The concept of setting aside natural areas as
protected parks may at best be inconceivable and at
worst repulsive to rural African cultures. Also, the
park concept still conjures images of the harsh
colonial legacy of wildlife preservation. 2's The colonial
conservation policies and laws made traditional
subsistence hunting an illegal and punishable offence.
Most of the subsistence wildlife resource-use
strategies came to be termed as 'poaching'. Many
Africans were imprisoned for poaching-related offences.
In certain instances whole communities, such
as the Walianguru of Southern Kenya, ended up in
prison, similar to the fate of the Ik of Northern
Uganda for much the same reason - virtually every
adult in these communities was a subsistence hunter.
The rural peasants' negative perceptions and attitudes
toward state-sponsored wildlife conservation
and tourism programmes may also be accentuated
by the fact that they receive very few direct conservation
and tourism benefits. Unequal distribution
of the costs and returns from wildlife management
and tourism is perhaps the most important conservation
and tourism development issue in Kenya. 12
While revenues from reserves are shared between
local and national government, those from national