Proceedings of Pathways Kenya 2016

The conference Pathways Kenya 2016 (http://sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu/pathways), took place from January 10-13, 2016 in Nanyuki, Kenya. This conference and training program was designed to address the myriad of issues that arise as people and wildlife struggle to coexist in a sustainable and healthy manner. Their mission is to increase professionalism and effectiveness in the human dimensions of fisheries and wildlife management field.

One of the session titled,”Holistic approaches to livestock–wildlife-environment management”

Livestock, wildlife and environment management is a challenging scenario in the integration of development and environmental conservation. The conflicts over natural resources are increasing with wildlife losing their habitat to competing claims for land. Land degradation is also increasing at an alarming rate in Sub-Sahara Africa. Due to the continued increase in the human population, previously sparsely populated biodiversity rich areas continue to lose resources at an unsustainable rate. As human settlements increase and continue to expand with changing land tenure systems, the livestock wildlife interface is becoming restricted in scope but more complex and problematic. Conflicts result from competition of existing resources especially water and pastures, with implications to disease transmission and predation. Holistic approaches play a central and crucial role in the support of sustainable management and conservation of the livestock-wildlife environments. Specifically, sustainable co-existence between livelihoods and wildlife is of critical importance to conservation of the biodiversity. The session highlighted approaches to one health as an integrative effort of multiple disciplines working at various scales to attain optimal health for people, animals and the environment.

The schedule, associated abstracts and proceedings are available online (schedule:http://programme.exordo.com/pathways2016/).