Renewed invasions of private ranches by herders in Kenya’s northern Laikipia region a year after similar invasions led to deadly conflicts is a sign of cracks in the country’s land use system, experts said on Wednesday.
A herder was shot dead when police tried to confiscate his cattle after they invaded one of the ranches last week, police and ranchers said. Martin Evans, chairman of the Laikipia Farmers Association, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that herder was killed as a matter of self-defense by the police. Dozens were killed and injured in Kenya’s drought-stricken Laikipia region last year as armed herders searching for scarce grazing land drove tens of thousands of cattle onto private farms and ranches from poor-quality communal land.
Increased droughts due to climate change, as well as population growth and the enclosure of public lands, have pushed many traditional nomads to move onto grazing land on private ranches. Each cow needs at least 10 acres of land to be healthy, Evans said, but the large herds of cattle kept by pastoralists was leading to depletion of grazing land.
The conflict in Laikipia highlights the struggle for land between indigenous communities and conservationists across the world, and is partly a legacy of Kenya’s colonial past.
This contested land ownership has been a source of friction, with politicians fuelling the conflict by instigating invasions into land that belong to ranchers, said Maria Dodds, a rancher in Laikipia whose property was invaded last year.
[Article source: The Standard, by Reuters]
