When Wildlife Can’t Move, We All Lose: The Case for Action on Protecting Migratory Corridors and Transboundary Migration in Africa, and Beyond
By Dr Mwenda Mbaka & Dr Katherine Baxter - March, 2025
*With special thanks to Janice Cox for her invaluable expertise and comments*
Across East Africa, the rhythm of life once echoed through vast landscapes. Wildebeest stampeded across the Mara-Serengeti plains, elephants navigated through wetlands, camels drifted across arid lands, and pastoralist herders traced the footsteps of rain and pasture. The lion’s roar was a hymn to nature, and the hyena’s laughter split the plains like thunder beneath pregnant clouds laden with the waters of life.
These migrations weren’t just spectacles. They were systems of life: sustaining biodiversity, supporting pastoralist resilience, and upholding ecosystems shaped by millennia of intricate movements. But today, that lifeblood is drying up. And the silence is deafening.
When Movement Becomes Impossible
Two narratives converge here: one of legal momentum and one of environmental stagnation.
Earlier this month, South Africa’s courts did something revolutionary. In a precedent-setting ruling, animal well-being was declared a central concern in environmental decision-making. The case, centered on the endangered African penguin and brought forward by BirdLife South Africa and SANCCOB with support from Animal Law Reform South Africa, signaled a profound shift, recognizing that animals are not mere “resources” but sentient beings worthy of legal protection. It is a moment of legal and moral clarity that reverberates far beyond the Cape.
The court case succeeded due to the ground-breaking inclusion of wildlife welfare in South Africa’s National Environmental Management Biodiversity Act (NEMBA) in 2022. This was a huge “win” for animal welfare, especially in linking this to Section 24 of South Africa’s Constitutional right to a healthy environment. This judgment must be viewed as more than a win for one species; it is a blueprint for how Africa can, and should, respond to the worsening crises facing wild animals across the continent, especially those that migrate. And it should serve as a lesson and a testament to what’s possible for those around the world seeking to make similar progress on these issues.
Meanwhile, in other parts of Africa, migratory species - from wildebeest and elephants to camels, cattle, sheep and goats - are being fenced out of existence. Their ancient routes, vital for survival, are being carved up by highways, blocked by development projects, or ignored entirely by poor policy decisions.
In Zimbabwe, a grim example unfolded when the government authorized the culling of 200 elephants due to food shortages caused by drought. These majestic creatures, dubbed “gardeners of Nature,” capable of traveling great distances in search of water and food, were left with nowhere to go. In South Africa’s Kruger National Park, the debate over elephant culling remains persistent (SUCO-SA), illustrating the peril animals face when migration corridors are lost.
In Kenya, forest elephants historically roam between Mt. Kenya, the Aberdare Range, Meru National Park, and the Isiolo-Marsabit ecosystem, navigating complex seasonal patterns in search of forage and water. Savannah elephants roam the savannahs, manipulating the ecosystem, including providing lesser animals access to nutrient-rich pods of plants, such as Acacia tortillis. Today, infrastructure developments and land privatization are severing these connections. Without safe corridors, human-elephant conflict is rising, and the long-term viability of these elephant populations is threatened.
Likewise, flamingoes, particularly the lesser and greater species, migrate between East Africa’s alkaline lakes, such as Lake Natron (Tanzania), Lake Bogoria, Lake Nakuru, and Lake Elmenteita. These sites serve as critical breeding and feeding grounds. But pollution, human activity, and altered water regimes have increasingly disrupted these spectacular and ecologically vital migrations.
Primates, too, are affected. In West and Central Africa, chimpanzees and colobus monkeys have traditional home ranges that span political boundaries and fragmented forests. In the Guinea Highlands and Congo Basin, their movement is being curtailed by mining, agriculture, and road construction, reducing gene flow and triggering localized extinctions. In Kenya, Olive Baboons and Sykes monkeys who once moved freely across highland forests from the Aberdares to Mount Kenya are now cut off by deforestation and human encroachment.
The tragedy is compounded by what we know of animal sentience. Elephants mourn their dead and pass survival knowledge down across generations. Wildebeests, primates, and flamingoes exhibit memory-driven and socially learned behaviors, relying on collective navigation and ecosystem signals. Animals form complex societies; they learn, remember, and feel. Denying their freedom to move is not only an ecological mistake, it is an ethical failure.
Why Movement Matters
Migration is not optional. It is fundamental. For wildlife, it provides access to water, food, genetic diversity, passing down survival knowledge about unique sources of nutrition, toxic trees, evasive behavior from hostile species such as humans and predators, and safe breeding grounds. For livestock and pastoralist communities, it is a deeply embedded survival strategy in a region defined by droughts and ecological variability, and highly dependent on the ecosystem services of wildlife.
When animals stop moving:
Rangelands degrade as nutrient flows are disrupted.
Biodiversity collapses, as inbreeding, disease, and behavioral disorders emerge.
Human-wildlife conflict increases, as animals, desperate for resources, encroach on human settlements.
Livelihoods are lost, especially for communities that depend on seasonal livestock mobility.
Movement is not chaos; it is ecological order in motion.
"My father walked these lands with our cattle, knowing when the rains would come, where the grass would be softest, and where the wild animals would move," says Hawa Abdi, a Borana pastoralist from northern Kenya. "Now the fences cut us off. Our animals starve. We have no paths left."
Hawa’s story is not unique. According to the Rift Valley Institute (2023), fencing and land privatization have pushed pastoralist communities in northern Kenya to the brink, eroding their adaptive capacities and leading to increased livestock mortality. The same barriers that block wildebeest also block cattle.
A Continent-Wide Emergency
In East Africa, nearly 70% of Kenya’s wildlife corridors have already been lost to infrastructure and land-use change (WWF-Kenya, 2017). The Serengeti-Mara ecosystem is fragmenting. The Athi-Kapiti plains and the Laikipia communal lands are disappearing under fences and sprawl. In Northern Kenya, drought-response corridors used by pastoralists and livestock are vanishing (ILRI, 2021).
In the Horn of Africa, Grevy’s zebras, camels, and beisa oryx once moved between Ethiopia, Somalia, and northern Kenya. Today, these species, and the communities that depend on them, are trapped between ecological pressure and insecurity.
In North Africa, barbary sheep, dorcas gazelles, and Eurasian migratory birds once journeyed across Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Now, militarized borders, desertification, and development are erasing centuries-old routes.
In West Africa, the Kob antelope, roan antelope, and Sahelian pastoralist cattle followed natural migration loops across Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and northern Nigeria. Today, these movements are curtailed by conflict zones, agricultural expansion, and fencing.
In Central Africa, forest elephants, chimpanzees, and African grey parrots once roamed across Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Congo Basin’s logging roads, plantations, and extractive industries now fragment their range, undermining their ecological roles.
In Southern Africa, aside from the African penguin and the Kruger elephants, the Kalahari-Namib corridor once hosted large migrations of oryx, springbok, and elands. These movements have largely disappeared due to private land enclosures and habitat loss.
The South African court’s recognition of the African penguin’s intrinsic value offers a blueprint for transformation: to recognize that animals’ ability to move is not a nuisance but a basic right fundamental to the intricately interdependent coexistence of all creatures.
Moreover, this right is a human right, too. Migratory animals sustain entire ecosystems, and by extension, our food systems, our economies, and our climate resilience. Blocking those movements is not just bad planning, it is a governance failure with serious implications for the future of human-animal coexistence worldwide.
Ubuntu, One Health, and Indigenous Knowledge
Africa has its own ethical and philosophical compass. The philosophical core of this blog rests in the deeply African lens for understanding interdependence: Ubuntu. Ubuntu means “I am because we are,” teaching compassion, interconnectedness, and shared destiny, and it must not be confined to the human sphere. It should be utilized to motivate the expansion of our spheres of sympathy and moral consideration to include animals, landscapes, and ecological systems. To obstruct movement is to rupture this sacred interconnection and to deny the foundations of ecological and cultural coexistence. It is, in our opinion, "anti-Ubuntu:" a violation of Africans’ right to their cultural heritage and a turning away from the deep roots of Africa’s ancestry, sustained and cultivated for millennia before the short-sightedness anthropocentrism of today.
Ubuntu also finds strong resonance with the globally recognized One Health approach, which affirms the need to balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems (WHO, One Health). These two frameworks, Ubuntu and One Health, should not remain mere aspirations; they need to guide decision-making at every level.
Pastoralists, too, should be recognized; not as backward touristic relics, but as Indigenous stewards of biodiversity. In the Sahel, the Fulani, Peulh, and Tuareg peoples have maintained traditional transhumance routes that sustain people, animals, and ecosystems. In the Horn, the Afar, Borana, and Somali peoples live in harmony with migratory livestock systems. In East and Southern Africa, the Maasai, Samburu, Barabaig, and Herero manage seasonal migrations with knowledge that remains vital in the face of climate change.
From Legal Milestones to Real Action
The South African judgment represents a legal turning point, but its power lies in what comes next. East Africa, and indeed all of Africa, must not delay in taking action. This is the moment for African Ministers of Environment to:
Legally recognize and protect migratory corridors, both transboundary and within national borders.
Halt infrastructure and fencing projects that obstruct known migratory paths.
Mandate Environmental Impact Assessments to include animal sentience, welfare, and mobility.
Harmonize land-use and environmental policies regionally to ensure ecological connectivity.
Empower Indigenous voices, particularly pastoralist communities, as partners in conservation.
Beyond national action, the African Union must rise to the occasion. Its Free Movement Protocol for people should inspire a Movement Protocol for Animals, built into existing frameworks like the AU Animal Welfare Strategy for Africa, the Convention on Migratory Species, and the African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
What’s missing is political courage and coordinated implementation.
A Shared Future
If we fail to protect migration, we are not only dooming animals; we are jeopardizing food systems, tourism economies, cultural heritage, human dignity, and climate resilience. Plants depend on animals to disperse seeds and pathogens to hone their immunity. Sedentary animals depend on migratory species to bring ecological renewal. From nutrient loops to microbial diversity, movement is life. And people depend on these intricate webs of life more than we care to acknowledge.
The South African court has spoken. It is now up to the rest of Africa, and the world, to listen - and to act. From the African penguin on the Cape coast, to the flamingoes of Lake Bogoria, the elephants of Mt. Kenya and the Aberdare-Meru-Isiolo-Marsabit corridor, the primates of the Congo Basin, and the grey parrots overhead; we should ensure that animals, and their microbial companions, can move, live, and thrive.
Because when animals can no longer move, neither can we.
Authors:
Dr Mwenda Mbaka – Veterinarian, Animal Welfare Expert & Conservationist
Dr Katherine Baxter – Social Scientist, Human-Animal Coexistence Expert & Policy Researcher
*With special thanks to Janice Cox for her invaluable expertise and comments*