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Research, Policy and Practice

Table 1 Annual income accruing to households from the different livelihood activities

From: Trade-offs for climate-resilient pastoral livelihoods in wildlife conservancies in the Mara ecosystem, Kenya

Livelihood activity

Made up of

Notes

Conservancies

Annual income received through monthly payments from one or more conservancy.

Some households were members of up to three different conservancies.

Livestock production

Gross revenue from livestock sold, value of livestock slaughtered, livestock gifts received and milk sold.

Sales of other livestock products, such as hides and skins, were sporadic and not captured here. The value of milk consumption was also not captured because we were unable to estimate it reliably from questionnaire data. Leaving out these products underestimates the value of livestock production, e.g., in Kenya, milk provides three quarters of the total gross value of livestock’s contribution to the agriculture sector, whereas hides and skins represent 4.3% of total livestock output (Behnke and Muthami 2011).

In addition, data were collected on the composition and number of livestock owned by the household and transformed into Tropical Livestock Units (TLU)a.

Cultivation

Income from crops sold and value of crops consumed.

Calculations included those households with a failed harvest but excluded those that had not yet harvested.

Off-farm activities:

Income from any other livelihood activity, including:

Many of the activities unrelated to tourism will be indirectly related to the increased flow of people coming to the Mara as a result of tourism.

 Tourism-related sources

 Jobs in tourism, income from curio and craft sales, rent fees from campsite or lodges.

 Non-tourism-related sources

 Livestock trading, jobs such as teachers, health workers, income from a transport or vending shop business.

  1. aTLU take into account a range of livestock types and sizes in a standardised manner where 1 TLU = 250 kg. In this study, 1 cow = 0.72 TLU; 1 goat or 1 sheep = 0.17 TLU (Grandin 1988; ILCA 1981)