Adopt-An-Acre for Wildlife

“What a marvellous example of how people and wildlife can live alongside one another” Sir David Attenborough after visiting Porini Amboseli Camp in 2012

Wild animals are declining catastrophically and for many species the numbers have halved in a relatively short period. This is almost entirely due to habitat loss from massive increases in the human population, especially in Africa.  Many of the forests and wilderness areas where animals once lived in abundance have now been lost to destructive logging, intensive farming and human settlement. Animals are being displaced, losing their former rangelands and falling victim to wanton killing, retaliatory attacks or poaching.

In Kenya, the human population has increased from 10 million to 50 million in five decades. Space formerly available for wildlife is disappearing rapidly as the land becomes densely settled and sub-divided with fences which are excluding wildlife and changing migration patterns.

There needs to be more space for nature. In Kenya, less than 8% of the land surface area is in the state-controlled National Parks & National Reserves. This is just not enough to provide a home for all the wild animals that reside outside the parks but are losing their habitat.

OUR WILDLIFE CONSERVANCIES: VAST AREAS OF PROTECTED WILDERNESS TEEMING WITH ANIMALS ON LAND OWNED BY MAASAI COMMUNITIES

As you may know, Gamewatchers Safaris has been instrumental in adding 100,000 acres of protected wildlife habitat adjacent to the Mara Reserve in the form of three adjoining wildlife conservancies: Ol Kinyei, Naboisho and Olare Motorogi on land leased from thousands of individual families of the Maasai community.

These Conservancies have been recognised as playing a vital role in expanding the lands where wildlife can freely roam beyond the boundaries of the National Parks and National Reserves, allowing the big cats and elephants to have a safe haven where they can thrive. And they have made a big difference to the lives of many hundreds of people from the local Maasai communities who own the land where the Conservancies are located. They derive a monthly income from the rents paid to them for their plots of land that have been leased and put together to form the Conservancies and many of their family members have jobs and livelihoods within the conservancies where they work as wardens, rangers and as staff in the safari camps looking after visitors and taking them out to enjoy watching all the different wildlife species.

Kenya’s eminent elephant conservationist, Cynthia Moss, has described the setting up of the Conservancies as “the single most successful conservation initiative since the creation of National Parks in the 1940s”. Cynthia states: “Conservancies protect land for Kenya’s wildlife and even more important, create sanctuaries of safety. In addition conservancies bring benefits in the form of direct payments and jobs to the people who share their land with wildlife.”

Since the conservancies were first set up, many visitors have had the memorable experience of discovering what it means to be in a beautiful unspoilt part of Africa where the savannah plains are teeming with wildlife such as elephants, all the big cats and many different herbivores like giraffes, zebra, buffalo and antelopes of all kinds.

Here, Porini Amboseli Camp safari guide, Daniel Mamai, explains the many benefits that the low-key tourism generated by Gamewatchers Safaris & Porini Camps brings to his community and to the wildlife in Selenkay Conservancy.

This video shows a large herd of elephants with calves in Ol Kinyei Conservancy (April 2020). Elephants are increasingly attracted into the pristine habitat of the conservancy where they are safe and protected.

Lions – and other Big Cats – are also attracted into the Conservancies where there is plenty of food and natural habitat.

Elephants are also thriving in Selenkay Conservancy …

PAYING FOR WILDLIFE CONSERVATION THROUGH SMALL-SCALE RESPONSIBLE TOURISM

It is the income from tourism by visitors staying at our small Porini Camps that enables us to pay for all the costs of running the conservancies and to create incomes for  the local community from the rents for their land and for paid employment for their family members. The sums provided to the local community in direct payments to them from Gamewatchers Safaris is over US$1.5 million per year.

Without funding, the local Masai communities will suffer and the future of the conservancies will be threatened as there is a very real risk that the conservancies will have to be turned into farmland and fenced off or developed for human settlement, as is happening on the neighbouring lands outside the conservancies, which will mean a huge loss of wildlife habitat and the end of much of the wildlife in those areas especially the big cats and the elephants.

This threat is especially serious in the case of the 18,500 acres Ol Kinyei Conservancy which has extended the wildlife habitat a considerable way beyond the Mara Reserve and helped to provide rangeland for the wildebeest migrating in from the Loita Plains, as all the land outside the Conservancy is now becoming fragmented, with fencing and increased human settlement and developments. The Ol Kinyei Conservancy is home to over 30 lions as well as leopards and cheetahs. Ol Kinyei Conservancy is a favourite habitat of big bull elephants as well as large elephant herds comprising many families of females and calves.

Similarly, the Selenkay Conservancy in the Amboseli eco-system is a vital dispersal area for the elephants from Amboseli National Park and provides important rangeland for them. Before we started the Selenkay Conservancy, nearly two decades ago, elephants had not been seen there for over 20 years but today they have made it their home.

INTRODUCING: ADOPT-AN-ACRE

As Gamewatchers Safaris, out of the 100,000 acres in the Mara plus 13,500 acres in Amboseli, on our own as a single company we are directly paying for the leasing of over 42,500 acres at a cost to us of over US$863,783 a year in rents to hundreds of Maasai families and we directly employ 247 members of staff in the conservancies and camps drawn from the local Maasai community at a total cost to us of over $621,200 in wages. This is a total income of nearly US$1.5 million for the community in rents and wages generated from the 42,500 acres, paid for by Gamewatchers Safaris, excluding the additional costs which we also incur in managing the conservancies as well as funding a number of community projects.

Payments are received in US$ but your own account does not need to be a US$ account and can be in a different currency (for example GB£, Canadian or Australian dollars, Euros or other currencies). Your bank will debit your account in your local currency for the equivalent of the amount sent in US dollars using their international exchange rate.