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Evaluating outcomes of community-based conservation on Kenyan group ranches with remote sensing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2017

DAVID WILLIAMS ,
JAMES H. THORNE ,
DAUDI SUMBA ,
PHILIP MURUTHI  and
NATASHA GREGORY-MICHELMAN
DAVID WILLIAMS*
Affiliation:
African Wildlife Foundation, 1400 16th Street, NW, Suite 120, Washington, DC 20036, USA
JAMES H. THORNE
Affiliation:
Information Center for the Environment, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA, USA
DAUDI SUMBA
Affiliation:
African Wildlife Foundation, Ngong Road, Karen, PO Box 310, 00502 Nairobi, Kenya
PHILIP MURUTHI
Affiliation:
African Wildlife Foundation, Ngong Road, Karen, PO Box 310, 00502 Nairobi, Kenya
NATASHA GREGORY-MICHELMAN
Affiliation:
African Wildlife Foundation, 1400 16th Street, NW, Suite 120, Washington, DC 20036, USA
*
*Correspondence: David Williams email: dwilliams@awf.org
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Summary

Conservationists have adopted community-based conservation (CBC) strategies to support landscape conservation programmes in East Africa, and these projects often involve community development assistance in exchange for a commitment to dedicating a portion of community lands for conservation management. There is, however, a dearth of empirical evidence assessing the effectiveness of CBC conservation programmes. This paper uses sub-metre-resolution satellite imagery to measure land-use change on four Kenyan group ranches that had created CBCs. Each ranch underwent a common participatory planning process that established a land-use plan involving three management zones: conservation, livestock grazing and settlement/cultivation. Using a satellite image time series, we recorded threat-based development – anthropogenic modification of natural areas and the density of structures – for each ranch. We found that CBCs with tourism lodges were more effective at controlling development than the CBCs without a lodge, particularly in the conservation zones and, to a lesser degree, in the grazing zones. We conclude that our use of very-high-resolution satellite imagery offers conservationists a cost-effective, fast and replicable approach to measuring CBC land-use change and that CBC projects can lead to positive conservation results.

Keywords

communityremote sensingassessmentevaluationconservationKenyaland usemanagement
Type
Non-Thematic Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 45 , Issue 2: Thematic section. Humans and Island Environments , June 2018 , pp. 173 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2017 

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Footnotes

Supplementary material can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892917000418

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