A Review of the Visible and Hidden Opportunity Costs of Human-Wildlife Conflict in Kenya

This paper reviews the Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) studies in Kenya with special interest on the hidden opportunity costs. The paper considered the negative implications to the victims of HWC and explores ways of ensuring full integration of all costs especially in regard to the search for more comprehensive compensation frameworks. One of the specific interests in the paper was to determine whether the hidden costs of HWC in Kenya are well considered in the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act 2013 (WCMA 2013) or whether there is need for a review and amendments. Data for this review was obtained from Google Scholar and Crossref references and citation-enhanced indexing databases. Content analysis from the two databases showed a lot of research interest on the cost of HWC to societies around conservation areas. Further content analysis revealedthat most of the HWC costs estimation studies have mostly concentrated on the visible costs (127 publications and 1507 citations) without serious consideration of the hidden costs (33 publications and 893 citations). As such, more research is required on the hidden costs in order to formulate more effective HWC loss compensation frameworks as a strategy for ensuring sustainable co-existence between society and wildlife.