The Masai Mara National Reserve is today faced by
unprecedented challenges.
Inside the Reserve, escalating pressures from
tourism development and growing visitor numbers drawn by the
world-renown of the Reserve’s wildebeest migration and other
exceptional natural resources are leading to a decline in the
quality of the tourism product, and to a deterioration of the
natural habitats on which the Reserve’s tourism product is
based, which is in turn leading to a major decline in several of
the Reserve’s charismatic wildlife
species.
Outside the Reserve, there is
growing pressure from local communities to use the Reserve’s
pastures and water sources for livestock, because of the
diminishing supplies of these resources in the wider ecosystem, and
deteriorating community livelihoods. Rapidly changing land-use in
the Greater Mara Ecosystem and rapid and uncontrolled tourism
infrastructure development is also leading to diminishing dispersal
areas and migratory corridors for the Reserve’s wildlife, and
enhanced poaching and human-wildlife conflict. In the face of all
these and other challenges, the Reserve’s management has been
unable to respond adequately to the changing circumstances, lacking
as it does a clear road map for the future management of the
Reserve in a radically changing world, and also lacking the
financial resources, manpower and infrastructure to address the
emerging challenges.
In response to these grave concerns about the
future of the Reserve, the County Councils of Narok and Trans Mara
together with the Mara Conservancy, which is responsible for
managing the Mara Triangle section of the Reserve, resolved in May
2007 to jointly finance the development of a new 10-year management
plan for the Masai Mara National Reserve (MMNR), the first
management plan for the Reserve to be developed for a quarter of a
century. The main aims of the plan are to:
-
.Ensure conservation of the Reserve’s
globally significant biodiversity
-
.Maintain the role of the Reserve as the flagship
of Kenya’s tourism industry
-
.Improve on a sustainable basis the revenues
generated by the Reserve, to support increasing community
livelihood and PA management needs
-
.Provide a practical management framework to
support Reserve managers in carrying out their day-to- day
management responsibilities.
In order to achieve these aims, the new plan sets
out a set of stakeholder and management agreed goals
(the purpose
statements and objectives) that Reserve
managers will aim to achieve, and a series
of prescriptions and management
actions that will be implemented in order to ensure these
goals are achieved. The plan mainly focuses on the management of
the Reserve itself, although, to a limited degree, it does also
address issues beyond the Reserve that are impacting on the area,
such as regarding ecological or community
issues.