Kenya Wildlife Service

Demand for animal-source foods (ASF) is growing globally, and the consumption can improve food and nutrition security. However, there are growing food safety risks associated with milk contamination. Studies assessing food safety measures (FSM) at the farm level are still limited. This study investigated FSM adoption in Kenyan smallholder dairy farms. Data were collected through focus group discussions (FGDs) and a farm survey involving 652 farmers, which considered 11 milking hygiene, 6 milk storage, 6 environmental hygiene, and 7 animal health measures. The Food Safety Index (FSI) was 51.67%, which reveals average FSM adoption and a good agricultural practices (GAPs) compliance gap that exposes consumers to public health risks. FSM adoption was associated with participation in formal and/or informal milk value chains, socio-economic and demographic factors, knowledge of milk quality standards and regulations, farm biophysical conditions, market dynamics and institutional factors. There is a need for increasing FSM adoption through improving farmers' knowledge, supporting their access to financial resources, and providing infrastructure and services, including roads, inputs, extension and animal health services. Policymakers should design and implement policies that address specific farmers' needs. There is also a need to provide economic incentives and ensure that the market rewards dairy producers who adopt high levels of FSM that lead to safer milk. Finally, promoting the One Health approach can help farmers address human, environmental and animal health risks, which can reduce food safety risks in dairy value chains.

BackgroundProstate cancer (PCa) is a leading cause of cancer-related morbidity and mortality among men globally. The prevalence is disproportionate among men of African descent and more specifically, in East Africa, where it is characterized by aggressive tumour biology and poor survival outcomes. Despite its high burden, the risk factors underlying its disproportionate prevalence remain understudied in this population. This study investigated lifestyle risk and protective factors among prostate cancer (PCa) patients, including demographic, dietary, lifestyle, and family cancer history, at Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) and Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.MethodsThis case-control study compared PCa patients with non-PCa controls. Data on sociodemographic, lifestyle, diet, and family history were collected using a standardized questionnaire. Multivariate logistic regression identified significant risk and protective factors for PCa from each of these factors. Several statistical approaches were used to rank a Tanzanian urban population’s significant risk or protective factors.ResultsRanking of broad classes of factors revealed that diet, lifestyle, sociodemographic, family, and patient history of cancer and other disease factor groups, in order of importance, were associated with PCa in men. However, the single best model explaining the odds of being PCa had intake of red meat, coffee, alcohol, tomato, and marital status as independent variables. Specifically, increased intake of red meat (AOR = 5.248), and alcohol (AOR = 2.189) were associated with a high PCa incidence while increased intake of soya (AOR = 0.248), coffee (AOR = 0.603), tomato (AOR = 0.188), and not being married (AOR = 0.147) were associated with lower incidence of PCa in the Tanzanian urban population.ConclusionThe findings suggest that dietary and lifestyle factors have a significant association with PCa incidence in a Tanzanian population compared to sociodemographic, family cancer history, and exposure to infectious and other lifestyle diseases. We recommend further research, including prospective studies or randomized controlled trials with large sample sizes, to confirm these findings, as they suggest health initiatives for the prevention of PCa among high-risk populations, such as urban male populations.

Abstract Megaherbivores are increasingly promoted as agents of nature restoration, yet most research on their ecological effects has focused on temperate and non-forested systems, with limited consideration of tropical forests and their historical land-use contexts. A better understanding of megaherbivore impacts in tropical forests is essential to inform rewilding and restoration efforts. This is particularly important in regenerating secondary systems that historically supported megafaunga and remain highly valuable targets for ecological recovery. We address this knowledge gap by comparing tree species composition, forest structural attributes, and understory habitat composition across three disturbance regimes in an East African tropical dry forest: (1) primary forest with megaherbivores, (2) secondary forest with megaherbivores, and (3) primary forest without megaherbivores. Under megaherbivore presence, understory habitat and tree branching architecture converged across primary and secondary forests, suggesting functional consistency in disturbance effects imposed by large herbivores and indicating that key structural ecosystem processes can be rapidly restored. In contrast, canopy structure and tree species composition remained distinct between forest types and strongly constrained by persistent legacies of past human land use. Our findings underscore that restoration strategies relying on megaherbivores must explicitly account for historical land-use constraints rather than assuming spontaneous convergence toward primary-forest conditions.

Abstract The South African lion ( Panthera leo ) metapopulation is distributed over a network of small, fenced protected areas and requires intensive management to mimic ecological processes. As the metapopulation grows, coordinated management—supported by reliable, cost‐effective monitoring—is increasingly important. However, monitoring programs to support improved metapopulation management can be resource intensive, and optimal sampling regimes are desirable, wherein expenditure of resources is minimized without compromising the reliability of estimates and the ability to detect population trends. In this study, we conducted a follow‐up lion population survey in a small, fenced reserve in South Africa, 2 years after a management‐driven population reduction. Using optimal sampling guidelines from an initial survey in 2020, we applied Bayesian spatial capture‐recapture (SCR) models to estimate current density at 5.24 individuals/100 km 2 (95% highest posterior density interval = 4.22–6.43), a 40% decline since the 2020 estimate. By following recommendations on survey effort and minimum data objectives, informed by the 2020 survey, we demonstrate how an initial survey can be used to optimize subsequent survey effort and strike a balance between precision and resource expenditure. Our study highlights how SCR models and search‐encounter methods can be used to guide lion management in small, fenced reserves and help to inform a more coordinated approach to lion metapopulation management in South Africa.

Electoral politics in Kenya has historically reflected deep structural inequalities, especially along gender, class, and geographic lines. While participation in electoral processes has expanded since the reintroduction of multi-party democracy in the early 1990s, women, particularly those residing in rural areas, and especially due to their being an “invisible majority” continue to encounter significant barriers to meaningful political engagement. Drawing on feminist political economy and intersectional feminism literature, employing sequential exploratory mixed-methods research design, the study examined the gendered architecture of political participation in Luo Nyanza counties of Kenya. Data were collected from a survey of 378 respondents and 43 qualitative in-depth interviews and FGDs across Siaya, Kisumu, Homa Bay, and Migori counties. Sampling combined multi-stage stratified random techniques for the survey and purposive selection for the qualitative. Chi-Square, multinomial logistic regression, ordinal logistic regression, MANOVA, and PCA’s K-means clustering were employed to analyze the stratification of campaign roles (monetary contribution, strategic management, security provision, sexual entertainment, house chores, cheerleading, and mobilization) by gender and other intersecting identities (education, income, disability, and political patronage). The findings provide a strong empirical critique to the dominance of quantitative incrementalism; ideas and practices that by-and-large reduce gender progress to the mere increase in the number of elite women occupying formal leadership positions. Four key themes underpinned the findings. First, rural women are routinely assigned to none and/or largely unpaid, symbolic roles such as cheerleading, cooking, and mobilization, while men, especially politically connected and well-educated, dominate managerial and resource-based functions. Second, Chi-Square tests revealed that only political patronage significantly predicted participation in exploitative roles, such as sexual entertainment, especially among young, low-income women, showing that for rural women, closeness to power can exacerbate rather than protect against gender vulnerabilities. Third, advanced analytics revealed that gender, when combined with the other intersecting identifies exhibit consistent influence on campaign role allocation to rural-based voters. Lastly, PCA’s KMeans Clustering revealed the deeper social architecture of electoral participation in Luo Nyanza by surfacing distinct constellations of rural political participation, namely, Hybrid Performative-Strategic, Masculinized Security-Exploitative, Household Anchor, and the Hyper-Visible and Vulnerable clusters. The study concludes that meaningful gender equity in political participation must go beyond elite inclusion and consequently recommends that duty-bearers should redirect efforts and resources to the informal political economies of the rural, devise context-sensitive campaign labor regulation, and formulate civic education strategies that aim to dismantle gendered norms, affirm rural women's agency, visibility, and voice.

Climate change is having unprecedented impacts on human health, including increasing infectious disease risk. Despite this, health systems across the world are currently not prepared for novel disease scenarios anticipated with climate change. While the need for health systems to develop climate change adaptation strategies has been stressed in the past, there is no clear consensus on how this can be achieved, especially in rural areas in low- and middle-income countries that experience high disease burdens and climate change impacts simultaneously. Here, we highlight the need to put health systems in the context of climate change and demonstrate how this can be achieved by taking into account all aspects of infectious disease risk (i.e., pathogen hazards, and exposure and vulnerability to these pathogen hazards). The framework focuses on rural communities in East Africa since communities in this region experience climate change impacts, present specific vulnerabilities and exposure to climate-related hazards, and have regular exposure to a high burden of infectious diseases. Implementing the outlined approach can help make health systems climate adapted and avoid slowing momentum towards achieving global health grand challenge targets.

Human-induced habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation are among the leading causes of species decline worldwide. This is particularly true in tropical forests, where unique, often highly specialized fauna is under threat. By altering resource availability, anthropogenic habitat change can impose resource constraints on animals and may influence their allocation of resources to competing life history traits. In this study, we investigated whether nestlings and adults differently invest in self-maintenance depending on habitat degradation in the placid greenbul (Phyllastrephus cabanisi placidus), a cooperative breeder native to the cloud forests of Eastern Africa. We quantified investment in self-maintenance by measuring innate immune function using bacteria killing assays (BKAs) in adult breeders and their nestlings along a gradient of fragmented and degraded forests of the Kenyan Taita Hills. While innate immune function is an important defence against pathogens, resources needed to maintain it may come at a cost to other processes such as nestling development. We show that while forest degradation did not affect adult innate immune function, nestlings bear the cost of growing up in degraded habitats, as their ability to clear bacteria from blood plasma was lower in areas with degraded vegetation. These findings highlight the importance of studying the effects of habitat fragmentation and degradation in the tropics, where most of the global biodiversity occurs, and where long-lived species may respond differently from short-lived temperate ones, for example by prioritising self-preservation over reproduction.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00114-025-02046-3.

Abstract Countries have committed to conserving and restoring ecosystems after signing the Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) will serve as a headline indicator to track countries' progress toward achieving this goal. Using Kenyan coral reefs, we demonstrate how nations implementing the GBF can use standardized estimates of ecosystem degradation from RLE assessments to support site‐specific management decisions. We undertook a reef‐by‐reef analysis to evaluate the relative decline of four key ecosystem components over the past 50 years: hard corals, macroalgae, parrotfish, and groupers. Using the two benthic indicators, we also calculated standardized estimates of state to identify reef sites which maintain a better condition through time relative to adjacent sites. Kenya's coral reefs have degraded across all four ecosystem components. At more than half the monitored sites parrotfish and grouper abundance declined by more than 50%, while coral cover and macroalgae‐coral ratio declined by at least 30%. This resulted in an Endangered threat status for coral reefs in Kenya (under criterion D of the RLE). The results can guide management actions related to 9 of the 23 GBF targets. For example, we identified several sites with relatively healthy benthic and fish communities as candidate areas for protection measures under Target 3. The RLE has a key role to play in monitoring and meeting the goals and targets of the GBF, and our work demonstrates how using the wealth of data within these assessments can inform local‐scale ecosystem management and amplify the GBF's impact.

Abstract Human–elephant conflict is growing in Africa as human populations and development increases, creating disturbance to elephant habitats. Beehive fences have been trialed as a coexistence tool with some success but all studies have looked at small sample sizes over a short time period. Our study analyses the behavior of African elephants ( Loxodonta africana ) that approached a network of beehive fence protected farms in two conflict villages over 9 years next to Tsavo East National Park. We compare differences in elephant raids and beehive occupation rates annually, during a drought, and during peak crop production seasons. Out of 3999 elephants approaching our study farms 1007 elephants broke the beehive fence and entered the protected farm areas (25.18%). This was significantly less than the 2649 encounters where elephants remained either outside the farm boundary or broke into the control farms (66.24%). A further 343 elephants entered the farm by walking through a gap at the end of a fence (8.56%). The annual beehive fence break‐through rates averaged 23.96% (±SE 3.15) resulting in a mean of 76.04% elephants deterred from beehive fences protected farm plots. Over six peak crop growing seasons the beehive fences kept between 78.3% and 86.3% of elephants out of the farms and crops. The beehive fences produced one ton of honey sold for $2250; however, a drought caused a 75% reduction in hive occupation rates and honey production for 3 years after negatively impacting honey profits and the effectiveness of the fences. Beehive fences are very effective at reducing up to 86.3% of elephant crop‐raids during peak crop seasons after good rainfall, but any increase in elephant habitat disturbance or the frequency and duration of droughts could reduce their effectiveness as a successful coexistence tool.