Conservation Goals Betrayed by the Uses of Wildlife Benefits in Community-based Conservation: The Case of Kimana Sanctuary in Southern Kenya

Abstract

Since the 1990s, many empirical studies of “community-based conservation” (CBC) have discussed the relationship of benefits from wildlife to local attitudes. In addition to that relationship, this article examines the use of benefits and the consistency of that use with wildlife conservation goals in a CBC project in Kenya. Kimana Sanctuary is a flagship CBC project in Kenya. In partnership with a tourism company, the community earned sufficient monetary benefit and realized hoped-for development. While CBC is an attempt to conserve wildlife over its entire habitat in partnership with local communities, it failed to attain the expected goal of the local conservation initiative. Wildlife benefits betrayed the assumption of CBC because involved parties overlooked the discrepancy between the definitions of conservation by local people and outsiders, and the function of monetary benefits as a trigger for future change. The design of CBC projects should be based more on local subsistence.