The company was established by Jake Grieves-Cook, a Kenya citizen, as a vehicle to work in partnership with rural landowners and communities living alongside the Protected Areas with the objective of enabling them to derive benefits in return for conserving wildlife.

In recent years there has been increasing fragmentation of land as communities "sub-divide" their land holdings and turn them into small-scale agricultural plots or lease them to larger commercial farmers. In many cases the more influential and sophisticated or politically well-connected individuals have acquired ownership of large tracts of land at the expense of the majority of the community. This has resulted in members of the community being displaced from their traditional lands and has caused significant habitat loss for wildlife.

With increased farming and loss of wildlife habitat, there has been growing conflict between humans and wildlife. The landowners and local community do not have the expertise, experience or finances to utilise their lands for tourism and have so far derived little or no benefit from wildlife conservation except for a few rare and isolated cases.

It was against this background that PoriniEcotourism was established to offer the services of a private sector company with commercial experience and the requisite expertise to work in partnership with the local landowners to utilise the wildlife habitat as a resource.