In April, I visited Kenya's Masai Mara reserve and wrote about my concern that it was being loved to death. Now, unfortunately, a new study seems to back up my fear that wildlife in the park are faring badly-though according to the research, the culprit isn't tourism but expansive livestock grazing in the larger Mara ecosystem.
Joseph O. Ogutu of the University of Hohenheim and colleagues from Kenya and South Africa analyzed aerial data that the Kenyan government collected from 1977 through 2009 in the Masai Mara reserve and the surrounding areas, which are home mainly to Maasai cattle-grazing communities. Overall, wildlife numbers plummeted by at least 70 percent during that period-with giraffes, zebras, warthogs, Thompson's gazelles, impalas and more than a half dozen others all in decline.
Animals inside the park appeared to be no better off than those outside its boundaries (which aren't fenced)-which calls into question a decade's worth of beefed-up conservation efforts inside the reserve.
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