New hope for Kenya's drylands

Lake Baringo has silted up

Some of the wildlife which had disappeared from Kenya's drylands are starting to return, thanks to the efforts of environmental agencies and the government.

The area around Lake Baringo in the country's Rift Valley used to be a great source of biodiversity.

But overgrazing in the past 50 years turned it into a barren wasteland - a disaster the area is only now starting to recover from.

"It's very dry, there's not a blade of grass - just a few scrubby thorn trees," Murray Roberts, executive director of the Rehabilitation of Arid Environments (Rae) Trust, told BBC World Service's One Planet programme.

"It is a disaster."

Fast retreat

While rainforests get much of the attention from environmentalists, drylands are also highly delicate and under threat.

"Drylands ecosystems tend to be very fragile," said Phillip Dobie of the UN Development Programme.

"If they're managed properly they can be very productive, and they're a source of excellent livelihoods for large numbers of people.

"But as you will see when you walk around here, they're fragile ecosystems - if they're managed badly they can degrade very quickly.

"I'm afraid that throughout the world - including here in Africa - we're seeing increasingly rapid degradation."

However, efforts around Lake Baringo to help encourage growth have gradually been bringing back wildlife to the area.

From seed

One of the simplest, yet most effective, measures has been the erection of a fence around parts of the land.

The fence stops goats from entering the land and eating newly germinated plants. It has been astonishingly successful - before it was put up, biomass averaged three species per square metre. Now, three years later, that is figure is 10-15 species.

Some big game have returned to the fenced areas

Mr Roberts said it had been discovered that the land could be rehabilitated, and grass and trees would grow again.

He also highlighted a number of other ways the Rae trust had been encouraging growth.

"We've used a system of micro-catchments, basically storing the rainfall into various pockets in the ground which we've manufactured," he said.

"We planted seeds - either seedlings of trees or grass seed - and it grows phenomenally well."

Further, it has been found that by and large the soil is good.

While the fields are grazed, it is controlled, and with the support of the people.

And although the trial period for the fencing was three years, communities nearby have insisted it stay up.

Piecemeal efforts

"They realised that they didn't have the control to keep the stock off with out the fence," Mr Roberts said.

Local elder Arab Jalanga said he had "high hopes" that if the land was rehabilitated, animals would return.

"Because of over-use by human beings, outside [of the fence] has become bare," he stated.

"Animals that used to be there, like the dik-diks, the gazelles, the zebras, the buffalos, have migrated. They don't have anything to eat."

He said the plant life had also changed - the only thing that grew was "useless" acacia plants.

Outside the fence the land remains harsh and parched

"These plants do not allow underneath growth, and as such, even if they are there, they don't hold anything in the soils.

"So that land is barren - it's unproductive."

However, so far much of the effort to restore the drylands is best described as piecemeal.

Kenya's governments through the years have often been accused of not doing much to protect the land, and simply sent in food aid when the situation became desperate.

But the country's new government has now said drylands are a priority.

"The whole aspect of natural resource management... is something that was taken for granted, not only in Kenya but across the region," Mahaboub Malem, of the Office of the President, told One Planet.

"That is what the government is trying to emphasise. We are all responsible for the natural resource management system, which is quite new in the way we do business now."

New ways

He added there was great concern about the loss of vegetation and animals.

"We're trying to begin from taking stock of what has been done, the appropriateness of what has been done, and how appropriate it was - what are the constraints, and what are the opportunities, from the point of view of the people?

"This forms the basis for the decisions that we make now, and that's why we think that definitely we will get it right."

This might not be too easy, however.

Mr Dobie in particular warned against any complacency, and stressed that it would be hard to get people to reverse the change in lifestyle that caused the problems in the first place.

"Generally speaking, the people who live here have known how to move about with their animals and use the environment to the optimum fashion," he said.

"Now, with what we might call modernisation and people tending to settle down, we're getting a total disruption of that lifestyle.

"All of the old strategies that used to be very good at managing the environment are disappearing."