Protected areas, the cornerstone of modern biodiversity conservation, go some way to protecting
wildlife species. However, they do not completely protect the biodiversity nor resolve the
conservation-development conflicts since they do not always exclude destructive human impacts [8].
Protected areas also tend to protect only a part of an ecosystem or species range, and wildlife dispersal from such areas may increase conflict with local people [12]. Even when alternative forms of land use, such as wildlife tourism, are implemented in an attempt to derive sustainable benefits from wildlife, conflict may still remain. The challenge is to identify strategies that ensure conservation and at the same time allow economic development so that mutually sustainable benefits can be derived [13]. This is a difficult issue especially in developing counties and requires detailed understanding of issues, careful monitoring, adaptive management on the basis of informed decision-making and consensus among various stakeholders
The Masai Mara Ecosystem in southwestern Kenya, comprising the Masai Mara National Reserve
and the adjoining group ranches holds a spectacular concentration of wildlife and is home to the iconic
Masai pastoralists and their livestock. The annual wildlife migration offers a great wildlife experience
to visiting tourists and was named in September 2007 by the international media as one of the new
Seventh Wonders of the World in a global popularity poll contest. The Masai Mara Ecosystem
however, embodies many of the current issues in biodiversity conservation. Despite being a vast area
incorporating a major protected area, its considerable large wildlife species require access to large,
unprotected dispersal ranges inhabited, and increasingly transformed, by agro-pastoral human
communities. Expanding commercial farming, tourism and other human activities on land within and
adjacent to the national reserve is threatening the sustainable coexistence of the region’s pastoral
people with the wildlife populations. The habitat loss and wildlife population decline in Masai Mara
has been attributed to population growth and spread of cultivation [14,15]. Although habitat
fragmentation is thought to be responsible for the decline of many wildlife species, the Masai Mara
Ecosystem has many confounding variables making trends analysis difficult because of the
unpredictable nature of various causes and factors [16]. The Masai Mara Ecosystem has different land
zones with different land uses. The national reserve, owned and controlled by two local governments is
exclusively for wildlife tourism and conservation. The adjacent group ranches on the other hand are
owned privately or communally and have multiple land uses, ranging from pastoralism, small-scale
farming, mechanized faming and wildlife tourism. This ecosystem also lies on the border with
Tanzania, where the socio-economic, political and land tenure systems are different [15]. Wildlife
movement across the borders from Tanzania is another important phenomenon. Animals migrating into
Masai Mara from Tanzania occupy the national reserve and the adjoining group ranches, while resident
wildlife species also migrate between the reserve and the adjoining dispersal areas within the
ecosystem [17]. These animal migrations show that the protected areas within the ecosystem are not