What keeps a wildlife corridor open?

I went to Kenya's Tsavo landscape to see the corridors that keep wildlife moving between two of Africa's great national parks. Here's what I learned during my trip about the work it takes to keep these routes open, and the communities that balance conservation with livelihoods, safety and local priorities.

Lukas Wenrick, senior director of learning innovations, ASU

August 19, 2026

Kenya’s Tsavo landscape is defined by movement.

Elephants and other wildlife travel between Tsavo East and Tsavo West in search of food, water and seasonal habitat. Their routes cross thousands of square kilometers of land where people also raise livestock, farm and support their families.

On a map, these routes appear as wildlife corridors. On the ground, they are something much more complex.

Over the past year, I led the work to turn the Conservation Futures Academy from an idea into an active program, and the Academy’s first learner cohort came together last fall. This past June, that work brought me to Southern Kenya with colleagues from the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures and Conservation International to learn directly from the people working to keep these landscapes connected.

A landscape connected by corridors

Tsavo East and Tsavo West are two of Kenya’s largest national parks. Together, they form part of an extraordinary landscape known for its biodiversity, expansive rangelands and dust-red elephants.

But wildlife does not remain within the parks' boundaries.

Animals move between protected areas in search of water, food, breeding grounds and seasonal habitat. To do that, they cross community lands where people also farm, graze livestock and build their lives.

Those connecting areas are wildlife corridors.

In the Tsavo landscape, the Taita Taveta Wildlife Conservancies Association, or TTWCA, helps coordinate a network of approximately 34 community conservancies and ranches across more than 4,000 square kilometers of wildlife dispersal and migratory corridors. Alfred Kirigha Mwanake, TTWCA's chief executive, welcomed our team into their space and taught us about what they are doing there.

TTWCA’s work sits at the intersection of conservation, livelihoods, land use, research, governance and community leadership.

What stood out to me most was how clearly their model recognizes a basic truth: conservation has to be shaped by the people who live in the landscape.

“I cannot milk your elephants”

The line that stayed with me most came during lunch with Betrand Nyage, TTWCA’s rangeland officer.

As Betrand discussed sustainable rangeland management, he shared a phrase he sometimes hears from community members:

“I cannot milk your elephants.”

It was simple, direct and difficult to forget.

A family can raise cattle, produce milk, earn income and feed its children. An elephant may carry enormous ecological, cultural and global value, but that value is not automatically tangible to the family living beside it.

The phrase reflects one of conservation’s most important challenges.

Communities cannot build their livelihoods around the idea that wildlife matters to the rest of the world. Conservation models must also support livestock, farms, income, safety and the priorities identified by the people who share the land.

Betrand’s work helps make that connection real.

Through sustainable rangeland management, he works alongside communities to improve grazing conditions and strengthen livestock and land outcomes while protecting the wildlife movement that makes the Tsavo landscape so important.

When the land can support both community livelihoods and migrating wildlife, keeping a corridor open becomes more practical and more sustainable.

Conservation in practice

During our visit, we toured TTWCA’s facilities, participated in a small tree-planting activity, joined a ranger patrol and spent time learning directly from staff and interns.

TTWCA is also hosting the first internships for ASU’s Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures.

The internship model brings ASU students together with local learners from the Tsavo landscape. Before arriving, participants complete four short courses developed with our Learning Enterprise team. Once on site, they rotate through three areas of work: policy, livelihoods and rangeland management.

The interns were only in their second week when we visited, but they had already experienced far more than I expected.

They had spoken with community groups about the risks associated with eating bushmeat and the potential spread of zoonotic diseases. They had studied human-wildlife conflict in places where wildlife corridors intersect with farms and community land. They had participated in ranger patrols, completed a field exercise on carrying capacity and joined community-led conservation convenings.

They were beginning to see conservation as it actually operates: through relationships, difficult choices, competing needs and steady work over time.

A corridor is an agreement

Wildlife corridors are sometimes described primarily as a matter of habitat design or ecological connectivity.

But a corridor drawn on a map is only a line.

It becomes meaningful when landowners, communities, conservation organizations and public agencies build the relationships and agreements necessary to keep the land open.

In Tsavo, those agreements are renewed every day.

They are strengthened when rangeland management improves conditions for livestock

Caption: Me, planting a seedling during our visit to Taita Taveta Wildlife Conservancies Association land in Kenya's Tsavo landscape, June 2026.

and wildlife. They deepen when communities have a meaningful role in governance. They are reinforced when local knowledge is treated as central to conservation rather than as something added after decisions have already been made.

And they are reinforced when the benefits and burdens of conservation are shared more fairly.

That was perhaps the most important lesson I took from the visit: a wildlife corridor is an agreement before it is a place.

What the landscape taught me

Our time in Tsavo gave me a much deeper appreciation for the people who sustain these landscapes.

The communities living alongside wildlife understand how animals move, where conflict occurs and what coexistence requires. Organizations such as TTWCA help connect that knowledge with research, policy, land management and broader conservation efforts.

Universities and external partners can contribute useful tools, learning opportunities, data and resources. But our role begins with listening and understanding what communities already know and what they identify as most important.

Thank you to Alfred, Maurine, Anyang, Betrand and the many other members of the TTWCA team who welcomed us, taught us and shared their work so generously.

Their work is a powerful reminder that lasting conservation is built by the people who live with the land, steward the wildlife and shape the future of the landscape every day.

From left: Jack Kittinger, director of ASU's Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures, who spent two decades at Conservation International. Winston Matthews, senior program manager at the school. Me. And Sharon Hall, president's professor in ASU's School of Life Sciences, who studies how people and wildlife share land around protected areas.

You can learn the work that keeps a corridor open

Everything that holds a corridor together in Tsavo, the community leadership, the data analysis, the rangeland agreements, is teachable. It's what the Conservation Futures Academy, the professional learning arm of the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures, is built to teach.

You don't need a background in conservation to start. The Academy offers a range of curricula from foundational coursework through executive education experiences, whether you're testing the field or already leading in it.

Indigenous Conservation Collaborations centers the community knowledge that decides whether a corridor stays open. Conservation Technology Innovations: AI, Drones, and GIS puts the data tools that show where wildlife moves in your hands. And Conservation and Nature Finance covers the financial models that pay for coexistence. Find the one that fits where you are, and the credentials on offer, in the full course catalog.

New to the field? Start with one course for $25

If you are earlier than that, Sharon Hall teaches the on-ramp. Introduction to Conservation (CNV 194) is one of ASU Universal Learner Courses, open to anyone with no application and no prerequisites. It runs eight weeks online and carries 3 credits. You enroll for $25, and you pay $400 to add the credit to an ASU transcript only if you like your grade, where it can ladder toward a degree.

The course covers ground we walked in Tsavo: protected areas, community-managed ecosystems, co-management and the career paths that run through all of it. Sharon lays out the basics in what conservation is and why it matters, including why she thinks the old conservation-versus-preservation split has run its course. If the career question is the one on your mind, start with how to become a conservationist.

About the author

Lukas Wenrick is senior director of learning innovations at Arizona State University, where his work turns new ideas into scalable learning pathways for learners, institutions and the planet. He led the work that launched the Conservation Futures Academy, whose first cohort completed its courses in fall 2025. He works with conservation partners around the world to build learning experiences grounded in the priorities communities name for themselves. This piece draws on a June 2026 field visit to Kenya's Tsavo landscape with the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures.