Human pressure continues to threaten wildlife in African rangelands.

Wild megafauna and relatively intact ecosystems continue to be threatened by human activities, showing that current protected areas are not enough. In the Maasai Mara, Kenya, community-based conservation is exploring new ways of combining livestock pastoralism with wildlife conservation and ecotourism.

These landscapes sustain ecosystems and wildlife, but some species need access to areas without livestock impact. However, a recent study in PNAS claims that livestock has no negative impact on wildlife species, fueling a discussion on whether the Maasai Mara National Reserve should remain off limits for livestock.

In our letter to PNAS, signed by 30+ Kenyan and international researchers and ecosystem managers, we show that human pressure including livestock grazing has increased dramatically in the Mara ecosystem over recent decades, accompanied by extreme declines in wildlife populations. Based on this, we argue that opening the Maasai Mara National Reserve to livestock grazing will likely be catastrophic for wildlife populations.

Read the full letter here: Short-term study fails to capture negative impacts of livestock intensification on wildlife | PNAS