How colonial land regimes and urban sprawl disrupt predator coexistence: Kenya’s hyenas reveal structural tolerance gaps

Indigenous pastoralist communities in Kenya, such as the Maasai, have coexisted with hyenas for centuries through adaptive land-use practices, spiritual frameworks, and non-lethal deterrence strategies. Colonial land policies (e.g., the 1954 Swynnerton Plan) criminalized these practices, replacing communal grazing with fenced ranches that fragment habitats and intensify human-wildlife conflict. Modern conservation often frames indigenous knowledge as ‘superstition,’ ignoring its empirical basis in predator deterrence and ecosystem resilience.

The decline of predators near human settlements mirrors historical patterns from Europe’s wolf eradication campaigns to North America’s bison genocide, where state-led violence and land enclosure disrupted millennia-old coexistence. In Kenya, the post-colonial shift from pastoralist mobility to sedentary agriculture (accelerated by the 1970s ‘Green Revolution’) coincided with hyena population declines in settled areas. The study’s focus on ‘tolerance’ echoes 20th-century conservation rhetoric that blamed local communities for biodiversity loss while absolving colonial and capitalist land regimes.

Cross-culturally, predator coexistence is often mediated by spiritual beliefs: in Hindu traditions, tigers are revered as forest deities (e.g., Pashupati), while in Mongolian shamanism, wolves are ancestral guides. Indigenous Australian Dreamtime narratives position dingoes as creators and regulators of ecological balance, yet Western conservation has pathologized them as ‘feral.’ These parallels reveal that ‘tolerance’ is not a biological trait but a cultural and institutional construct shaped by power relations.

Ecological studies confirm that predator survival near humans depends on habitat connectivity, prey availability, and human disturbance levels, not merely ‘attitudes.’ Research on hyena behavior in the Maasai Mara shows that their presence in human-dominated landscapes is linked to nocturnal activity and avoidance of direct conflict, contradicting the ‘inevitable decline’ narrative. The study’s focus on tolerance overlooks the role of anthropogenic food subsidies (e.g., livestock carcasses) in altering hyena diets and movement patterns.

Artistic traditions across cultures depict predators as symbols of duality: the hyena in Maasai oral poetry embodies both trickster and guardian, reflecting its ecological role as a scavenger and apex consumer. In Western art, predators are often framed as villains (e.g., ‘The Big Bad Wolf’), reinforcing a binary that obscures their ecological necessity. Spiritual practices, such as the Maasai’s ‘enkipaata’ (ritual dances), encode knowledge of predator behavior and coexistence, yet these are dismissed as ‘folklore’ in conservation discourse.

Future scenarios for predator coexistence must integrate indigenous land tenure reforms, rewilding corridors, and agroecological practices to reverse habitat fragmentation. Modeling suggests that restoring pastoralist mobility could reduce human-wildlife conflict by 40% in Kenya’s rangelands, while fenced conservancies exacerbate predator displacement. Climate change will further stress predator populations, necessitating adaptive governance that centers indigenous knowledge and community-led conservation.

Maasai and other pastoralist communities are systematically excluded from conservation policy-making, despite their proven success in coexisting with hyenas. Their knowledge is often co-opted by NGOs (e.g., ‘indigenous knowledge’ workshops) without compensation or land rights recognition. The study’s focus on ‘tolerance’ as a behavioral metric ignores the structural violence of land dispossession, which forces communities into unsustainable livelihoods that escalate conflict with predators.