Reimagining Maasai Mara
Faculty Sponsor(s)
kate Lorenzen
Subject Area
Mathematics
Description
Our team was tasked with reimagining the Maasai Mara wild game reserve in Kenya, which is home to hundreds of thousands of animals and 1,200,000 humans living in tribes in the region. We focused on identifying the big five species, lions, elephants, rhinos, buffalo, and leopards, and calculating rough estimates of their population growth over the next 25 years. Our team found that lions, leopards, and humans have linear population growth charts, whereas elephants, rhinos, and buffalos have more exponential growth rates. Our recommendations include establishing two outposts along the Tanzanian border, tracking and protecting rhinos, leopards, and elephants with multiple teams, setting hard caps on the number of some species allowed in the reserve, and protecting endangered species like elephants, leopards, and rhinos from poachers. We also suggested watching the populations of buffalo and setting a hard cap to prevent them from outgrowing their predators proportionally and overgrazing the land.
Recommended Citation
Welk, Liam; Weerasinghe, Mills; and Gale, Colin, "Reimagining Maasai Mara" (2023). Linfield University Student Symposium: A Celebration of Scholarship and Creative Achievement. Event. Submission 15.
https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/symposium/2023/all/15
Reimagining Maasai Mara
Our team was tasked with reimagining the Maasai Mara wild game reserve in Kenya, which is home to hundreds of thousands of animals and 1,200,000 humans living in tribes in the region. We focused on identifying the big five species, lions, elephants, rhinos, buffalo, and leopards, and calculating rough estimates of their population growth over the next 25 years. Our team found that lions, leopards, and humans have linear population growth charts, whereas elephants, rhinos, and buffalos have more exponential growth rates. Our recommendations include establishing two outposts along the Tanzanian border, tracking and protecting rhinos, leopards, and elephants with multiple teams, setting hard caps on the number of some species allowed in the reserve, and protecting endangered species like elephants, leopards, and rhinos from poachers. We also suggested watching the populations of buffalo and setting a hard cap to prevent them from outgrowing their predators proportionally and overgrazing the land.
