At least 30 per cent of wildlife has been lost within the Maasai Mara landscape since the 1970s due to challenges facing the ecosystem.

Save the Elephants senior scientist Festus Ihwagi attributed the losses to habitat loss, land fragmentation and change in land use.

"Livestock is now taking over,” Ihwagi said.

The researcher raised a red flag over the alarming rate at which fences are coming up in the landscape, blocking wildlife movement.

“The fences have become snares for Wildebeests, giraffes and other wildlife species. Fences are one of the major challenges of fragmenting the habitat,” Save the Elephants senior scientist Festus Ihwagi said.

Ihwagi made the remarks on Thursday evening during a webinar by Africa Nazarene University on biodiversity loss.

“Some of the fences are simple, mainly made of barbed wires while others are electric fences. Some of the fences are enclosures for livestock at night. All in all, they impede the movement of wildlife within the landscape,” he said, adding that the fences started as early as 1985.

Ihwagi said the fences had impeded the wildebeest migration, deemed the biggest animal show on earth.

Each year, tourists are lured to the ecosystem by the more than 2 million wildebeest migrating between Kenya and Tanzania.

The wildebeest join half a million gazelles and 200,000 zebras in the perilous trek from the Serengeti Park in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara reserve each year.

In 2006, the wildebeest migration was named the 7th Wonder of the New World in a poll of experts conducted by ABC Television's Good Morning America.

It is also one of UNESCO’s Wonders of the World.

Ihwagi said the fences are a result of people buying land within the landscape.

The scientist said between 2019 and 2021 Mara has witnessed a lot of fences that kill wildlife.

The Maasai Mara ecosystem is home to about 25 per cent of Kenya’s wildlife.

It hosts more than 95 mammal species besides being a recognised Important Bird Area with 550 bird species.

About 70 per cent of this wildlife lives outside the gazetted conservation area, the Maasai Mara National Reserve.

Ihwagi said agricultural activities are also threatening the resource.

He said the Maasai Mara is surrounded by community conservancies and one of the biggest challenges is habitat fragmentation.

Ihwagi said the Mara landscape is the cross border between Kenya’s Maasai Mara Reserve and Tanzania’s Serengeti.

“There is a very close interphase between wildlife and humans. One of the most important challenges within this landscape is the interaction between wildlife and the people,” he said.

Ihwagi’s sentiments are in agreement with previous studies showing how the gem is faced with a myriad of challenges.

It is estimated that 1.3 million wildebeests crossed annually from the Serengeti Park in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara in the 1970s.

This figure is reported to have dropped to 157,000 in 2016.

This is according to Joseph Ogutu, a senior statistician at the University of Hohenheim, Germany, who analysed trends in East Africa's five remaining migratory wildebeest populations in 2019.

Ogutu and his colleagues used aerial survey monitoring data collected over almost 60 years (from 1957 to 2016) in Kenya and Tanzania.

"We found that four migrations have virtually collapsed," Ogutu says.

"The remaining Serengeti-Maasai Mara route is now under threat and fewer animals are crossing yearly.

Ihwagi said all is however not lost as communities in the area have started pulling down fences to allow free movement of wildlife.

The Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association has been engaging landowners with a view to de-fencing to secure wildlife corridors.

The association was formed in 2013 to serve as a membership organisation for current and future wildlife conservancies in the Greater Maasai Mara.

They have a mandate from landowners and tourism parties to play an overarching coordination role for the Greater Mara Ecosystem stakeholders.

By conserving the greater Maasai Mara ecosystem through this network of community-protected areas, the association ensures the prosperity of biodiversity and wildlife, the regional Maasai population, recreation, tourism and the nation of Kenya for generations to come.

Today, 15 wildlife conservancies have been established in areas surrounding the national reserve.

The county of Narok has also moved in to forestall the imminent collapse of the ecosystem.

A new management plan shows that there will be no new tourism accommodation developments as well as the expansion of bed capacity within the reserve.

The management plan says that currently there is a very high bed capacity and visitor densities in the reserve.

“There will be no new tourism accommodation developments and no expansion of existing bed capacity permitted in all Maasai Mara National Reserve zones during the lifespan of the plan,” part of the plan says.

The plan says human populations and activities both within and around the reserve have increased dramatically in recent decades.

Some of the pressure includes high visitor densities impacting on the reserve’s habitats and wildlife, to even more profound long-term external factors, such as diminishing quantities and erratic flow of water in the Mara River and the lifeline of the reserve.