Who They Are

Step back in time at Elephant Pepper Camp, a glorious tented camp hidden in a grove of giant ebony and elephant pepper trees overlooking the Masai Mara Plains. Modern comforts are set amidst hurricane lamps, and sumptuous meals served under a ceiling of stars.

The View Out

The camp is situated in the heart of the protected Mara North Conservancy, a spectacular wilderness area on the northeastern border of the Mara National Reserve. Here now for 20 years, it is one of the original, very small and exclusive tented camps, and is located away from other lodges. With only 9 en-suite tents, this magical camp maintains the atmosphere that is usually felt only on a traditional, mobile luxury safari.

The View In

What They Are Doing

Elephant Pepper Camp was built with sustainability in mind. There are no generators, cement, or any permanent structures, making the camp completely movable. Nestling almost out of sight under its canopy of trees, it closes for two months a year to allow the ecosystem to regenerate.

The Masai Mara

Elephant Pepper was instrumental in the formation of the Mara North Conservancy, a spectacular 28,000 hectares on the northeast border of the Mara National Reserve, a core parcel within the Masai Mara ecosystem. For the exclusive use of its 12 member camps, it provides some of the Mara’s prime game viewing in complete privacy. At the same time it guarantees the more than 700 Masai landowners stable revenue, with the camps paying $112,000 a month in fixed lease payments, or $1.3 million annually. Almost twenty percent goes to conservation management with employment of rangers, vehicle surveillance, and maintenance of infrastructure.

Zebra on the Mara North Conservancy

The camp has worked with the local Masai community for nearly 20 years, with the creation of the conservancy being the latest development in preserving this vital wilderness.

Among the initiatives the camp has spearheaded and participated in: Water from Wildlife, bringing water to schools without damaging the ecosystem; it has also introduced water-catchment and -collection systems, as well as the concept of shallow wells to support the local communities.

Place of Rest

When the area surrounding the camp was designated a wildlife conservation area by the Masai, Elephant Pepper was instrumental in helping the local Masai relocate to their new homesteads. The camp also transported their building materials for them, in order to reduce the need for tree felling. It supports the Aitong Primary School, which has, since 2007, added a new classroom, kitchen, and new desks and chairs.

Guests are encouraged, whenever possible, to go on game walks instead of drives. This experience is unrivaled, especially as all of the guides have the prestigious SilverLevel qualification, making them some of the best in the country. Over eighty percent of the staff are employed from the surrounding communities.

The camp relies on solar power, ecofriendly toilets, and traditional bucket showers. Food is sourced locally as much as possible; glass is separated and sold to a recycling plant in Nairobi, all of whose funds are donated to the East African Women’s League to support a family planning program managed by the North Lake Branch in Naivasha.

Watch the Trailer and $10 Goes to Save Lions

It’s a fact learned by few people who go on safari. They don’t realize that the animals they are watching, enjoying, enthralled by, might not be there for their own children to one day see. And that’s what the Jouberts, who have been filming predators in southern Africa for twenty years, mostly for National Geographic, are trying to do with The Last Lions. They want to make people aware of the beauty and irreplaceable richness that will die when the predator cats do.

The Jouberts follow one lioness, who, with her three cubs, flees a pride of females and settles on Duba island in Botswana. The rest of the movie is about her battle to keep her family alive, to feed them, and to fend off attacks by other cats and a massive herd of buffalo. It’s a story of Africa’s wildlife, heartbreaking at times, but it reminds you what’s at stake. Lions in all their glory.

Financed by National Geographic, which has launched Cause an Uproar in order to spread information about the plight of lions.  Also, The Big Cat Initiative, which was started by the Jouberts and National Geographic, is working in Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, and other countries, to try and halt the decrease in the number of cats. As Dereck Joubert says, “We are fighting for one cat at a time.”

But the Jouberts also do their own share.

As stakeholders in the Great Plains Conservation, which owns properties in Botswana, Tanzania, and Kenya – such as Duba Plains, where the movie was filmed, and Ol Donyo Lodge – the company puts money back into conservation and cat programs and anti-poaching. To support their company and its properties is to support wildlife.

Campi Ya Kanzi is a lodge in the Chyulu Hills section of the great Kilimanjaro Ecosystem, a 280,000-acre reserve where Ernest Hemingway wrote The Green Hills of Africa.

Up to sixteen guests can be accommodated in six cottages and two suites, all set on wooden platforms and underthatch, with large en-suite bathrooms (with solar-heated water). The African decor has Italian accents, reflecting the background of owners Luca Belpietro and Antonella Bonomi. There is also Kanzi House – with its own swimming pool and Jacuzzi – that can accommodate up to ten people.

What They Are Doing

In 2000, Luca and Antonella formed the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust. Its mission is to support the preservation of biodiversity within the Maasai tribal lands of East Africa by promoting conservation, education, and health services within the Maasai community. A $100 conservation fee per guest per day is paid to the trust. (Watch Luca talk about the trust in the video below.)

Campi employs 152 Kenyans, and the trust is involved in education, health, and conservation.

Forty teachers are employed in 14 local primary schools. A gifted-pupils private school is run for the best pupils. A total of 22 secondary-level scholarships are offered to the best pupils. The trust runs a public school it built and which is attended by 722 pupils.

The trust employs a doctor and four nurses to look after three dispensaries.  One of them has been provided with solar electricity and a bore hole.

The trust has set aside a private conservation area of 5,000 acres on this traditional Maasai pastoral land to ensure the preservation of one of the earth’s most diverse ecosystems and the fascinating traditions of the Maasai people.

The trust employs 60 anti-poaching scouts and eight other scouts to monitor the lion population.

Its Wildlife Protection and Compensation Program strives to protect lions in southern Kenya from the threat of extinction. Losses caused by predators are compensated by the trust to the Maasai landlords, only if the predators themselves were not hunted, thereby assuring a measure of protection to the lions roaming the reserve. It runs the Simba Project, a  scheme whereby landlords are compensated for livestock killed by predators.

Animal Spotting

As a result, the lion population has increased by more than three hundred percent in two years. The presence of lions encourages tourism, and as the Maasai learn to coexist with the lions, they see them as an extension of their lifestyle rather than as a threat.

The actor Edward Norton is the U.S. president of the Trust, which is also supported by the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Fund (a 501(c)(3) organization). The fund is about to invest some $250,000 in health facilities. In 2006, Cartier, together with Norton, promoted its Love Charity Bracelet program to generously provide the trust with a substantial contribution.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0e-s0Kq-60

In Their Own Words

“We began Campi ya Kanzi in 1996 not with personal financial gain in mind, but with the objective of using profits from sustainable tourism to protect and preserve the local ecosystem and to sustain the traditional culture of the Maasai people.”

When the Camels Aren't Patroling

Who They Are

Peponi is a small hotel on the exotic island of Lamu in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya. The Korschen family, who still own it, opened the hotel two miles from Lamu town in 1967, and it still retains much of the same original character and charm. Small and personal, it is an ideal place to rest after a safari or simply to use as a hideaway.

Sit and Relax

The 24 rooms are divided into superior and standard, and all of them have ocean views. All rooms have overhead fans, mosquito nets, showers (no baths). Fresh flowers add a nice finishing touch. The hotel is at the one end of the 12-km.-long Shela Beach.

Peponi on the Beach

What They Are Doing

The Lamu Marine Conservation Trust, or Lamcot, was started by Peponi in 1992 to save the local sea turtles, whose numbers were fast diminishing, and is now headed by Atwaa Salim. With the backing of Carol and Lars Korschen and with financial support from conservation organization Tusk, its mission is to reduce the illegal trade of sea turtle products on the black market; increase the survival rate of the hatchlings and enhance beach security in Lamu through regular patrolling; treat sick turtles that have barnacles, tumors and other complications; spread awareness of the turtles as an essential part of the ecosystem and biodiversity, especially among the local community; promote eco-tourism through the trips to see the hatchlings.

Locals View the Hatchlings

Practical work on the ground includes the monitoring of nest sites, hatching of turtles, and tagging of turtles that are caught by mistake. Patrollers, all of them ex-poachers, now patrol the two main nesting beaches using camels sponsored by Tusk. The patrollers work on an incentive scheme, receiving bonus payments for every successful egg that hatches and nest that is protected. Ten years ago, only 20 nests hatched successfully; this rose to 70 nests last year.

Measuring a Turtle

Local fishermen who catch turtles by mistake now bring the animals to the trust headquarters, where they are they are measured, treated if ill, tagged, and released back into the ocean. Each fisherman is put on a register and paid an incentive according to the size of the turtle (in other words, what would he have gotten for it on the black market?).

As with many other Tusk projects its success depends on the commitment of the local community. Here they have taken on the plight of the turtle and changed their fishing and cultural practices. In addition, the trust and Lamcot work with the primary schools on Lamu to establish tree nurseries and run an environmental after-school club. They have also set up a bee-keeping project as an alternative form of income.

Another World - Lamu

Tusk has been the project’s primary donor covering annual running costs since 2000. In addition the trust has purchased a boat, camels, and radio equipment for the beach patrolers. Through donations made by visitors to the project and the sale of merchandise, the project is able to cover the cost of capital items each year.

A Fund Member Addresses Villagers

A long and severe drought in East Africa has killed off not only huge herds of cattle belonging to pastoralists like the Maasai but also wild animals. Predators have sometimes resorted to killing cattle, leading to a new standoff between man and lion. This has been a true testing ground for the efforts of the Maasailand Preservation Trust, started by Richard Bonham of Ol Donya Lodge. Its Predator Compensation Fund has been working hard to save lions by paying participating communities for any damage to livestock the predators cause. In an incident last week, members of the fund went to a village where a lioness had been killed. It turned out that she was with a pride that had left Amboseli park in search of food, and that the lioness had actually jumped a fence into a protected boma to try get a cow.  A herder speared the lioness through the heart, killing her instantly. It was a justifiable killing, the fund decided, but the incident has made it redouble its efforts in the community.  Read more about the fund and the latest test of their success. Anyone who visits Ol Donyo Lodge will see the efforts of the Maasailand Preservation Trust firsthand.

In 2006 the anti-poaching team funded by the Maasailand Preservation Trust, which was started by Richard Bonham of Ol Donyo Lodge, introduced a couple of new members – two bloodhounds. Using dogs against rhino poachers  has added a new prong to the fight against this illegal and treacherous activity. Together with their handlers,  the dogs Bosco and Drastic make up the Delta Mobile unit, part of the Mbirikani Community Game Scouts, who started as six men in 1996 and are now five groups of several dozen scouts who cover 1.5 million acres. Their work ranges from combating poaching activities to resolving human/wildlife conflicts, and from keeping river systems flowing to providing general security, including anti-stock theft, protection of indigenous forests – and much, much more. In 13 years, the scouts have collected more than 10,000 wire snares and arrested over 1,500 poachers. Arrests currently average over 50 a month. Anyone visiting Ol Donyo Lodge can arrange a visit to see Drastic and Bosco. Good idea!

Lewa Wilderness

Who They Are

Lewa Wilderness is situated within one of Kenya’s major private conservation successes, the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy (previously known as Lewa Downs), at the foot of Mt. Kenya. Lewa Wilderness is the original family home of the Craigs, who came from England and settled here in 1924 to raise cattle, and is still home to hosts Will and Emma Craig. There are 9 wonderful en-suite cottages, each with a sitting room area with bar and open log fireplace. On offer is a wide range of activities, including game drives, walks, horse and camel riding, scenic flights and bush camping.

What They Are Doing

Grevy's Zebra at Lewa

Wildlife

The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy has become a major conservation beacon in Africa, with tourism at the very heart of wilderness and community survival.  In addition to many research projects, the conservancy formed the Anna Merz Rhino Sanctuary, which became very successful with both black and white rhino breeding, as well as a grevy’s zebra breeding program, with one-fifth of the world’s grevy’s zebra now resident at Lewa.

Community

Staff with Camels, Lewa

Lewa Wilderness only recruits from local communities and themanagement team is Kenyan.  Lewa is one of the biggest employers in the Eastern Province, and the staff undergo annual training in job-specific fields, including medicine and bush craft. In addition to the conservancy’s 200 full-time staff and up to 100 part-time staff, an additional 150 people are employed in tourism enterprises, furniture- and carpet-making workshops, and farms within Lewa’s boundaries.  The conservancy also provides financial and managerial assistance to schools, clinics, and water projects along its boundaries and beyond, into the remote northern districts.

Making Furniture at Lewa

There are five target primary schools close to Lewa’s boundary. One – the Lewa School - was built by the conservancy, which continues to provide educational materials and other support. Four other schools receive material support and participate in the conservancy bursary program, whereby the best-performing children from each of the schools is supported through secondary school.

The conservancy has built and maintains a clinic, which provides medical care to its employees for free, and to its neighbors at cost.  It also supports a variety of local self-help groups, including farm development groups and a women’s group initiative, for which it helps raise funds for microfinancing. It has also built a meeting hall. More than 200 women benefit from this program, which was started in 2003.

Safaricom Plus Rhino

The Safaricom Lewa Marathon, which began in 2000, aims to raise funds for conservation and community projects around the Samburu, Isiolo, Laikipia, and Meru areas.  The marathon has attracted more than 750 runners from all over the world to take part in the full and half marathons, with an additional 100 children competing in the five-kilometer fun run.  Over one million dollars has been raised through the runs and various fund-raising events. This money is distributed to a range of projects in northern Kenya, including  conservation, education, healthcare, and community development.

From a Lewa Cottage

In Their Own Words

“The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy works as a catalyst for the conservation of wildlife and its habitat. It does this through the protection and management of species, the initiation and support of community conservation and development programmes, and the education of neighbouring areas in the value of wildlife.”

A Tent at Rekero

Who They Are

Rekero Camp is a seasonal luxury tented camp with nine tents and is located in a part of the Maasai Mara Conservation Area known as Ol Chorro Losoit, close to the confluence of the Talek and Mara rivers.  This area represents an important animal corridor and, combined with the surrounding lands making up the Mara conservation area, provides an extended ecosystem that is vital to the preservation of the wildlife within Maasai Mara National Park itself. Rekero was founded by Ron and Pauline Beaton over 25 years ago, and is today run by their son, Gerard, his wife Rainee Beaton and longtime employee, Jackson Looseyia.

Near Rekero Camp

Rekero Homes, which is where the Rekero Trust can be found, is in the Mara North Conservancy at the foot of Kipileo Hill. Each home can sleep up to seven people, and Acacia House, a luxurious private villa, has a swimming pool.

What They Are Doing

The Rekero Trust has funded over a quarter of the 100 graduates from Koiyaki Guiding School to train locals in the guiding profession, at a cost of $46,000 over the past four years. Most of these graduates are now in full-time employment at various lodges around Kenya. It has donated more than 75 pairs of binoculars to the school students to take with them into their new jobs.

On their Laptops at Rekero

At the trust headquarters there is a modern computer classroom for the local schools and communities that includes twelve laptops, some with wireless connection via a satellite. This is possibly the first primary school in Kenya with direct access to the Internet. To guarantee uninterrupted access to the Internet and to minimize dependence on fossil fuel powered generators, the trust has installed a new inverter system and is trying to raise funds to cover solar panels. The trust has also employed a full time computer teacher.

It offers a fully funded 10-day course to local schools and institutions, and has already paid for 12 groups to attend. In 2006-7, the trust built the ‘Bwana Phil’ building that provides accommodations for up to 18 students and two instructors, with shower and toilet facilities as well as a kitchen and a dining room.

The trust has funded two community scouts for the last four years to patrol the Rekero conservancy for poachers and other possible violations. It has also funded a carpenter for the last five years to make and maintain school desks and carry out other repairs.

The trust has, among other things, provided a new 50,000-liter water tank and guttering system to bring clean drinking water to Ngousani School; supplied 125 metal-framed heavy-duty desks with hard wood tops to the school; contributed $720 to repairing the school’s bore hole pump, as well as providing ongoing sponsorship of 16 pupils; given over $6,000 worth of schoolbooks, stationary, pens, pencils, and sports equipment to three other local schools; and erected a security fence around the Aitong School, as well as sponsored an additional teacher there.

The trust is involved in numerous other community projects, from litter collection to tree planting to the construction of a sanctuary for cheetah orphans in Nairobi.  The Rekero directors helped found both the Olare Orok and Mara North conservancies.

In Their Own Words

“We place equal weight on, and therefore divide funds equally between, education and the environment, including wildlife, as they are inextricably linked. “

Mara Plains Camp

Who They Are

Mara Plains Camp, a small, high quality, six-roomed camp under canvas, is one of the latest additions to the forward-thinking Great Plains group. It is located within the private Olare Orok Conservancy and just a few hundred meters from the Maasai Mara National Reserve’s northern boundary. Guests can game drive in both the Mara and Olare Orok and be away from the crowds and the hordes of minibuses. In fact, Olare Orok boasts the Mara’s lowest vehicle density, only one guest per 700 acres. The conservancy has nearly 20,000  acres rich in wildlife, especially predators and big cats. Another new conservancy four times that size, Mara North, is being created nextdoor and is already being traversed by guests. (See map below.)

What They Are Doing

Conservation and Community

The Maasai Mara could be one of the planet’s premier wildlife reserves. It is a relatively small reserve of only around 150,000 hectares whose wildlife range has historically extended across unfenced borders into Tanzania in the south and northwards into neighboring tribal lands. Most of the wildlife in the region once used to inhabit and migrate across the reserve into the vast open, surrounding, tribally owned plains.  However, conditions have changed in recent years as the local Maasai have increased from about one person  per square kilometer 30 years ago to about 25 people today.  With these increased densities, conflicts between people, livestock, and wildlife have become increasingly prevalent, with wildlife numbers plummeting, most species declining by between 60 and 90 percent over the past two decades.

To compound matters, much of the prime land around the Mara has recently been subdivided into 60-hectare plots. These parcels of land are now owned by individual Maasai tribesmen.  This change in land ownership is a real threat to the reserve, to the wildlife of the region, and to the annual wildebeest migration if not handled sensitively. If human habitation on the Mara’s boundary is allowed to grow unchecked, there is a very real danger that the wildebeest migration will be blocked by a barrier of people.

Map of Olare Orok and Mara North

In this scenario the wildebeest and other wildlife will no longer migrate throughout the region, and possibly in time the annual wildebeest migration from the Serengeti will be forced to skip Kenya completely, allowing the northern migration from the Loita Plains to die out.

However, if the land issue is resolved amicably, conservancies created, and Maasai communities meaningfully brought into the mainstream of tourism businesses – and income is meaningful and fair – the privately owned plots of land could be turned from being the biggest threats to wildlife to being the salvation of the Mara.

The prime threat to the reserve is that disgruntled Maasai landowners will move their homes closer and closer to the border of the Mara, at the same time bringing significant and unsustainable numbers of livestock to the area. Numbers of animals are already at such unsustainable levels that cattle and goats can almost daily be found grazing within the reserve itself.

After receiving a direct invitation from Maasai tribesmen and landowners in 2008, Great Plains became involved in the Mara region and became the catalyst for the creation of the new 80,000-acre Mara North Conservancy. These two conservancies have the potential to become the role models to solving many of the conflicts between the Maasai and the Mara wildlife, creating working examples to be copied throughout the whole Mara region.

Within these two conservancies the business model has been changed from the traditions of the past. Close on one thousand Maasai tribesmen and families have now contracted to lease their land to safari camps to create the two conservancies of around 100,000 acres along the northern boundary of the Mara.  Each of these landowners now gets paid each month a guaranteed rental, regardless of what occupancies are in the lodges. The financial risk is back where it should be – on the shoulders of the safari camp operators.

To ensure that there is a viable and sustainable conservancy, the Maasai landowners have agreed to move away from the boundary of the Mara and back to their traditional homes, taking their livestock with them, leaving the area next to the Mara free of homesteads and livestock.  This process has already happened in Olare Orok, which is now free of habitation, with the vacuum rapidly being filled by wildlife.  Contracts were signed late in 2008 and early 2009, with the contracted Maasai landowners now being paid monthly rentals for their first time in history. The same is now happening in the Mara North Conservancy.

Mara Plains Camp is the only camp that pays monthly contributions to both Olare Orok and Mara North.  This little 12-bed camp now makes payments of over $150,000 a year to the landowners of both conservancies.

Suite at Ol Donyo

Who They Are

Ol Donyo Lodge is situated in southern Kenya.  The lodge is on a 275,000-acre, community-owned group ranch that lies between four renowned parks, Amboseli, Tsavo, Chyulu, and Kilimanjaro. Having built up their reputation over the past two decades, under the leadership of the famed Richard Bonham, the owners of Ol Donyo Wuas built a new lodge that opened in mid-2008.  Its ten suites are among the most upmarket in Kenya, some of them with two beds, some with four, allowing families the opportunity to be under one roof but still have their privacy.  All but two suites have private pools.

In spite of its location outside a proclaimed game reserve, the wildlife around Ol Donyo Lodge has built up steadily over the past 20 years to significant numbers. Today Ol Donyo Lodge is one of the few areas in East Africa where the Big Five can be found running free and wild outside of a proclaimed national park or game reserve. Yet, over twenty years ago, guests would have been excited if they saw just the fresh footprint of an elephant. Today Ol Donyo Lodge’s wildlife is thriving, thanks to its practices and its community outreach programs. The area is now the home to some of the largest elephant “tuskers” alive in Africa today.  A number of the massive elephants that frequent the lodge’s waterhole carry over 80 pounds of ivory.

Tuskers at ODL

What They Are Doing

The Maasailand Preservation Trust was founded in 1992 by Richard Bonham in response to the increasing conflict between the ecosystem and its human inhabitants. Its main focus is to provide the Maasai people with financial and other critically important benefits in return for conserving wildlife and habitat.

A pioneering project that has been very successful is the Predator Compensation Scheme. Maasai pastoralists around Amboseli have for the first time agreed not to kill predators in retaliation when a lion, cheetah, leopard, or hyena kill their livestock. Instead they are now financially compensated for their losses. Every livestock animal killed by a predator results in an agreed cash compensation for the owner. Agreements and contracts have been signed with Maasai communities over an area of over a million acres.

This project has been so successful that the predator slaughter and population decline has stopped. But the financial costs are high. Ol Donyo Lodge, via its affiliated trusts, now spends between $100,000 and $200,000 a year to compensate the communities for any livestock killed around Ol Donyo Lodge and on the tribal lands that surround Amboseli.

The trust has also worked in close collaboration with local communities on 1) improving health care and education, 2) using game scouts to combat game meat poaching and resolve human-wildlife conflict, 3)  monitoring of highly endangered species, such as the Chyulu Black Rhino, and 4) conserving habitat through reforestation and natural resource management. in its battle against poachers, Ol Donyo Lodge is one of the few places that makes highly successful use of bloodhounds for tracking.

A Maasai Trust Anti-Poaching Unit in Chyulu Hills

An equally significant conservation program at Ol Donyo Lodge is the partnering with the neighboring community to create a new wildlife conservancy and sanctuary that will guarantee the safety of wildlife while simultaneously uplifting the local Maasai community. The community will lease land to Ol Donyo Lodge to create a new conservancy. In return, Ol Donyo Wuas will guarantee payments each quarter to some 4500 rural Maasai families who earn little or no other revenue besides what they can earn from their livestock.

The first phase of this program is to create a conservancy of over 22,000 acres. An agreement has been struck in principal and the plan ultimately is to enlarge this to 70,000 acres, once Ol Donyo Lodge’s occupancies and revenues increase. This will create wildlife migration corridors that will link up old migration routes between Amboseli, Tsavo, and Chyulu parks. Besides the obvious benefit of creating a wildlife conservancy, the project will ensure that money gets paid largely to families.

In Their Own Words

“The aim of this form of payment policy is to ensure that the lowest strata of Maasai society in the region receive direct financial benefits from wildlife and the creation of the conservancy – and in particular that the women and families have the opportunity to earn money themselves.  Studies have shown that once the women are involved in the community’s finances, their families and that of the community at large have the best chance of upliftment.”