A recent study indicates that the pastoral practices of the Indigenous Maasai community in Kenya have shown nearly no significant positive or negative impact on the ecological health of the Maasai Mara National Reserve.
Bilal Butt acknowledges the controversial nature of his findings. As an associate professor specializing in sustainability and development at the University of Michigan, he realizes that the idea of allowing cattle to graze in a national park can be upsetting for many.
Nonetheless, the research conducted by his team and centuries of wisdom from the Indigenous Maasai people provide solid support for these conclusions.
The findings reveal that the Maasai’s shepherding practices have had almost no noticeable impact on the ecological state of the Maasai Mara National Reserve.
This context is vital, especially for land that attracts tourists while at times forcibly excluding the Indigenous farming communities, according to Butt, who is part of the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) at U-M. He aspires for his team’s research to influence new perspectives on land use, who should have access to it, and the cultural narratives that shape these discussions.
“There’s a perception that having cattle in the ‘wild’ is somehow unnatural,” Butt suggested. “But what is truly unnatural: people on safari in their 4WD vehicles or cattle grazing in the field?”
The Maasai Mara National Reserve was created to protect the area’s wildlife. However, over recent decades, populations of its large, famous herbivores, such as zebras, impalas, and elephants, have dwindled.
While researchers and conservationists previously blamed the Maasai’s cattle grazing practices for this decline, Butt questions these claims and the contexts in which they arise.
Throughout his academic journey, Butt observed how common conservation theories often disregarded the ancestral knowledge of those who inhabited the land long before the reserve’s establishment in 1961.
“The more I learned, the more I started rejecting what I was being told,” Butt reflected. “The insights were not derived from the locals; they were influenced by perspectives from the Global North, with little understanding of how the Maasai manage livestock and engage with their environment.”
Supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Butt and his research team aim to integrate this overlooked knowledge into conservation science and policy. He argues that much of the existing research fails by relying on experimental settings that overlook the realities experienced on the ground.
“There’s a common claim that livestock are harmful, but where does this belief stem from? It comes from studies that do not accurately grasp how Indigenous communities and their animals interact with the land,” Butt explained. “We wanted to ground our work in their real-life experiences.”
In their latest study, Butt and Wenjing Xu, a former postdoctoral researcher at SEAS, aimed to evaluate the effects of the Maasai’s cattle grazing practices quantitatively.
To achieve this, they examined 60 locations within the reserve monthly over a span of 19 months, making careful observations of cattle, wildlife, vegetation, and soil conditions. They also employed ecological and statistical models to rigorously analyze the grazing cattle’s effect on these ecological elements.
The results demonstrated that cattle and large wild herbivores often cohabited the same areas, particularly at the reserve’s edge. However, the direct impact of cattle on the land and wildlife was minimal.
Among the 11 species researched, only buffalo were found to have experienced some displacement due to cattle, with the impact categorized as “negligible.”
Moreover, while cattle did affect soil and vegetation, their influence was less significant compared to that of wild herbivores engaging in natural behaviors.
“There’s a tendency to criticize local communities and their practices as automatically harmful, but that’s not necessarily accurate,” Butt said. “If we consider this issue holistically—taking into account ecological, historical, and cultural factors—it offers a much different perspective than the prevailing narrative. It’s not about despair; it’s about sustainability.”
