By KIPCHUMBA KEMEI
Masai Mara, Kenya: Conservationists have warned that farming and other human activities in the Masai Mara Game Reserve pose a threat to the ecosystem.
They said huge commercial wheat and maize farming along the banks of the Mara River, charcoal burning, grazing among other activities was degrading the environment.
They said the activities were shrinking wildlife habitat and fueling human-wildlife conflict and want the Narok County management to formulate the reserve management plan.
“Unchecked human activities within the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem bode ill for future wildlife conservation prospects,” said their spokesperson Nick Murero, the Mara-Serengeti Ecosystem Coordinator for Lake Victoria Basin.
Mr Murero said yesterday in Mara that communities living within the ecosystem should be discouraged from charcoal burning and renting land for farming by giving them incentives and observed that they were being forced to do so because of poverty.
He called on the National Environment Management Authority to enforce the ten-year-old moratorium on construction of new tourists’ facilities in Mara, saying the reserve was losing its prestige because of overcrowding.
