0 Rehabilitation of Degraded Community Grazing Lands in Laikipia, Kenya

Land degradation is a serious problem in semi-arid rangeland in Africa, threatening wildlife habitats, grazing lands and pastoral livelihoods. Range rehabilitation was carried out in degraded grazing areas in four community ranches in Laikipia. The aim was to alleviate pasture scarcity, improve ecosystem resilience and create alternative income generating activities for the pastoralist group ranch communities. As part of an implementation program of the natural resource management programmes developed by the respective group ranches communities’ African Wildlife Foundation started facilitating rehabilitation of degraded lands with support from various donors e.g. GEF. The communities showed great interest in restoring the degraded areas within their ranches as an important strategy of implementing the plans. Rehabilitation was also deemed necessary for the sustainability of the community conservation initiatives, combating land degradation, and resource-based conflicts and improvement of the pastoral livelihoods. Besides ecotourism, rehabilitated areas can be a resource for various income generating activities (IGAs) for the community, such as bee-keeping, harvesting grass seed for sale, and fattening of stock for sale among others. So far. More than 500 Ha of severely degraded rangeland has been successfully rehabilitated in the four group ranches. 

See a project showcase in SER website here and read a policy brief here.