Seasonal factors influencing livestock herding strategies in the Talek area, Narok District, Kenya: A political ecology perspective

This thesis explores the factors that influence the traditional herding practices of pastoralists livestock. The study is centered on the Talek area of the Narok district in southwestern Kenya, adjacent to Kenya's most popular protected conservation area, the Maasai Mara National Reserve. The study incorporates a political ecology framework, which seeks to examine cultural, demographic, economic, and political dimensions of resource use and ecological change, focusing on these issues and their linkages at and across multiple spatial and temporal scales. The study examines both the biophysical and socio-economic factors that affect the traditional livestock herding strategies of Maasai pastoralists. These two separate, but interactive components are discussed within the contexts of both spatial and temporal scales of analysis. The biophysical components that this study examines are the effects of the following factors on seasonal livestock herding activities: (1) the tsetse fly ( Glossina spp.) and the transmission of human and animal trypanosomosis (sleeping sickness), (2) resident and migratory wildebeests ( Connochaetes taurinus) found within the greater Mara-Serengeti Ecosystem, (3) the role of the Maasai Mara National Reserve (MMNR) as a biophysical reservoir, and (4) climatic variability. The socio-economic components of this study examine the effects of the following on the seasonal herding activities of Maasai livestock: (1) bush land and the spread/retreat of tsetse, (2) economic needs and markets, (3) the policies of protection on the MMNR, and (4) dramatic demographic changes. The study provides feedback to the discourses on the political ecology conceptual frameworks, biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.