ILRI scientists map Kenyan watershed services to benefit people, crops, livestock and wildlife

A map of land use in the Ewaso Ng’iro watershed, taken from Mapping and Valuing Ecosystem Services in the Ewaso Ng’iro Watershed, published in 2011 by ILRI.

From Ecosystem Marketplace comes this review of a new publication from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

‘. . . As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts in [dryland pastoral] ecosystems, water catchment and management becomes a crucial tool in building ecosystems resilience. For practical water management, entire watersheds need to considered; from the water catchment in highland forests to the basins in the lowlands.

‘Understanding the dynamics of the watershed, conducting cost-benefit analysis of different land use practices, and determining the economic value of ecosystem services in particular water, forests and biodiversity plays a key role in advocating for conservation and sustainable development of landscapes, where linkages between ecosystem services and human well-being are well documented.

That’s why the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a Nairobi-based NGO, published Mapping and Valuing Ecosystem Services in the Ewaso Ng’iro Watershed to inform the Government of Kenya on the latest developments on arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL’s) that cover approximately 80% of the country.

‘Typically, ASAL’s encompass a range between the savanna grasslands and desert areas. The extent of the Ewaso Ng’iro North watershed, the subject of the study, begins in the highlands of Mount Kenya where agriculture, logging and land grabbing have been documented, to the lower plains of Laikipia and Samburu which are famous for the wildlife and rich culture.

‘The step-by-step approach of mapping and valuing the ecosystem services of the watershed began with using spatial imagery to map the extent and characteristics of the watershed. This included water, biomass, livestock, wildlife and irrigated crops. These services were quantified and the demand for these services based on different land-use systems measured. An economic valuation of these services was then conducted.

‘The results of such a study are expected to inform the Government of Kenya on how to improve the standard of living in the region. This tool allows for a comparison of “alternative land and water uses between livestock, crop production, and wildlife-based tourism to enable future assessments of how and how much each use will improve the standard of living and whose standard of living.”

‘Determining the ecosystem services of the watershed takes into account more criteria than just water, but the categorization of water makes it possible to determine it’s unique value to human well-being.

The ILRI study priced the value of water based on what production systems water was a main contributor too, namely crop and livestock. It showed that value of water requirements for crops was much higher than livestock in the drylands, a cost that can now be used as a tool for various water pricing schemes and conservation incentives by policy makers.

‘The study also indirectly priced water’s contribution to tourism and biomass, values that can be used to compare different land use implications.

‘The use of such a study is not limited to policy implementation, but can inform a range of conservation and development initiatives on where to focus effort.

‘Considering different land use implications, energies can be directed towards opportunities that can deliver maximum benefit at least cost. This could be by developing conservation areas where agriculture may not be viable, or developing market mechanisms to boost livestock production. Payments for ecosystem services can also be developed for such watersheds to advocate for their conservation. . . .

[S]tudies such as the one conducted by ILRI take the first steps in informing us the how’s, why’s, what’s and how much ecosystems contribute to human well-being.

Read the whole article at Ecosystem Marketplace: Kenyan cattlemen map watershed services, 21 Dec 2011.

Read about the ILRI publication on the ILRI News Blog: Putting a price on water: From Mt Kenya forests to Laikipia savannas to Dadaab drylands, 19 Jan 2012.

Download the publication, Mapping and Valuing Ecosystem Services in the Ewaso Ng’iro Watershed, by Ericksen, PJ; Said, MY; Leeuw, J de; Silvestri, S; Zaibet, L; Kifugo, SC; Sijmons, K; Kinoti, J; Ng’ang’a, L; Landsberg, F and Stickler, M. 2011. Nairobi, Kenya: ILRI.

 

Rethinking drylands: Time to unlock their (big, neglected) potential

A herd of livestock near Marsabit town, in Kenya’s remote northern pastoral drylands (image on Flickr by Neil Palmer/CIAT).

It’s time to unlock the potential of the world’s drylands, which cover more than one-third of the earth and are home to a third of humanity, half of whom—one billion—live in poverty and hunger.

The current famine ravaging the Horn of Africa underscores the need to address the root causes of this crisis.

Many dryland areas have a long history of neglect, having been marginalized from both development processes and political discourse.

Dryland-focused policy options must be incorporated into national development agendas if they are to reduce poverty levels.

These are a few of the take-home messages of a new book produced by two United Nations organizations: The Forgotten Billion: MDG Achievement in the Drylands, which builds the case for mainstreaming dryland issues into national and international development frameworks.

Among ways proven successful in supporting sustainable drylands development is an index-based livestock insurance program in Mongolia, which can protect that country’s many livestock herders against extreme winter weather and other natural hazards. Last week a similar insurance scheme implemented by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners in Kenya’s northern Marsabit District made its first payouts to pastoral livestock herders there in the wake of the drought in the Horn (go here for those stories).

Other livestock-based ‘building blocks’ for successful dryland development highlighted by the book include legislation enacted in several West African countries to protect the mobility of pastoralists and their livestock herds and employing a ‘one-health’ approach by combining human and animal vaccination for nomadic families in Chad.

Excerpts from The Forgotten Billion:
‘Home to more than 2 billion people in nearly 100 countries, drylands cover about 40 percent of the world’s land surface. They encompass a wide variety of environments, including sandy deserts, temperate grasslands and savanna woodlands. Drylands are found on every continent but are most extensive in Africa and Asia (Figure 1.1). They are characterized by limited water resources—precipitation is often scarce and unreliable and evaporation is typically high. on average, drylands range in primary productivity from hyper-arid, arid and semi-arid, to dry subhumid. however, averages mask considerable variability. rainfall totals may fluctuate from year to year and over short distances. The result is a group of diverse and dynamic physical environments.

‘Globally, about half of all dryland inhabitants are poor. Many depend on a highly variable natural resource base for their livelihood and are constrained by socio-economic conditions that are worse than in other areas of the world. Most drylands are located in developing countries and approximately 90 percent of dryland peoples live in developing countries. Sustainable development in the drylands would help reduce poverty and hunger worldwide. Indeed, it will be impossible to meet the Millennium Development goals (MDGs) of halving world poverty and hunger by 2015 if life does not improve for the poor people of the drylands. Together, they are the ‘forgotten billion’. . . .

‘Despite the difficulties of living in drylands, people have successfully inhabited these areas for thousands of years. Historically, drylands played a central role in the development of human societies. The domestication of plants and animals, the creation of the city, and the advent of at least three major world religions can be traced to drylands. Today, drylands provide much of the world’s grain and livestock. Semi-arid areas such as the North American Great Plains, the Pampas in Argentina and the wheat belts of Ukraine and Kazakhstan produce a significant proportion of the world’s cereals.

Similarly, dryland rangelands support about 50 percent of the world’s livestock. . . .

‘Despite their historical and contemporary significance, drylands are the subject of several misconceptions that impede their sustainable development. One misconception is that drylands are barren places with little economic value. In truth, the value of dryland ecosystem services—to national economies and the lives of local people—is much higher than previously understood, even though their biological productivity is relatively low. A better appreciation of this value will help correct the notion that drylands cannot yield satisfactory and sustainable returns on investment due to the high risks associated with low and unreliable rainfall. Not least, poor people’s private investments are significant.

‘Equally erroneous is the notion that drylands’seclusion, poverty and low biological productivity condemn them to be weakly integrated into markets. In fact, dryland communities have long used markets to drive their development and the importance of this economic strategy is rapidly increasing. Markets can function even under uncertain conditions.

‘Greater respect for the resilience of dryland peoples goes hand in hand with an improved understanding of how dryland ecosystems operate. Contrary to the view that drylands are prone to relentless desertification, a new understanding of resilience in these environments emphasizes their variability as ‘disequilibrium’ systems. Further, the integrated approach to dryland challenges advocated by the Drylands Development Paradigm emphasizes the complex co-evolution of human and ecological systems in drylands.

‘Dryland communities are not, as often perceived, resistant to change. On the contrary, life in drylands requires inhabitants to be continually dynamic in response to their changing environment. Their existing adaptive capacity, assisted by appropriate policies and research, can offer viable pathways to development. The notion that standard development policy can adequately address risk and vulnerability in drylands must yield to emerging approaches that build on local and customary practices, often confronting variability directly.

‘The misapprehension that drylands contribute little to national and global economies and values should also be corrected. Drylands are increasingly important when viewed through the lens of emerging global issues such as food security and climate change. Meeting global food targets requires improved, sustainable management of dryland resources, including water, land and nutrients. The variability of dryland output must be reduced while production increases in line with global needs.’

Download the book: The Forgotten Billion: MDG Achievement in the Drylands, United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, 2011.

 

Maasai livestock herders in Kenya paid to conserve the wildlife that share their rangelands

Nairobi cityscape in the background of Nairobi National Park (photo on Flickr by Luigi Guarino).

‘As pastoralists in the North Rift grapple with the drought that has affected more than 12 million East Africans, a new model to pay the residents for conserving the ecosystem in reserves and parks is helping them to diversify income and end dependence on rain-fed agriculture.

‘The payment of the pastoralists has successfully been piloted in areas near Maasai Mara National Reserve and Kitengela, near the Nairobi National Park. In both areas, the herders have formed ‘eco-conservancies’ to protect their grazing areas for livestock and wildlife alike.

‘Under the scheme, pastoralists are given cash incentives in exchange for allowing their land to be used for ecological services that promote conservation. . . .

‘A report by the International Livestock Research Institute indicates that the income from the payment constitutes 59 per cent of the total off-farm earnings among participating households . . . .

‘The Wildlife Lease Programme was initiated by the Wildlife Foundation and the Friends of Nairobi National Park to counter the loss of crucial migration lands connecting Nairobi National Park. . . .

‘[I]n order to ensure that the conservation payment is long-term, experts at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are investigating the trade off to quantify how such interventions could be more equitable to pastoralists inhabiting these wildlife-rich areas.

The scheme comes hot on heels of a report recently released by ILRI which showed that despite government decision to invest Sh8.5bn in agriculture and funding irrigation schemes in drought ravaged parts of Turkana, the only feasible way to address future droughts is through investing in pastoralism in dry lands. The report found that only investments aimed at increasing the mobility of livestock herders could buffer the dry lands from future food crises.

‘It argued that herding makes better economic sense than crop agriculture in many of the arid and semi-arid lands that constitute 80 per cent of the Horn of Africa, and that supporting mobile livestock herding communities in advance.’

Read the whole article at Business Daily: Pastoralists benefit in new programme to conserve wildlife, 17 Oct 2011.

 

CNN reports that drought in Horn is increasing conflicts between people and wildlife

Elephants and livestock both need water on a regular basis  (photo of Kenya elephant on Flickr by Shawna Nelles).

CNN reports that ‘As the Horn of Africa suffers its worst drought for 60 years, there are reports of growing conflict between people and wildlife over the region’s limited resources.

‘. . . Jan de Leeuw, from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), says during periods of drought people get desperate.

‘”Herders have animals which are thirsty and because these are areas which have very few water points if wells don’t have water they might have to walk 50-100 kilometers to find another,” he said.

‘Leeuw says that Ethiopian herders have told him that during times of drought rules about certain areas being protected for livestock in their opinion can be broken.

‘But it’s not just the livestock that’s using areas it shouldn’t says Leeuw.

‘”Based on aerial surveys in Kenya we see that two thirds of the wildlife wanders out of the protected areas during dry seasons in search of water,” he said.

‘”In areas with crops elephants tend to eat these, which is leading to reactions of people,” he continued. . . .

‘One initiative that’s easing the tension between wildlife and animals is to provide farmers with incentives to protect areas of their land for wildlife.

‘”If you create incentives for people to protect wildlife they become much more positive about it,” Leeuw said.

‘Leeuw says that there are still many farmers in Kenya who aren’t getting these incentives and should be. Herders can earn money managing pieces of land for conservation and find other places to graze their livestock.

‘”While their livestock might not produce milk, they will still get money from tourism and wildlife preservation so it’s giving them stability in their income,” he added. . . .’

Read the whole article at CNN: Elephants and livestock battle for water in East Africa, 9 Sep 2011.

 

Germany and ILRI sign agreement in Nairobi to collaborate in research to assess the pastoral-livestock-wildlife benefits from Kenya’s eco-conservancies

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited ILRI’s Nairobi campus on 12 Jul 2011: Here, the Chancellor is rising from signing ILRI’s visitors’ book, with German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner, Kenya Agriculture Minister Sally Kosgei and ILRI Director General Carlos Seré looking on (photo credit: ILRI/MacMillan).

Nairobi’s Daily Nation newspaper reported yesterday (12 Jul 2011):

‘Kenya has opened its doors for more German investments following the setting up of an office expected to promote trade between the two countries.

‘This follows the signing of an agreement that establishes a delegation office for German Industry and Commerce in Nairobi at a ceremony witnessed by ‘Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Raila Odinga. . . .

Kenya and Germany also signed an agreement to support research at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi. . . .’

The study to be conducted by scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, in partnership with Kenyan institutions and groups, will assess the state of Kenya’s ‘eco-conservancies’, which strive to benefit both Kenya’s wildlife and the pastoral people who have been stewards of wildlife in this country for centuries. The study will examine the benefits accruing from the establishment of these eco-conservancies in terms of both wildlife conservation and poverty reduction among Kenya’s pastoral communities.

Following the agreement signing ceremony, attended by ILRI Director General Carlos Seré and ILRI’s Director of Partnerships and Communications Bruce Scott, Chancellor Merkel attended a State luncheon given by President Mwai Kibaki, to which ILRI’s director general was also invited.

Read the whole article in the Daily Nation: Our doors are open, German investors assured, 12 Jul 2011.

 

FAO hosts meeting on buffalo and livestock diseases in Africa

In June 2011, the European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (EuFMD) hosted a meeting on buffalo in Africa. Presentations from the meeting are online, and include:

• Mapping African buffalo distributions, in relation to livestock disease risk
• Ecology and social organization of forest buffalo
• Spatiotemporal dynamics of forage and water resources shape space use of West African savanna buffalo
• Fusion-fission patterns in African buffalo and buffalo-cattle contacts at wildlife-livestock interfaces: an investigation using GPS telemetry
• Spatial Distribution of Foot-and- Mouth Disease Viral Lineages in African buffalo (Syncerus caffer)
• Contextualising Livestock and Buffalo in Africa
• Modelling the risk of Foot and Mouth Disease transmission at the wildlife/livestock interface of Kruger National Park

 

High-level scientific training kicks off systematic game counts in the Kitengela rangelands outside Nairobi

Plains game and Masai livestock are relatively compatible in Kitengela and other East African pastoral lands (photo credit: ILRI/Mann).

The non-governmental ‘Friends of Nairobi National Park’ organization report the following story this month about a ground count of the wild mammals inhabiting the rangelands an hour’s drive from Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, rangelands that not only maintain Maasai herds of cattle, sheep and goats, but also serve as the annual calving grounds of wildebeest from the Park. The Masai landowners here are keen to find ways to sustain both their livestock livelihoods and their wildlife resources, both of which are threatened by Kenya’s fast-expanding population and development. Counting what wildlife remains gives them a basis on which to plan the future of these traditional Masai lands.

‘. . . A greater ecosystem game count . . . started about a week ago with the Nairobi National Park game count; . . . preparations are now underway for the last two sections of the wet season counts i.e. Kitengela, Isinya and Kipeto ground counts (1st, 2nd and 3rd Triangles respectively).

‘With technical support from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which has provided the equipments to be used for the whole exercise, including GPSs [global positioning systsms], range finders [binoculars], maps, and compasses, training for the Kitengela and Isinya ground counts kicked off early on [14 June], with Shem Kifugo of ILRI providing his expertise and leading the training for the enumerators who are community members. [We at] ‘Friends of Nairobi National Park’ . . . realize that we have a big role to play in influencing decisions that are made in relation to the park and the greater ecosystem, and thus there is need for us to back our reasoning with sound scientific evidence. It is for this very reason that the training had to be undertaken and the counting will be done in a systematic manner using sound scientific procedures.

‘The first day of the training for the 25 enumerators for the 1st two triangles was indeed intensive, and the sheep and goat land in the Kitengela was turned into a classroom, where the students were given practical lessons on handling and using the GPSs, reading maps, using rangefinders and compasses and filling in data sheets as well as the actual game counting and recording.

‘More than half of the enumerators under training were taking a refresher course, as they had undergone training on the same several times with ILRI. Some had participated in the counts in 2004 and others had participated in the fence mapping exercise recently carried out by ILRI. This made work easier for Shem, as those who already had the knowledge of the use of the equipment assisted the newcomers and formed part of the training team. Shem says this is the best approach, as people tend to understand their peers faster than when a person from outside tries to explain things. Some of the members of this team will be used for the training in Kipeto, where the enumerators have not had previous training and/or experience in game counting. . . .’

The game counting started on 18 June and ran for 10 days in Kitengela and 12 days in Isinya. All the data collected was given to ILRI scientists, who will enter the into their computer models and run analyses. The researchers will then make a report and provide it and the results to these Kajiado communities doing the game counts.

Read the whole article on the Friends of Nairobi National Park website: Kitengela ground count training kicks off on high note, 16 June 2011.

 

Wildlife populations reported to be crashing in Africa’s renowned Mara and Okavango wildlife refuges

The African Cape buffalo (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth).

Is conservation of wild mammals and their environments in Africa at a crisis point? Are wildlife populations “crashing” in Africa’s most renowned wildlife reserves? Two new reports suggest that may be the case. The following was reported in the Guardian today.

‘The Okavango delta in Botswana has suffered “catastrophic” species loss over the past 15 years, researchers have announced , in the latest sign of a growing crisis for wildlife in Africa.

‘Some wild animal populations in the delta, one of the wonders of the natural world, have shrunk by up to 90% and are facing local extinction, according to the most comprehensive aerial survey yet undertaken there.

‘The findings come after a study this month showed dramatic declines in animal numbers in the Masai Mara wildlife reserve, south-west Kenya, raising anxiety about the effectiveness of conservation across the continent. . . .

‘”The results were unexpected,” said Mike Chase, founder of Elephants without Borders, which did the aerial survey of the region. “There has been a cosy pretence that wildlife is thriving and doing well in the Okavango delta. Our survey provides the first scientific evidence that wildlife is declining, and pretty sharply too. That cosy pretence has been blown out of the water.”

‘He added: “It is still one of Africa’s great wildlife destinations, but doing nothing will jeopardise that reputation.”

‘Chase’s study found that 11 species have declined by 61% since a 1996 survey in Ngamiland district, the location of the delta. Ostrich numbers were worst hit; there was a 95% drop, from 11,893 animals to 497 last year. Some 90% of wildebeest were also wiped out, along with 84% of the population of the antelope tsessebe, 81% of warthogs and kudus, and nearly two-thirds of giraffes.

‘”The decline of wildebeest has been catastrophic. The numbers have fallen below the minimum of 500 breeding pairs to be sustainable. They are on the verge of local extinction. These are grim statistics. You would have expected to see serious decline since the 70s in somewhere like Kenya, but our trend analysis only goes back to the 90s. To have seen decline on our watch is totally unacceptable,” Chase said.

Chase suggested a drought in the 1980s and 1990s, plus bushfire, habitat encroachment and poaching, as the main reasons for the nosedive. “The causes are multiple and complex, but drought is the over-arching one.”. . .

‘The study was funded by Botswana’s government and Chase was due to present his findings to ministers and scientists on Friday. . . .

‘One politically sensitive topic is the fencing to separate wildlife from farmers’ livestock. Joseph Okori, a local wildlife expert, said: “We did see a great impact from fences on species like springbok, kudu and zebra. When drought comes these fences blocked them from normal migration patterns and access to water.”

‘The Okavango delta is not the only tourist destination in Africa to face a loss of natural bounty. Researchers found that in the Masai Mara, numbers of impala, warthog, giraffe, topi and Coke’s hartebeest had declined by more than 70% over three decades.

‘Scientists at Hohenheim University in Germany, and the International Livestock Research Institute [ILRI] in Nairobi, said wildebeest had again been badly hit: their celebrated migration now involved 64% fewer animals than it did in the early 1980s. Zebra numbers inside the reserve had fallen by three-quarters.

‘Joseph Ogutu, a senior statistician in the bioinformatics unit at Hohenheim University [and formerly a scientist at ILRI, where he did this research], said: “There is a crisis. And what we’re seeing in the Mara is not specific to that region.” The conflict between wildlife and farming livestock was seen as significant here too. Ogutu told of a 1,100% increase in cattle grazing in the reserve, along with poaching and changing land-use patterns – the primary causes of the Mara’s downward trend in wildlife populations.

‘Conservationists believe there are lessons to be learned from both trouble spots. “One of the big problems in both the Mara and the Okavango delta is that we are not looking at how the land around them is managed,” said Drew McVey, species programme officer at WWF-UK. “It’s very important that we have a more holistic approach to conservation and development and don’t seen these as isolated islands. We need to think of them as full ecosystems.”. . .’

Read the whole article in today’s Guardian: Drought and poachers take Botswana’s natural wonder to brink of catastrophe, 18 June 2011.

Read more about ILRI’s recent comprehensive study in Kenya’s Masai Mara on the ILRI News Blog: Numbers of wildlife in Kenya’s famous Mara region have declined by two-thirds or more over last 33 years, 1 June 2011.

 

Wildlife ‘crash’ reported in Kenya’s famous Masai Mara region

The African Cape buffalo is all but gone on the Mara ranches adjacent to Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Reserve; ‘The status of Masai Mara as a prime conservation area and premier tourist draw card in Kenya may soon be in jeopardy’—Joseph Ogutu (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth).

Matt Walker reports on the BBC this week that populations of wildlife species in the world-renowned Masai Mara reserve in Kenya have crashed in the past three decades. News of this crash came from research published recently in the Journal of Zoology.

‘Numbers of impala, warthog, giraffe, topi and Coke’s hartebeest have declined by over 70%, say scientists.

‘Even fewer survive beyond the reserve in the wider Mara, where buffalo and wild dogs have all but disappeared, while huge numbers of wildebeest no longer pass through the region on their epic migration.

‘However, numbers of cattle grazing in the reserve have increased by more than 1100% per cent, although it is illegal for them to so do.

‘This explosion in the numbers of domestic livestock grazing in the Mara region of south-west Kenya, including within the Masai Mara national reserve, is one of the principal reasons wildlife has disappeared, say the scientists who conducted the research.

‘Dr Joseph Ogutu, a senior statistician in the Bioinformatics unit of the University of Hohenheim, Germany conducted the study with colleagues there and at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. . . .

‘This covered 12 species of large mammal, ostriches and livestock, and allowed the team to calculate trends in wildlife numbers over a 33-year period across the entire reserve, and in the Masai pastoral ranches adjoining the reserve.

‘The data also allowed the scientists to investigate whether numbers of migratory wildebeest and zebra coming into the Mara each year have reduced. . . .

‘”We were very surprised by what we found,” Dr Ogutu told the BBC.

‘”The Mara has lost more than two thirds of its wildlife.”

‘Of the 13 large species studied, only ostriches and elephants had not fared badly outside of the reserve, while inside the Masai Mara only eland, Grant’s gazelle and ostrich showed any signs of population recovery in the past decade.

‘The declines are particularly surprising, say the scientists, as they had expected animal populations to have recovered since 2000-2001.

‘That is when major conservancy efforts, and an increase in local policing, began in an attempt to protect the wildlife there.

‘”But to our great surprise, the extreme wildlife declines have continued unabated in the Mara,” says Dr Ogutu.

‘”The great wildebeest migration now involves 64% fewer animals than it did in the early 1980s,” he adds.’ . . .

‘There appear to be three main causes of these dramatic declines: the activities of poachers, changing land use patterns in ranches within the Mara, and an increase in the number and range of livestock held on these ranches. . . .

‘The expansion of settlements, fences and livestock numbers need to be regulated if these declines in wildlife are to be arrested, they propose, as well as bringing down poaching levels. . . .’

Read the whole article at BBC Nature News: Wildlife ‘crash’ in the Mara region of Kenya, Africa, 31 May 2011.

Read an ILRI News blog post on this: Numbers of wildlife in Kenya’s famous Mara region have declined by two-thirds or more over last 33 years, 1 June 2011.

 

Forestalling the next plague: Building a first picture of all diseases afflicting people and animals in Africa

A project funded by the Wellcome Trust on zoonotic diseases was broadcast on an Australian television program called ‘Catalyst’ on 10 March 2011. The research described in the program is supported by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), where the project’s principal investigator, Eric Fevre, is hosted.

The television program interviews Fevre and his colleagues Lian Doble, a veterinarian managing laboratory work in western Kenya, and  Appolinaire Djikeng, technology manager of a Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) Hub, located on ILRI’s Nairobi, Kenya, campus.

Fevre and Doble and their team are investigating what diseases of both people and animals are circulating near the border town of Busia, a very poor, densely populated area whose communities mix crop growing with livestock raising on small plots of land. Research such as this that is looking at both human and animal diseases is rare, but is urgently needed because close relations of people and farm animals, as well as the existence of monkeys and other wildlife nearby, are a ‘recipe for diseases’ jumping from animal to people. If we’re going to manage to forestall another zoonotic plague such as bird flu or HIV/AIDS, we’re going to have to conduct more of such ‘one health’ investigations that look at exactly what diseases are being passed between animals and people.

This research is part of a larger study being conducted by ILRI at the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) Hub to look at diseases of animals and people across eastern Africa. The program also features an interview with BecA Hub’s technology manager, Appolinaire Djikeng, about the potential for genomics and meta-genomics to build a picture of the complex relations of disease pathogens circulating in the region. ILRI is already active in this area; together with a network of Kenyan partners we are using state of the art sequencing tools to examine pathogen incidence and diversity from complex, mixed, field samples. This work is funded by the Google Foundation under their ‘Predict and Prevent’ program.

A transcript of the Australian television program on this research follows.

NARRATION
Africa, the cradle of humanity and renowned for its wildlife. It could also be the origin of the next global pandemic. It’s long been known that people and animals living close together—well, that’s a recipe for disease. But exactly which diseases? And if new diseases are creeping into the system? Well, that’s something they’re trying to find out here in western Kenya. They’re called zoonotic diseases: infections that can jump from animals to people.

Eric Fevre
There are lots of zoonotic infections. In fact, about 60 per cent of all human diseases are of zoonotic origin.

NARRATION
So this team headed by Eric Fevre is taking a much closer look at the health of people and livestock in a densely populated region of western Kenya.

Eric Fevre
It seems to be obvious that zoonotic infections will occur more in people who keep livestock than in those who don’t. Whether that’s the case has never been formally established.

Lian Doble
If you look around here you don’t see the cattle in a field, in a fenced field or in a barn away from the people. Cattle are tethered within the compound that everybody’s working in, the chickens are loose around, going in and out of the houses. It’s a much more integrated system than anything we really see at home.

NARRATION
The kinds of problems that this environment creates are readily apparent.

Eric Fevre
We’re in a mixed crop-livestock production system where people are keeping a few animals. And as you can see behind me here, it’s the rainy season and people have recently planted their new crops. And this is an area of interaction between the croplands and the animals. And you can see behind over there behind those fields is some forest. And there might be a watercourse flowing through that forest, for example, where the animals are going to water. And that’s where the exciting things happen from a disease transmission point of view.

NARRATION
Part of the team focus on human health, taking a range of samples from people in the village as well as a detailed account of their medical history and current living situation. Meanwhile, others in the team have a look at the livestock.

Lian Doble
What we do know is that there are a large number of diseases that circulate between animals and humans. The problem is that a lot of these diseases cause signs which are very similar to other human diseases like malaria and human tuberculosis. What isn’t known is actually how many of the diseases that are mainly diagnosed as malaria actually are another disease caused by the pathogens found in cattle. So we’re just trying to find out what diseases she has and what are shared with the people that she lives with.

Paul Willis
And does she look healthy?

Lian Doble
She’s feisty and she’s quite healthy so we’ll see what she might have been carrying. And we can tell you later in the lab.

NARRATION
Samples are taken back to field laboratories in the town of Busia on the Ugandan border.

Eric Fevre
In this place we’ve got a human and an animal lab next door where we process the material that comes in from the field. One of the things that we really need to do is look at fresh material. Because once the samples get a bit old, the parasites become a bit difficult to identify. And the second important thing is that we of course feed back to the participants of our study. So results that we get in the lab here are used directly by the clinicians working in the field to decide what treatments they should be giving people. So that’s one of the direct ways that our research project feeds back into the community.

NARRATION
This detailed look at the community health of a whole region is showing many expected results, and a few surprises.

Eric Fevre
One of the diseases that we’re testing for is brucellosis. And looking at the official reports there isn’t any brucellosis in this region. But we have detected brucellosis both in animals and in people and so already that’s what’s telling us that there are things circulating here that official records don’t pick up.

NARRATION
There seems to be a lot of malaria around, but Eric’s team are finding that many cases are masking something much more sinister.

Eric Fevre
Often it won’t be malaria. It will be something else. And there are a multitude of different pathogens that cause fever of the type that malaria also causes. And that’s a real problem. Because somebody with a low income might need to, say, sell one of their animals to then go to the clinic, get a diagnosis, buy some anti-malarial drugs. They don’t work because the person actually has sleeping sickness. So they go back to a different clinic. Or to a traditional healer. They get drugs that don’t work for the infection that they have. And so on and so on, five, six, seven times, travelling maybe ten kilometres each time. That’s a huge economic burden on them. And then finally they get properly diagnosed when they’re in the late stage of their infection. And it would have been much easier to treat them if they’d have been caught earlier on.

NARRATION
It’s a very complex picture that is emerging, one that could be simplified by some basic technology.

Lian Doble
Thirty per cent of our participants don’t have access to a latrine. You can imagine what that means. And that’s something that could be very actually quite easily sorted out with some education and some money and would sort out all sorts of other diarrhoeal diseases, which are one of the huge killers of young children in Africa.

NARRATION
Back in Nairobi another team is taking a different look at the spread of diseases across east Africa.

NARRATION
Appolinaire Djikeng heads up a team collecting samples of animals and people from a wide swath across Kenya.

Appolinaire Djikeng
So essentially at the moment we are trying to cover the east African region. But of course we would like to once we establish our processes and data management skills and data analysis skills we like to expand this to other parts of Africa.

NARRATION
The first step in the labs is to figure out exactly what spread of diseases are present in their samples.

Appolinaire Djikeng
You are able to go in there, look at the, the complex composition of the viruses, at the pathogens or at the small organisms that exist in them in doing it that way you are able to come up with a catalogue of potential organisms that exist in there.

NARRATION
And this analysis goes deep into the DNA of the viruses and pathogens that are found, tracking minute changes in their genetic make-up that allows Appolinaire’s team to follow the spread of individual strains of a disease.

Appolinaire Djikeng
We have a reasonably good bioinformatic infrastructure here for storing that data and extracting them, looking at specific parameters from that particular data base. With so many samples from such a wide geographical area and with so much information for each individual sample these guys are dealing with a lot of data and so they brought in four million bucks worth of computing grunt. With so many samples from such a wide geographic area and with so much information for each individual sample these guys are dealing with a lot of data. So they brought in four million bucks worth of computing grunt.

NARRATION
There are several teams looking at zoonotic diseases in Kenya, but the impact of their work is global.

Appolinaire Djikeng
The threat of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases are no longer restricted to countries like central Africa or sub-Saharan Africa So I think now we have to put this work in the context of the global effort across the world. Trying to make sure that even remote parts of the area do have resources and capabilities to begin to do good and accurate diagnostics of what could be emerging.

Eric Fevre
We actually use the data that we gather to, to try and understand how these things are being transmitted, how the fact that your animal has this disease impacts on your risk at a population scale. And, and use that to then try and understand the, the process of transmission of these diseases.

Lian Doble
The next big disease problem is very likely to be a zoonotic disease so doing this sort of work and then leaving it isn’t an option. It needs to be ongoing and, and build. This is the start of something and we’ll build on it from here.

Download this Catalyst show from Australia’s ABC website (select ‘Zoonosis’ 10/3/2011).

And check out a blog by Paul Willis about the adventures of filming in Kenya’s border town of Busia: Coming to an end, 7 March 2011.

Here’s some of what Willis has to say in his blog about this film project:
‘Busia is a hard place; a border crossing town riddled with grinding poverty and hard living. The main street, the only sealed road through town, is frequently clogged with a seemingly endless string of trucks waiting to cross the border into Uganda. Because Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are all landlocked nations, every drop of fuel and most freight coming into the country has to be trucked in from Mombasa and most of that comes through Busia. . . . This area of Kenya has some of the most intensively farmed land in East Africa. The whole landscape is divided into small plots with clusters of mud and thatch huts scattered among them. Here people live cheek-by-jowl with their crops and animals. It’s a recipe for diseases to jump from animals to people. Add strips of forested vegetation inhabited by a variety of monkeys and other native mammals and the chances of new diseases leaping into the human population goes up dramatically. We’re here to report on the work of a dedicated group trying to get a handle on exactly what diseases are in this chaotic system. It’s hard work, in one of the hotter areas of Kenya, and the study is spread over a huge area. . . .’