SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

The Mpala Research Centre has been created as a research and training facility with a mandate to identify and explore the key environmental components of this landscape and to seek ways of resolving conflicts. With no formally protected areas and a variety of land tenureship systems within a region of more that 10,000 square kilometers, Mpala is well placed to promote an informed approach to regional conservation. It is intended that this approach is not only advanced through research at Mpala, but applied locally, and through training, exported elsewhere. The Centre is administered by the Mpala Research Trust, in collaboration with the Kenya Wildlife Service, the National Museums of Kenya, Princeton University, and the Smithsonian Institution. Research can be conducted at Mpala by any applicant with an explicitly proposed, approved and funded project.

Laikipia Predator Project:  As the human population continues to expand and take over new areas, lions are losing their habitats to humans. Because of the dramatic reduction of their ranges and a decreased availability of their wild prey, lions are increasingly moving into human habitats and coming into contact with people and their livestock, where they sometimes resort to preying on cattle, and can cause significant impact on farmers' livelihoods. As a result many are killed.

The Laikipia Predator Project (LPP) is studying the lions in Laikipia to find out what makes them vulnerable to extinction in an unprotected area, and how practical measures can be developed to encourage coexistence between people, livestock and predators. By understanding how lions, livestock and people are able to coexist in Laikipia, the project is developing strategies for lion conservation that may be applicable to other areas in Africa.

Mpala Research Centre hosts KLEE: the Kenya Long-term Exclosure  Experiment.  This large-scale, long-term exclusion experiment is demonstrating how cattle and wildlife interact as important drivers of community and ecosystem dynamics in the black cotton rangeland ecosystem of central Laikipia. Eighteen four-hectare (ten-acre) plots were established in 1995 that exclude six different combinations of 1) cattle, 2) wild large mammals, and 3) mega- herbivores (elephants and giraffes). The exclusion of these different types of large herbivores has had strong impacts of both the tree and grass layers, informing our understanding of wildlife/ livestock competition, bush encroachment, rangeland productivity, and responses of vegetation to drought.

The  Laikipia Elephant Project aims to build capacity to enhance the conservation and management of Kenya's second largest elephant population (over 5000 animals). The project is being implemented by the University of Cambridge through a UK Darwin Initiative grant in collaboration with the Save the Elephants, the Laikipia Wildlife Forum, CETRAD and the Kenya Wildlife Service.

The project is:
1) Evaluating the performance of simple and affordable tools for deterring crop-raiding elephants from smallholder farms in southwest Laikipia

2) Tracking elephants using GSM/GPS collars with a view to generating information for conservation planning to mitigate future human-elephant conflict

3) Trialing early warning systems for crop-raiding. One system, the E-fence, sends text messages from collared crop-raiding elephants to community scouts/managers when an elephant is approaching a cultivated area

4) Providing training to communities living with elephants to generate supplementary income (chilli farming, dung paper products and honey).