Purpose: In the recent years, human-wildlife conflicts have been increasing and its implications on biodiversity conservation and livelihood is significant in the drylands of Kenya especially in Garissa County. The link between these conflicts and socio-economic livelihoods has however been less explored in northeast Kenya, which prompted an investigation into the impact of human-wildlife conflict on socio-economic livelihoods of communities bordering Bour-Algy Giraffe Sanctuary in Garissa County.
Methodology: A survey was conducted on the locals from the location as well as other stakeholders such as local administration that is village elders and chiefs, Kenya Wildlife Service as well county government officials from the department of Agriculture, Environment and Livestock. Both qualitative (KII) and quantitative (Structured questionnaire) were used. The qualitative data was analyzed through thematic analysis. The impact of Human Wildlife conflicts on socio-economic livelihood was established through Pearson correlation while the moderating effect of legal framework was established through a multivariate moderated regression model.
Findings: The results indicated that resource competition between livestock and wildlife is associated with a significant decrease in socio-economic livelihood, crop raids and predation were associated with an insignificant decrease in socio-economic livelihood, human intrusion affected socio-economic livelihood in a negative and significant manner. The findings led to the conclusion that increasing HWC was associated with economic losses, reduced income and increased costs which deteriorated socio-economic livelihood.
Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: The study recommends the county government of Garissa to work hand collectively with the local community to ensure minimization of resource competition by building more watering points, passing laws to prevent land encroachment, implementation of policies that aim to penalize and discourage hunting and poaching the wildlife, expanding the grazing land towards the sanctuary, intruding the sanctuary in order to harvest honey, massive deforestation activities to expand the human territory towards the sanctuary and cutting down trees to get fuel and expanding agricultural land.