National Human Wildlife Coexistence Strategy and Action Plan 2024-2033.

This National Human Wildlife Coexistence Strategy and Action Plan provides for enhancing the human-wildlife co-existence in critical ecosystems outside the conservation protected areas, and for putting in place strategies to support communities to benefit from the wildlife resources while minimising human wildlife coexistence incidents. Thus, this Strategy and its Action Plan presents an overarching framework that prioritises, coordinates, directs, recognises, and encourages the participation of communities, partners, and other stakeholders in enhancing sustainable wildlife conservation and harmonious human wildlife coexistence outside the country’s protected areas, in order to safeguard communities and their properties. The mission of the Strategy is the management of human wildlife conflicts in a cost-effective and efficient manner, using evidence-based short- and long-term solutions to meet the needs of both community welfare and biodiversity conservation. The Goal of the Strategy is to apply effective and sustainable approaches in mitigating human-wildlife conflicts and promoting human-wildlife coexistence in Kenya. The Strategy defines the following objectives, with related actions and measures: land and space issues for sustainable wildlife conservation; initiating innovative, effective, and affordable human-wildlife conflicts mitigation strategies; improving capacity to prevent wildlife damage before they happen; institutional changes; opening wildlife sector to diverse economic activities.
The Strategy is structured as follows: 1) introduction; 2) guiding principles; 3) approach and methodology; 4) human-wildlife conflicts status, hotspots, drivers and impacts, including: some case study landscapes; 5) costs to communities and the government; 6) response time, capacities and protection of citizens, including: role of conservancies and conservation organisations, effectiveness and efficiency of evacuation protocols of wildlife impacts; 7) species impacted and their conservation, including: trend, population, and conservation status of wildlife species involved in human-wildlife conflicts, community’s attitudes and perceptions towards declining wildlife species and implications to their conservation; 8) conflict mitigation strategies and their upscaling; 9) land use and spatial plans; 10) enhancing conservation education, including enhancing wildlife conservation education and awareness programmes; 11) fostering research and information gathering for management of human-wildlife conflicts; 12) enhancing policy, legal and regulatory reforms; 13) Action Plans, including: monitoring and managing species involved in human-wildlife conflicts, empowering communities to support human-wildlife conflicts mitigation measures, land use and spatial planning in conservation areas, fostering research and harnessing information for the management of human-wildlife conflicts.