The Golini-Mwaluganje Community Elephant Sanctuary: A Community Conservation Poised for Success but Plagued by an Elephant Management Dilemma

Abstract

Introduction:

"There is a growing consensus that the best way to encourage local communities to protect wildlife and natural habitats is to enable local communities to benefit from the existence and use of these natural resources. For example, in the case of elephants, Kreuther and Simmons (1994) conclude that: 'The evidence strongly suggests that the best conservation strategy for African elephants is to promote them as a valuable resource which provides direct personal benefits to the people who face the cost of co-existing with them.'

"Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) is the most often mentioned African community conservation effort. (Based on a review of the literature.) Community conservation in Kenya is not well known, but it has also been relatively successful. Since 1992, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been funding the Conservation of Biodiverse Resource Areas (COBRA) Project to assist the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to develop and implement a strategy for working with communities who live with wildlife on their lands. With COBRA assistance, KWS has carried out dozens of small- scale community projects such as construction or rehabilitation of clinics and schools, and construction of water troughs and cattle dips. But the most interesting and promising initiatives have been the identification and implementation of income-generating projects whose success is directly linked to the well-being of wildlife. This paper describes the formation and current status of one of the most important of these ventures, the Golini- Mwaluganje Community Elephant Sanctuary, and analyses its performance as community conservation project. The Golini-Mwaluganje Community Elephant Sanctuary is a relatively successful community-conservation project poised for even greater successes, but it is plagued by unresolved elephant management problems."