By Checky Abuje
MPALA Research Centre (MRC) in Laikipia county, Kenya is one among well-established centres of excellence in wildlife research in Kenya that has for decade helped shape development and successes of community and private conservancies within sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.
Established in 1994, Mpala Research Centre has stood out in catalysing and disseminating interdisciplinary high impacting Research on relevant environmental sustainability and human development issues in the region.
Dr Winnie Kiiru is the Mpala Centre Director and revealed to Africa Science News that as a living Laboratory, the Centre is an “all round” research institution that looks into life behaviour of wildlife within the conservancies that informs policy makers and regulators of Wildlife conservation on the best practices for socio-economic empowerment at the community and national levels.
According to the institution’s last year (2022) report, Northern Kenya is characterised by Savannas and woodlands has an estimated 100 mammal species, that include Elephants, gravy zebras, reticulated giraffe, African wild dogs and black rhino. 550 birds species are also found within the Mplala Research ecosystem.
Winnie, who addressed Journalists drawn from across East Africa at the centre, said researchers and students from around the world carry out research at the institution whose mandate is to capacity build Kenyan and African Scientists.
In partnership with Mplala Wildlife foundation, Princeton University, Kenya Wildlife Service as well as National Museum of Kenya and Smithsonian Institution, Dr Winnie says her institution has achieved a lot despite challenges that are socio-economic. Limited funding from governments towards research is among the challenges.
The prolonged drought and by extension the outbreak of Covid-19 remained the biggest challenge towards the Research outcome at the Mpala Research Centre in the recent years that according to Director Winnie, researchers were compelled either to suspend their research or change the research question following the dictates of climate change.
“Researchers sometimes get desperate especially when their subject hibernated to another habitat or behave in a different way due to stress of drought. In these circumstances, the research question becomes invalid and interferes with the entire research” retorts Dr Winnie.
However, according to locals’ dissemination of research outcomes for the benefit of local communities is a barrier for the community to appreciate the final research content.
Cosmas Nzomo(Logistics and guest relation manager)at Mpala Research Centre expressed fears that research language and fatigue, mode of dissemination hampers trust building between researchers and the community and calls for a well thought out modalities to break the language barriers not only in Kenya, but in Africa for the local communities within the community conservancies to appreciate research work for better biodiversity conservation efforts and create harmonious coexistence .
Dr Winnie lauded Mpala Research Centre ability to create employment for the locals, adding that most of the researchers are Kenyans.