WWF-Kenya: Our solutions

More than 40 years of conservation work

It’s not just Kenya’s landmark wildlife which has to be saved. The natural resources that illustrious species such as elephants and black rhinos rely on are being overexploited – and poor people need to be factored into the conservation solution. What kind of solutions is WWF working on?

Species conservation

Few countries can claim to be home to the Big Five – a group of majestic species that includes rhinos, elephants, lions, leopard and buffalos. For the critically endangered rhinos, WWF has supported Kenya's sanctuary approach to protection, breeding, and management of the species. The aim of our work is simple: increase the number of this species as rapidly as possible.


Another pachyderm we are trying to help is the African elephant. In Kenya, we focus on:

• monitoring and mitigating human-elephant conflict (HEC) in the Transmara district
• increasing awareness and making local communities actively use HEC mitigation methods and
  
• developing capacity within government, local communities and project staff for improved HEC mitigation, and elephant conservation and management.

Find out more about HEC in our TransMara story

Marine conservation

In the Eastern African Marine Ecoregion (including Kenya), an area of exceptionally high biodiversity that provides a livelihood for millions of people who depend heavily on the sea, we’re creating offshore havens – marine protected areas. In the process, we hope to reduce by 15% mortality of dugongs and to get a better idea of the population size of the species in the entire western Indian Ocean region.

Freshwater conservation

Over in the Mara River Basin, things are much drier – dramatically so. Local communities and other stakeholders are increasingly facing water shortages as well as problems with poor water quality and environmental degradation. This limits attempts to alleviate poverty and improve healthcare, food security, economic development and protection of the natural resources.

Our Transboundary Water for Biodiversity in the Mara River Basin (TWB-MRB) project attempts to tackle these issues by harmonizing river basin management plans and policies to provide a sufficient quantity of clean water, promoting a transboundary agreement between Kenya and Tanzania and monitoring indicators for biodiversity conservation.

Environmental education

Lake Victoria is the second largest freshwater body in the world and supports a human population of approximately 30 million. Over the last 4 decades, the biodiversity of the lake and its catchment have been compromised. For example, indigenous fish species have plunged by 80%, and over 70% of the forest cover in the catchment area has been lost.

As a response, WWF has developed the Lake Victoria Catchment Environmental Education Programme (LVCEEP), which aims to influence the behaviour of riparian and catchment communities and schools to encourage participation in environmental management and conservation.

Similar efforts are under way with the Lake Bogoria Integrated Catchment Management Programme (LBICMP), which in addition to environmental awareness, also focuses on solving problems of soil erosion, poverty, human resource conflicts and depleting wetland resources.