Wildlife Management Studies

Kenya & Tanzania

  • itEpzdcrp7E
Google Map
PROGRAM DETAILS
Location Kimana, Kenya and Manyara area, Tanzania
Language English instruction with 2-credit Swahili Language & Culture course
Program Dates

Fall 2013: Sept 2 – Dec 8 & Sept 3 – Dec 9
Spring 2014: Feb 3 – May 11 & Feb 4 – May 12
Deadline Rolling admissions. Early submissions encouraged for acceptance into program of choice.
Program Cost

$19,690 (Includes all tuition, room, board, local travel. Excludes airfare.)
Financial Aid Need-based scholarships, loans, and travel grants are available.
Prerequisites One semester of college-level ecology or biology; 18 years of age
Credits 18 credits

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

The School for Field Studies (SFS) Kenya and Tanzania: Wildlife Management Studies Semester program allows students to examine how land-use practices within Maasai group ranches can be sustainably managed to promote both local economic livelihoods and wildlife conservation. Students will gain a general overview of cultural perceptions, conservation issues, wildlife dispersal areas, and biodiversity conservation in Kenya and Tanzania while meeting and interviewing wildlife managers and members of the Maasai community.

OVERVIEW

There are many opportunities for effective conservation, natural resource management, and rural development despite the seeming negative trends on availability and quality of habitat and resources for wildlife and livestock on the Maasai steppe in East Africa. The diverse habitat surrounding the SFS camps is used by wildlife as migration corridors among protected areas. The Maasai, and now other settlers, depend on this same area as a communal grazing zone for livestock and for growing food. As a result, they often face economic hardship due to crop damage from migrating wildlife, loss of livestock, and resource depletion. Pollution and climate change also threaten the already strained water supply and the health of numerous species of birds and animals. The Center research is framed by the needs of both human communities and dispersing and migrating wildlife in the region.


STUDENT RESEARCH

Our curriculum and research focus on determining how changes in land-use and resource availability in the Maasai steppe ecosystems can be managed in such a way as to foster the well-being of local communities while safeguarding and promoting biodiversity conservation.

Through classroom and field activities, students will contrast the conservation issues in the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem of northern Tanzania with those in the Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem in Kenya, just north of Mount Kilimanjaro. In this two-country program, students will begin their study at one field station, gaining general knowledge about the wildlife in the region, the pastoralist lifestyle, and principles of wildlife management.

Around the half-way point in the semester, students will travel overland to the other field station to apply the foundational knowledge of wildlife management to delve into the specific issues in that region. They will conduct the Directed Research in the final month of the program at the second field site. Students will visit multiple protected areas and group ranches at both sites.


FIELD RESEARCH, LECTURES, AND EXERCISES

  • Manyatta: Rare opportunity to glimpse Maasai culture, including rural settlements not usually visited by tourists
  • Musical ceremonies, demonstrations in fire-making, dances by Maasai morans (warriors), and lessons in spear throwing
  • Amboseli and Tsavo National Parks: Multi-day excursions illustrating the management implications of high concentrations of animals in a confined area
  • The impact of the elephants, whose trumpeting punctuates the night, are clearly visible by daylight
    Lake Manyara National Park: Large mammal identification, baboon ecology, threats to wetlands from tourism, land-use changes, and local resource uses
  • Tarangire National Park: Multiple-day excursions on animal counting, wildlife management, lion ecology and behavior, conservation models, and preservation of corridors
  • Ngorongoro Conservation Area: A day trip to learn integrated management, inclusion of indigenous communities in management, large mammal ecology, animal identification, and the role of vulcanicity in species diversity

 

SAMPLE DIRECTED RESEARCH

  • The role of privately owned conservation areas in Maasai group ranches as nuclear areas for potential wildlife dispersal and migration routes within the Amboseli Ecosystem in Kenya
  • The role of privately owned conservation areas in Maasai group ranches as nuclear areas for potential wildlife dispersal and migration routes within the Amboseli Ecosystem in Kenya
  • Impact of humans and large mammals, such as elephants, on plant communities in group ranches and implications of these on wildlife conservation and human livelihoods

 

COMMUNITY FOCUS

Above all else, SFS seeks to give back to our host communities around the world. Understanding community views on wildlife, the challenges faced, and management policies employed by park managers is central among our research goals. Students have many opportunities for social interaction as well, including:

  • Subdivision of the Maasai group ranches and their implication on land-use and wildlife conservation
  • Community service work in local schools, hospitals, orphanages, and with a local women’s group
  • Visits to an elephant orphanage and a giraffe center
  • Visit to Iraqw community in Karatu, Tanzania
  • Visits to local markets and a neighboring boma (Maasai homestead) for traditional Maasai celebrations, a lecture on culture and artifacts, and jewelry making with Maasai mamas, while conducting interviews for research work

HOUSING

The SFS Center for Wildlife Management Studies operates in two locations, one in southwestern Kenya near Amboseli National Park, and one in Tanzania, neighboring Lake Manyara National Park.

In Kenya, SFS students live at our Kilimanjaro Bush Camp (KBC) in the remote foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, near the town of Kimana. KBC is an excellent site for examining land-use and conservation issues in and around nearby national parks. The camp is nestled within a lush zone of yellow acacia trees with clear undergrowth giving a perfect view of the magnificent vegetation mosaic. Students sleep in thatched-roof bandas, with a main building, or chumba, which houses a dining room, kitchen, and a classroom.

While camped at Moyo Hill Camp, our field station in Tanzania, students will live in the Manyara area, about a 10 minutes drive from Lake Manyara National Park and a half hour from the famous Ngorongoro National Park. This wonderfully scenic area, world-renowned for its beauty, geography, history, and wildlife, is perched on an escarpment overlooking the Rift valley and the Ngorongoro Hills, withplenty of hiking trails to enjoy.

EXPERIENCE SFS
PROGRAM COURSES
  • BI/EE (NS) 371 Techniques of Wildlife Management (4 credits)

    This course introduces students to the questions, principles, and tools used by resource managers in the East Africa savanna ecosystem. Students study habitat assessment, plant and animal identification, associations and distributions, and other approaches to evaluating the savanna ecosystems. Behavioral, physiological, and social responses of animals to a changing environment will be examined. Field and laboratory techniques for monitoring ungulate populations and optimizing management practices will be presented. Decision-making processes, on which wildlife management programs are based, will be addressed.

     

  • BI/EE (NS) 372 Wildlife Ecology (4 credits)

    This course presents students with the information and conceptual background necessary to understand the underlying ecological principles of the East Africa savanna ecosystem. We will focus on the fundamental processes and inter-relationships between the biotic and abiotic environment. We begin with basic ecological principles, setting them against the background of East Africa. Factors underlying distributions, population biology, and behavioral ecology will be examined along with competition and predation using African examples. Theoretical models will be discussed in light of our observations on field trips.

     

  • EE (SS) 302 Environmental Policy and Socioeconomic Values (4 credits)

    This course provides insight into the broad social context surrounding natural resources to determine effective approaches to resource management. Objectives are to understand sociocultural context including hierarchies and power structures; formal and informal decision making processes; value systems relevant to natural resources including religious factors and environmental ethics; past and present uses of natural resources; economic factors (local, regional, external); ownership patterns; attitudes and other factors that affect change and their historical basis; and legal basis for enforcement of environmental policy. Introduction of major constituencies which effect conservation (NGO conservation groups, economic interests, etc.) and their underlying philosophies.

  • EE 491 or 492 Directed Research (4 credits)

    This course prepares students to distinguish hidden assumptions in scientific approaches and separate fact from interpretation, cause from correlation and advocacy from objectivity. Specific tools will include experimental design, field techniques, basic descriptive statistics and parametric and non-parametric quantitative analysis. Succinct scientific writing, graphic and tabular presentation of results and effective delivery of oral presentations will be emphasized.

  • LE 205E Introduction to Swahili Language and East African Tribal Communities (2 credits)

    This course contains two distinct but integrated modules. The Swahili language module offers listening, oral and written practice of the Swahili language, at a basic level of proficiency, to increase students' communication and comprehension skills. Much of the Maasai population does not speak Swahili, but it is the national language in Kenya – this phenomenon will be explained in the second course module. The socio-cultural aspects of East African tribes module emphasizes understanding of, and direct contact and interaction with the native communities with which SFS works, primarily the Maasai. This exposure to culture and language will be reviewed and processed through lectures, field exercises and classroom discussion. The socio-cultural module is designed to help students experience intense immersion in the culture and be therefore more adept at working effectively in their community-based Directed Research efforts. 

DOWNLOAD RESOURCES
CONTACT