

The widely-travelled father of three looks forward to relocating to Zimbabwe after living for 20 years in North Wales, United Kingdom. His wife Clare and their teen-age children daughter Shona and son Seumas (pronounced Shamaus) will join him in Zimbabwe before settling in to a new school term in August. Their eldest daughter Hanna is studying for her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at Manchester University, UK.

Peter enjoys mountaineering, cycling and outdoor pursuits in general while Clare loves horses. ‘I wonder whether she will bring some down to Harare or she will buy one when we get there’, he says rather pensively.

Filed under: Africa, Article, Crop-Livestock, CRP12, Forages, ILRI, Livestock Challenges, PLE, Southern Africa, Staff Tagged: environment, ILRI, natural resource management

Didier Zida, a post-doctoral scientist has returned to Burkina Faso following a six- month stint with ILRI’s People, Livestock and Environment theme in Nairobi.

Zida, returned to INERA after six months with PLE

Zida is also working with PLE to implement the Livelihood diversifying potential of livestock based carbon sequestration options in pastoral and agro pastoral systems in Africa project. He said at the farewell party that the opportunity given to him by ILRI along with other collaborators to undertake his post-doctoral research within the ILRI scientific community was immeasurable.

He came to ILRI knowing nothing about geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing, yet his research demanded dealing with these two methods endlessly. As he left ILRI, Zida was a GIS and remote sensing specialist, and that expertise will certainly benefit his future research work.

In spite of limited time, he was able to apply himself to his work and to forge good relationships with other ILRI members.

‘I believe these networks are a basis for future collaboration. I look forward to collaborating with the PLE team while implementing the livelihood diversification project’, he said.

He hopes that the collaboration between ILRI and the institution he is affiliated to (the Institute of Environment and Agricultural Research – INERA) and such exchange training programs will continue in the future.

Filed under: Africa, Article, Biodiversity, CRP11, Drylands, Forages, ILRI, Kenya, Pastoralism, PLE, Vulnerability Tagged: Biodiversity, climate change, environment, ILRI, natural resource management, PLE

Chancellor Angela Merkel when she launched the Conservancies project in 2011 at ILRI

Wildlife conservancies will today come under scrutiny in a workshop to discuss wildlife tourism as a response to climate change. The workshop is organized under the auspices of the Enabling livestock based economies in Kenya to adapt to climate change: A Review of payment for ecosystem services from wildlife tourism as a climate change adaptation option.

It will examine through an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) the viability of emerging conservancies within and around the protected parks in arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs). Participants will also discuss policy options that either support or regress the development of conservancies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Pastoral societies are vulnerable to climate change because they inhabit drylands with repetitive drought and often have an insufficient financial buffer to absorb the shocks that droughts create. Conservancies are seen as one way to adapt to this climate variability as they provide diversification of the income portfolio into activities less prone to drought. This source of income may potentially increase the resilience of pastoral societies to climate change.

In addition, in some instances, conservancies also allow for the maintenance of open rangelands under a changing land tenure system that leads to fragmentation. Open rangelands are critical for mobility for pastoralists and their livestock especially during drought periods.

Recently, in many parts of Kenya community based conservancies have been developed, where land is managed by pastoralists to promote both wildlife and livestock to attract tourists and generate revenue.

The community based conservancy model is often highlighted for its potential to strengthen resilience of pastoral communities to climate change. However, it is unclear what the effect is on household income, and how the income generated affects the resilience to climate change. Resilience of household income to climate change also depends on equitable distribution of PES revenue, yet, there is little insight on the equity of access to benefits derived.

The study which has brought together researchers with expertise in development economics and ecosystem services respectively from ILRI, the University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart) and the Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg will today be complemented by practitioners including government workers, non-governmental agency workers, private partners knowledgeable about conservancies and representatives of pastoral communities based around the conservancies.

This project is sponsored by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany and was officially launched by Chancellor Angela Merkel, when she visited ILRI in 2011.

More ASALs policy briefs click here for ILRI/EU Decision Support tool and here for ILRI/ASARECA Biodiversity case studies

Filed under: Biodiversity, Climate Change, CRP11, Drought, ILRI, Kenya, Pastoralism, PLE, Tanzania, Vulnerability, Wildlife Tagged: climate change, East Africa, environment, ILRI, Kenya, natural resource management, pastoralism, rangelands

Environmental Permanent Secretary Mr Ali Mohammed

The Permanent Secretary in Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, Mr Ali Mohammed (EBS) will on Tuesday 14th February 2012 give the opening address at a policy workshop hosted by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Mr Mohammed was recently elected as Vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The IPBES is a mechanism being set up to further strengthen the science-policy interface on biodiversity and ecosystem services. It is expected to enhance the existing processes that aim at ensuring that decisions are made on the basis of the best available scientific information on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The main aim of the workshop is to engage stakeholders from grassroots users through to national and international policymakers/practitioners, entrepreneurs, and scientists working on issues related to the Biodiversity, Ecosystem services, Social sustainability and Tipping points in African Dry lands (BEST) project. It is managed in collaboration with The African Technology Policy Studies Network, the Institute of Zoology, London, University College London, UCL, Anthropology (East African dry lands societies, livelihoods and NRM institutions) will host a one-day Policymaker, Practitioner and Community User Workshop. BEST is run by the People Livestock and Environment (PLE) theme in ILRI.

BEST targets to provide awareness into the poverty and environment impacts of different policies on tenure and natural resources management, as is incorporated at household decisions. The outcomes are intended to be used by national and international policymakers at all levels who have responsibility for planning and budgeting, climate change adaptation programmes, and donor-funded interventions. The stakeholders comprise of national and international interest groups (including responsible investors). The envisioned beneficiaries are the local users who are mostly the residents in the dry lands; BEST has the intentions to improve their livelihoods and environments and also make them more resilient and sustainable.

The workshop will be held at ILRI, Nairobi on 14 February 2012. BEST researchers will present project aims and approach, preliminary work completed to date, and plans for subsequent work, soliciting feedback on all elements of the project during the workshop.

The BEST research collaboration brings together international partners, social and natural scientists; specialists in ecology, economics and anthropology, in geographic information systems (GIS) and in modelling. Others are communications and research management experts, to help create an integrated approach to addressing central issues in African dry lands ecosystem services and poverty alleviation.

Project partners include TAWIRI, ASARECA, ESRC-STEPS and many others contributing data and insights, sharing and enhancing the networking potential in both consultation/feedback and dissemination of findings.

Filed under: Article, Biodiversity, Climate Change, CRP11, Drought, Drylands, Event, ILRI, Kenya, Livestock, PLE, Project Tagged: ASARECA, Biodiversity, climate change, drought, East Africa, environment, ILRI, Kenya, livelihoods, natural resource management, pastoral communities, PLE, rangelands

Ogutu: warming is a threat to biodiversity

Warmer temperatures and drier weather conditions have significantly affected the composition of wildlife in Kenya’s Lake Nakuru National Park, situated in the heart of the Rift Valley, states a new study published on January 28, 2012. The Nakuru region has experienced perhaps one of the fastest warming rates in the region in the past half a century.

This, associated with human encroachment around Kenya’s first fully fenced-protected park, has seen the numbers of two wildlife species plummet to levels that now threaten their future population viability in the park although, surprisingly, the park continues to hold a high level of biodiversity including the world famous flamingos.

The trends of nine (9) most common herbivore species were studied in the 41 years from 1970 to 2011. The study found that the waterbuck, once a flagship species whose population density in the park was the highest known anywhere until the mid 1990s, has lost its position of dominance to buffalo and zebra, while Grant’s gazelle and impala at first increased and then gradually declined. Both the waterbuck and warthog decreased in numbers to levels that now threaten their very survival in the park while the buffalo, zebra and Thomson’s gazelle continued to thrive. Populations of the other three common species were relatively stable.

The crash of the waterbuck population following the 1990 drought is attributed to competition for forage between waterbuck, on the one hand, and buffalo and zebra, on the other. There are extensive overlaps in the forage consumed by the three species but waterbuck select a diet far richer in crude protein and thus requires plenty of water to excrete the nitrogenous waste in urine. It therefore has a much higher minimum requirement of water than most African ungulates.

Waterbuck crashes, duickers disappear

Consequently, as more animals seek to feed around the lake shore during dry periods, the forage gets depleted faster and selective feeders like the waterbuck suffer the most. Thomson’s gazelle, impala and waterbuck that are the most strongly dependent on the lakeshore grasslands that become more extensively exposed under dry conditions when the lake level recedes, have to compete more intensely with the expanding buffalo and zebra populations. Zebra and buffalo have a competitive edge over these smaller grazers on the lake shore grasslands, as well as on grasslands around the artificial water points dispersed all over the park in the dry season, when food supply is lowest elsewhere. This is because both buffalo and zebra can tolerate low-quality grasses because of their bulk-feeding style due to their large body sizes and also because zebra is a non-ruminant grazer able to rapidly process large quantities of low-quality forage.

It is not only the common smaller species that are bearing the brunt of the increase in numbers of the larger species in the park. The small and rare species are facing even harder times. So for example, the mountain reedbuck that was once the fourth most abundant species in the park during 1970-1971 and the common and blue duikers have all but virtually disappeared from the park due to the loss of their favoured habitats of tall grasslands and shoreline vegetation due to grazing by the expanding numbers of the large-sized grazers.

The lack of a water outlet and the small size of Lake Nakuru make it very vulnerable to habitat degradation and changing land use in its 1800 Km2 catchment basin. The massive destruction of forests in the catchment basin and the alteration of the catchment hydrology have destroyed most of the wildlife that previously existed in the region; described by early European explorers as the richest found anywhere in East Africa. As a result of these changes, populations of elephant, Jackson’s hartebeest, Masai and Rothschild giraffes, white rhinoceros, and eland became locally extinct. A once spectacular migration of zebra and Thomson’s gazelles between Lake Baringo and the Lake Nakuru-Elementaita region also disappeared.

The waterbuck: Its survival in Lake Nakuru threatened

Being located right next to Nakuru town, the park is gradually being adversely affected by water pollution due to industrialisation and the lake level has dropped from 2.5 m (in 1925-1979) to 1.01 m during 1992-2002 and now stands at 0.756 m (2003 to 2011), reflecting high siltation rates.
Water quality in the streams supplying water to the lake is also deteriorating exposing animals to potentially dangerous agro chemicals and heavy metals.

It is indeed very striking that this small park has been able to support such large numbers of a diverse large mammal assemblage for over four decades, despite wide climatic variation and major land use changes in its surroundings. However, although the long-term consequences of the population expansion and increasing isolation of the park are uncertain at present, when the expanding populations reach their carrying capacity in the park, they may become more vulnerable to rainfall, temperature and lake level influences on their food resources and large predators, with ramifying and unforeseen adverse consequences for the other species.

The study titled Dynamics of ungulates in relation to climatic and land use changes in an insularized African savannah ecosystem, was published in Biodiversity and Conservation journal by Joseph Ogutu, a senior statistician in the Bioinformatics unit of the University of Hohenheim, Germany. He conducted the study with colleagues there and at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, where he initially served under the People, Livestock and Environment theme.

Masai Mara National Reserve

Ogutu previously published extensive studies on the world famous Masai Mara National Reserve (2011 and 2009). The 2011 study published in the Journal of Zoology indicated that the populations of wildlife species in the world-renowned Masai Mara reserve in Kenya have crashed in the past three decades by as much as 70%.

Fewer survive beyond the reserve in the wider Mara, where buffalo and wild dogs have all but disappeared, while huge numbers of wildebeest no longer pass through the region on their epic migration.
However, numbers of cattle grazing in the reserve have increased by more than 1100% per cent, although it is illegal for them to so do. This explosion in the numbers of domestic livestock grazing in the Mara region, including within the Masai Mara national reserve, is one of the principal reasons wildlife has disappeared, the scientists said.

‘The status of Masai Mara as a prime conservation area and premier tourist draw card in Kenya may soon be in jeopardy’ Ogutu’, said at the time.

By Jane Gitau

Filed under: Biodiversity, CRP11, Drought, Drylands, Forages, ILRI, Kenya, PLE Tagged: Biodiversity, biomass, drought, environment, natural resource management, PLE

ILRI DG: Jimmy Smith announced the far reaching changes

The start of a new year is for many of us, a time for reflection, a time for resolutions and often re-organisation of personal goals to meet our resolutions. For the People Livestock and Environment Theme, a new beginning is literally happening.

A new Theme Director, Dr Iain Wright takes over the mantle from 23 January 2012 (announced Dec 19, 2011 here).  A new research team – the ‘Sustainable Livestock Futures’ group, led by Dr. Mario Herrero, has also been incorporated in to PLE. However, the name remains the same. Mario’s group will continue to provide leadership at the institutional level with respect to work on sustainable futures.

As ILRI and the parent group the CGIAR move into new ways of collaborating in research, several PLE scientists will be actively engaged in carrying forward the CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs). These will be Mario Herrero leading the work on ILRI aspects CRP 7: Climate change; Polly Ericksen coordinating CRP 1.1: Drylands; while Alan Duncan will coordinate CRP1.2: Humid tropics.  Jan de Leeuw will coordinate CRP 5: Land, water and ecosystems.

In making the announcement, ILRI Director General Dr Jimmy Smith said: “As we move into new research planning and funding situations, we need to adjust the ways we organize ourselves to meet our commitments and maximize synergies across the institute“.

He said the, the Management Committee agreed to the changes, in late 2011. However, he added, “these are not set in stone and will evolve and be adapted as we proceed”.

Filed under: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Crop-Livestock, CRP11, CRP5, CRP7, CRPs, Drylands, Ethiopia, ILRI, Kenya, Livestock, Pastoralism, PLE Tagged: climate change, East Africa, environment, ILRI, livestock, natural resource management, PLE