Fence and defence

In late April, David Western, the head of Kenya Wildlife Services, the agency that runs the parks and wildlife, was summarily sacked. Western had set the agency off on a new and constructive course when he took over from Richard Leakey several years ago. The coup was orchestrated by those preservationists who see conservation as a military-style campaign of "us versus them". By contrast, Western was pursuing a collaborative approach, seeking to integrate the needs of wildlife with the needs of local people. This means that both "sides" stop being sides, and acccept that they can do each other a power of good. Scientists around the world were shocked at the sacking, and said so. President Moi intervened to reinstate Western.

Now Western has been fired again, and Leakey has been reinstated as director. Virtually all outside financial supporters of Kenya wildlife have protested vigorously, but such is the byzantine nature of Kenyan politics that the conservation cause will have to live - or rather semi-expire -with this body blow.

Western ranks among the top ten systems ecologists in the world. His book is an illuminating account of his experiences with wildlife conservation in Kenya, also in a dozen other countries of Africa and in diverse other parts of the world. His expertise lies not only with elephants vis-a-vis fever trees or zebras vis-a-vis water supplies or lions vis-a-vis tourists. It resides too in his understanding of economics, sociology, demography, anthropology, and whatever other discipline pertains to understanding the niche of wildlife conservation in crowded Africa. He has absorbed this eclectic expertise through osmosis, primarily during his decades-long efforts to understand the ecosystem dynamics of Amboseli Park at the foot of Kilimanjaro.

Amboseli is a system of swamps fed by underground springs from the mountain's ice cap, located in savannah plains that are otherwise a semi-desert. There is hardly a wildlife concentration to match it in the whole of Africa. The same swamps supply dry-season water for the cattle herds of local Maasai tribesmen, both of whose numbers have been increasing. As a result, there has been much scope for conflict between humans and wildlife.

Some such as Leakey would resolve the problem by fencing off the park. This reveals a serious misunderstanding of ecosystem workings: wild creatures need to migrate outside parks for extended periods of the year. It also betrays an indifference to basic needs of the Maasai, who in response have threatened to spear every last lion in the park.

When the problem first surfaced in the early 1970s, Western applied his professional skills with splendid success and won the support of one of the most enlightened conservation bodies, the New York Zoological Society, now known as the Wildlife Conservation Society in light of its pioneering endeavours throughout the tropics. He brokered a compromise agreement with the Maasai, primarily by installing a pipeline to relay water from the swamps to outlying areas for Maasai cattle. The revolutionary breakthrough - no other term for it - was the first step away from the apparent "bunker mentality" of establishment preservationists in Kenya.

Western details the battles engaging scientists, conservationists, local tribespeople, animal rights-ists, and a host of others who jump into the wildlife arena. He is caustic about those with views set in concrete, whether on the ivory trade, population growth, or the rich/poor divide. He speaks with graphic compassion about the rights and wrongs of elephant culling, eco-tourism, and international treaties. He is witty about prima donna researchers, humane societies that would put humans last, and journalists with their compulsive urge for an "angle" (especially an intellectual punch-up between rival camps). He describes an array of political leaders, some true leaders and others leading the charge towards Swiss banks.

For my own part, I believe the only way ahead is to enable local communities to sense a stake in the survival of "their" wildlife. After all, they are in a position to make or break the cause: if their wishes are not heeded, they can crowd elephants and the rest out of living space. Recruit them as supporters, and you recruit the most numerous, most committed and often the most expert of all wildlife guardians - and then let poachers take to the fastest heels they can find.

I have read hundreds of books on wildlife and associated fields such as biodiversity science, environmental economics and citizen activism. I have rarely recommended one as strongly as I do this one. Western tells his tale so arrestingly that even though I was already familiar with most of what he says, I found I could not put it down.

Norman Myers is a visiting fellow, Green College, Oxford, who lived in Kenya from 1958 to 1982 and is an honorary elder of the Maasai tribe.