Sir

As government budgets for conservation in protected areas decline, there is increasing need for other mechanisms to fund conservation efforts: for example, private-sector involvement. Tourism has long been viewed as a potentially benign source of funding for protected areas, but relatively few sites worldwide have so far been able to generate significant resources. Even where they have, sustainable conservation will result only if the revenues generated are properly managed and allocated.

A case in point is the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya, world famous for its huge density and diversity of wildlife and an annual migration of more than a million wildebeest. Visitor entrance fees alone could generate $US5.5 million annually for conservation and surrounding community development. This equates to earnings of over $3,500 per square kilometre, some 12 times more than the estimated requirement for effective management1.

To date, little revenue has been collected by the local councils overseeing the reserve, and very little has been reinvested. This all appears set to change as the Trans Mara County Council has just contracted the Mara Conservancy, a Kenya-based private consortium, to manage its portion of the reserve, including ticketing, revenue collection, tourism management, security and wildlife conservation. In its first few weeks of operation in June and July, the Mara Conservancy generated more than five times the amount previously collected by the council over a whole year, as well as attracting additional donor funding2. Already new security and management equipment has been purchased and staff are being paid on time.

Such a dramatic turnaround bodes well for a reserve that has suffered from uncontrolled and unmanaged tourism impact, and which has witnessed considerable declines in many of its wildlife species3. Moreover, this example could have far-reaching consequences for both wildlife and local Maasai communities. Much of the Masai Mara's wildlife is seasonally reliant on dispersal areas outside the reserve, which results in considerable conflict between people and wildlife. Local communities are entitled to receive 19% of reserve revenues as compensation, but have received little or no money since the mid-1990s. The turnaround in financial management in Trans Mara suggests that these communities could soon see the benefits they are due, which should be equivalent to at least $1 million around the whole reserve.

However, as revealed at workshops supported by the United Kingdom's Darwin Initiative, local residents remain suspicious of this new, private management structure, which appears as yet another neo-colonialist plot to expropriate their land. The onus is on the Mara Conservancy to ensure that benefits flow to neighbouring communities via the local council as rapidly as it is upgrading the resources of the reserve management itself.

If financial resources can be effectively captured and appropriately deployed, then real conservation gains could be made, both inside and outside the reserve. The Masai Mara could become a model for tourism-based, sustainable, integrated conservation and development through public–private partnerships.