Conserving Biodiversity without Preserving Settler Ecologies

In January 2024, a multi-week operation took place to translocate twenty-one black rhinos to Loisaba Conservancy—a private wildlife conservancy in the north of Laikipia County, Kenya. The operation is an important part of Kenya’s national Black Rhino Recovery and Action Plan, which aims to double Kenya’s black rhino population by 2037. It also marks the formal establishment of Kenya’s newest private rhino sanctuary, accessible to tourists visiting the conservancy’s luxury camps and lodges.

Previously established by an Italian Count in 1997 and later purchased by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Loisaba Conservancy has been fundraising and preparing for the translocation for several years. Rhino protection is an expensive endeavor in Kenya, as elsewhere. A decade ago, it cost US$260,000 to translocate the same number of rhinos and US$500,000 annually to host a viable population. These figures have likely increased with inflation and rising security costs. Ultimately, the translocation in January 2024 was made possible by international donors, such as TNC, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, and Space for Giants.

Such complex, expensive undertakings raise questions about why some species come to be prioritized in contemporary biodiversity conservation agendas—and attract the lion’s share of funding—while others do not. Studies suggest this often has little to do with endangerment, as many endangered species remain neglected in conservation action.

Recent biodiversity conservation research has attempted to answer this question and suggests that charismatic flagship species that attract funding—such as elephants, lions, and rhinos—are more likely to be prioritized in conservation agendas and programs. In our recent book, Settler Ecologies: The Enduring Nature of Settler Colonialism in Kenya, we show that the animals and plants prioritized in biodiversity conservation efforts in settler colonial contexts are often those that help sustain settler colonialism. These conservation efforts are riddled with contradictions—prioritizing population growth of specific species in the short-term over adaptive and resilient socio-ecological systems in the long-term.

Keystone Species of Settler Ecologies

Settler colonialism is a system of power that perpetuates the repression of Indigenous peoples and cultures by dispossessing them of their rightful land and resources, exploiting and transforming the same landscapes, and making settler occupation appear natural. Today, settler colonialism remains a powerful organizing structure in rural parts of Laikipia, which was settled as part of Kenya’s racially-segregated “white highlands” at the turn of the twentieth century.

In the early 1900s, pastoralists and their cattle were pushed off the biodiverse, fertile lands of Laikipia reserved by the colonial government for white settlement. Swathes of forests and shrubland were cleared to pave the way for a settler-dominated agricultural system that relied on commercial export crops, such as coffee and tea, sisal, and timber. On settler ranches, mammals ranging from rhino to zebras were classified as “vermin”  and pushed to the edge of extinction by colonial-era hunters. Today, memories of these days remain tucked away in the corners of settlers’ homes. As one settler said to us, flipping through an old photo album, “I don’t know what to do with all the photos of dad with dead rhinos.”

Ironically, Laikipia remains a settler colonial stronghold today in the name of conservation. Settler ranches have been transformed into private wildlife conservancies dedicated to reintroducing and protecting the same species settlers endangered and eradicated. These species continue to be used in support of present-day settler-colonial projects, just in different ways compared to the past.   

The species prioritized for conservation in Laikipia tend to be those that contribute to creating a landscape that appeals to tourist imaginaries of what African nature ‘should’ look like. Tourists visiting Laikipia’s private conservancies can travel to exclusive eco-lodges by helicopter, dropping down in the middle of tens of thousands of acres of open grassland and shrubland brimming with endangered and endemic species. Laikipia is key to Kenya’s exclusive, high-end safari tourism market because the species it hosts fulfill the imaginaries that tourists attach to Africa as a “Wild Eden” and a “rugged, ‘pristine’ landscape”—teeming with charismatic megafauna undisturbed by pastoralists and their livestock with centuries’ of history in the landscape. 

These species can be described as keystone species of settler ecologies. More than other species, these species make settler land economically productive by appealing to tourists; they attract international conservation finance; and they enable settlers to secure land and resources in ways that deny Indigenous peoples and their livestock access to ancestral territories. In these ways, the presence of these species can serve to naturalize settler occupation and normalize settler colonialism.

Black Rhinoceros

Black rhinoceros offer a compelling example of this. Each translocation of black rhinos leads to new restrictions on and closer monitoring of pastoralists and their livestock. Conservancy personnel and wildlife authorities, in particular, rely on advanced technologies and military style tactics to secure new and growing rhino populations. In the process, settler-ranches-turned-private-conservancies have been transformed from relatively open rangelands to highly fortified properties, making use of innovative ring fencing systems with motion-triggered camera traps, aerial surveillance, and ground patrols carried out by specialized wildlife rangers. Some private conservancies reportedly have privately funded anti-poaching units with “permission from the Kenyan government” to shoot and kill suspected poachers on sight.  

As one white settler explained to us during an interview, settlers, “were smart. They put rhino on their land. That got the whole international community behind them.” This is exemplified by the case of one settler ranch in Laikipia, which, after establishing itself as a rhino sanctuary, was later incorporated into the Mount Kenya UNESCO World Heritage Site. This secured the ranch as conservation space of global significance, revealing how certain animal bodies can be seized and harnessed to help shore up support for settler colonialism.

Black rhino populations have increased steadily from less than 400 individuals in 1989 to an estimated 1,004 individuals today. Laikipia now contains some of the world’s largest rhino sanctuaries. Despite perpetuating structural and other forms of violence, this is seen by many as an indication of wider conservation successes in the region. As a keystone species—a species that is seen as part of the ecological glue that holds a larger ecosystem together—protecting rhino is believed to have positive knock-on effects for other species in the landscape.

At the same time, conservation outcomes are more complex than growing population numbers alone. Insufficient habitat to sustain the growth of rhino populations has become a key concern in Laikipia. Some private conservancies are reporting concerns about declining rhino health as numbers grow and are implementing supplementary feeding programs in response. More worryingly, breeding populations on private conservancies has contributed to a loss of genetic diversity among rhinos. Over time, rhino populations could become less healthy, more susceptible to disease, and less likely to reproduce—detracting from the conservation gains made to date.

African Elephant

Elephants, too, have been enrolled in the creation and maintenance of settler colonial space. As a “tourism flagship species” that tourists are willing to pay large sums to see, conservancies are able to profit off elephants. One strategy used to draw elephants into private conservancies is the construction of new water infrastructure. In the arid and semi-arid landscapes of Laikipia, water provisioning is an effective way of attracting species that tourists come to see—even during dry season.

Attracting and sustaining large herds of elephants for tourists in confined spaces, however, is not always conducive to conservation itself. Elephants naturally forage across large areas. When elephant numbers rise too quickly in specific areas, they degrade the local habitat. This is proving to be a major challenge in Laikipia, where conservation interventions have led to increased elephant populations within conservancy boundaries. Inside conservancies, elephants have reduced woodland cover, contributing to the decline of key tree species and the birds, insects, and other forms of life they support.

Pastoralists have described how elephants are more brazenly and frequently entering their settlement areas—destroying crops, damaging irrigation systems, and even entering homes looking for salt and water. This is often blamed on familiarity with humans bolstered by artificial watering points and interactions with tourists, as well as loss of land cover and migratory corridors. As a result, human-livestock-elephant conflict is on the rise. Some even feel that the future of settlements bordering conservancies may be in jeopardy should these trends continue. 

Keystone Species of Pastoral Ecologies

Like black rhino and African elephant, many breeds of indigenous livestock are also on the verge of extinction. Yet, unlike the keystone species of settler conservation, indigenous livestock have not been centered in Laikipia’s conservation efforts.

Today across Laikipia, most pastoralists keep exotic and crossbred species of livestock, as they tend to have greater economic value. However, indigenous breeds like red Maasai sheep can still be found in some of the region’s more remote areas.  

During colonial settlement, a range of livestock breeds were introduced to settler farms and ranches in Laikipia as settlers attempted to establish a commercially viable agricultural sector that mirrored that in Europe, Great Britain, and North America. They imported breeds of sheep known to gain weight quickly and produce high-value meat and wool.

Over time, exotic breeds brought to Kenya have been crossbred indiscriminately, leading to the near extinction of many indigenous breeds. Although crossbred animals do tend to have quicker weight gain under the right conditions, they are more susceptible to disease and drought. Some pastoralists feel that exotic breeds also graze differently than indigenous ones, leaving the land bare and difficult to recover after the rains and heightening the risk of certain diseases. 

Indigenous livestock are better suited to life in Kenya’s arid rangelands than exotic breeds. Red Maasai sheep, for example, are renowned for their resistance to gastrointestinal parasites common in the region. Red Maasai sheep also have incredible drought tolerance. Better adapted to hot, arid environments, they can walk long distances to find water and graze more lightly and diversely as they move across the landscape.  

Research finds that conserving indigenous livestock breeds could provide opportunities to improve meat production and livelihoods in arid parts of northern Kenya that are experiencing the harsh effects of climate change. In addition to building adaptive livelihoods and resilient socioecological systems, conserving endangered indigenous livestock breeds could have broader conservation benefits, such as supporting ambitious target to halt biodiversity loss through the conservation of genetic diversity.

Conservation Otherwise

There is no denying that conserving black rhinos, elephants, and hosts of other wild species is as crucial now as ever before. Yet, as the cases of both these species in Laikipia reveal, the socioecological contradictions of prioritizing keystone species of settler ecologies are also increasingly apparent and hard to ignore. Successful biodiversity conservation requires balancing the protection of entire social-ecological systems, including the biophysical and sociocultural components, rather than focusing solely on the protection of lucrative charismatic taxa.

As the world scrambles to prevent a mass extinction event and continues to work towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework—taking “urgent action to halt and reverse biodiversity loss” by 2030—we must ensure a diversity of threatened species are offered protection through conservation. There is a need to look beyond the usual cast of keystone species in biodiversity conservation.   

In Laikipia and other similar contexts in eastern and southern Africa, greater dialogue with and direction from Indigenous Peoples is fundamental to unsettling power-laden ideas about how conservation landscapes should look and which species should be prioritized—in the process, creating space for “conservation otherwise.” As culture and conservation of genetic diversity are linked, conservation landscapes must not be void of biocultural diversity. Rather, support for culturally significant species and Indigenous-led conservation is key to meeting international biodiversity obligations, as diverse livelihoods, diets, and cultural and wellbeing practices also contribute to diverse, resilient socio-ecological systems.

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Featured Image: A black rhino inside one of Laikipia’s world-renowned private wildlife conservancies. Photo by Brock Bersaglio, 2022.

Charis Enns is a Senior Lecturer in Socio-Environmental Systems at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. Contact. Website. Twitter.

Brock Bersaglio is an Associate Professor of Environment and Development in the International Development Department at the University of Birmingham. Contact. Website. Twitter.