The Maasai Mara ecosystem is one of the world’s most important conservation landscapes.  It is also home to the Maasai people whose pastoralist traditions have allowed wildlife to coexist with humans and livestock for centuries.  Today, this ecosystem is severely threatened by expanding agricultural production; by subdivision and fencing; and by increasingly unpredictable climate patterns.  A key solution is the development of wildlife conservancies.  

Conservancies consist of hundreds of individually owned parcels of land pooled together and leased out to tourism operators.  Landowners receive direct payments for renting their land while retaining the right to graze their livestock.  As such, conservancies provide a unique platform for unlocking economic value for local communities.   Likewise, conservancies offer tremendous hope for maintaining and restoring critical habitat outside of national protected areas, many of which are simply too small or isolated to provide a sustainable future for wildlife.  

The Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association is the umbrella organization for the Mara’s 15 wildlife conservancies and an important recipient of BAND Foundation support.

Grazing is the lifeblood of Maasai culture in northern Tanzania, and its currency is grass.  Population pressure, agricultural expansion, infrastructure development and land subdivision are placing enormous pressure on savanna grassland resources in this landscape.  Likewise, these same threats are endangering the region’s wildlife, which require access to community lands as critical migratory corridors and dispersal areas linked to their strongholds in iconic national parks like Tarangire and Lake Manyara.  

Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) are communal lands, frequently bordering national parks, that serve as grass banks for both livestock and wildlife.  With BAND Foundation support, Honeyguide is working to ensure that these areas fulfill their promise to benefit both people and nature.

Media coverage of the biodiversity crisis too frequently lends itself to apocalyptic headlines and a sense of hopelessness.  In turn, this can cause people to tune out and feel as though nothing can be done to stem nature’s decline.  It also shortchanges the countless individuals and institutions successfully working to save species, restore ecosystems and pioneer new conservation models.

BioGraphic – a free, nonprofit, independent, online journal powered by the California Academy of Sciences – delivers high-quality scientific reporting on the most promising conservation solutions from around the world.  The BAND Foundation provides funding to bioGraphic to enable expanded coverage and increased reach.

Several years ago, a mysterious disease started to appear in sea stars all along the Pacific coast of North America, rapidly and simultaneously decimating well-known species such as the sunflower and ochre stars.  Sea stars are keystone predators vital to the health and productivity of intertidal zones.  The affliction, known as sea star wasting disease (SSWD), can kill an otherwise healthy sea star in a matter of days, ultimately by causing the animal’s body structure to break down and collapse.

SSWD is one of a number of emergent diseases wreaking havoc on wildlife globally yet generating relatively little public attention and concern.  Partly this is because many of the species most severely impacted – including amphibians, reptiles, freshwater mussels and bats – are frequently overlooked despite the essential ecological roles they play.  Additionally, while there are clear policy and funding frameworks to address the detection, treatment and prevention of diseases that directly affect people and livestock, little corresponding infrastructure exists for wildlife disease.  This is particularly problematic given the speed with which many of these pathogens are spreading.  

The growing wildlife disease threat has primarily human origins.  The global movement of people and goods, including the wild animal trade (both legal and illegal), facilitates the spread of disease across countries and continents while the climate crisis is allowing diseases to emerge and thrive where they previously could not.  

Funding is urgently required to address this growing problem.  Needs include critical scientific research on known diseases; the capacity to better predict, detect and respond rapidly to outbreaks; the ability to educate the public on steps people can take to reduce disease spread; and key policy changes to help prevent the movement of disease across borders.

The BAND Foundation has funded projects targeting particular diseases (including SSWD, white-nose syndrome in bats and another deadly fungal pathogen in salamanders) while highlighting the broader threat wildlife disease poses to biodiversity and human well-being.  Most recently, we supported PRIMED – Primary Responders in Marine Emergent Diseases – a collaborative monitoring and response network on the Pacific coast. 

Researchers with the BAND-funded Mara Predator Conservation Program (MPCP) have recently discovered an active den of highly endangered wild dogs just inside the northern boundary of Mara North Conservancy.  The conservancy is an innovative partnership through which local landowners pool and lease their land to tourism operators in exchange for receiving regular payments and retaining the right to graze their livestock.  

The pack’s den is very close to the conservancy border in an area threatened by fencing and agricultural conversion.  MPCP is working with the Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association and other partners to engage local communities in developing strategies for safeguarding key habitat corridors and reducing human/wildlife conflict.  A number of local Maasai landowners recently agreed to remove fencing around their properties, a critical move for the future of wild dogs and other species in this high priority conservation landscape.  

As seen below, there appear to be nine young pups at the site.  Wild dogs have long been persecuted across their range for predating on livestock and are also highly vulnerable to canine distemper and other diseases.  Their presence here is testament to the critical importance of mixed use landscapes outside national parks and protected areas, and their persistence on such landscapes depends entirely on community tolerance.  MPCP is urgently working to raise funds to assist in monitoring these dogs and in implementing measures to reduce the risk to local livestock.

Honeyguide is a Tanzanian NGO working to develop successful models of community conservation across over one million acres of critical habitat in northern Tanzania.  Honeyguide engages in long-term partnerships with local communities aimed at achieving ecological viability and financial independence in priority sites, including Randilen Wildlife Management Area in a project funded by the BAND Foundation. 

Honeyguide’s strategies include reducing human/wildlife conflict; increasing revenue generation from tourism and other sustainable land uses; strengthening management and governance of community wildlife areas; and guiding, training and equipping village game scouts.  Two of these village game scouts, Lerumbe Kaay and Shinini Simel, have recently been selected to receive the prestigious 2019 African Ranger of the Year Award from the Paradise Foundation.  Lerumbe and Shinini were among 50 winners from 17 countries.  These videos briefly tell their stories.

The African Ranger awards seek to recognize the essential role of rangers in conserving Africa’s wildlife.  An estimated 20,000-25,000 rangers work across the continent to safeguard elephants, rhinos, gorillas and a host of other species often at great risk to themselves and their families.  In addition to highlighting their achievements, the awards provide direct financial support to the rangers.