How we work with the Maasai community to give wildlife room to roam

Community-based conservation is the future

There are, of course, other conservation models, one of the most common being the national park system. As beautiful and important as national parks are, their static nature unfortunately doesn't fit the reality of what we are facing with climate change.

Over the coming years, we expect much more movement of wildlife and people. The places that needed to be protected for the last hundred years may not need protection in the future, but new places will.

We believe a community-based conservation model is so important because it is the future of conservation. The days of people being locked out of the national park-and animals being locked in -while a distant national government makes decisions that affect the local community, are over. A perfect example of the direction we should be heading is a recent decision by Kenya's president, William Ruto. He announced last August that management of Amboseli National Park will return to the Kajiado County government, which hosts the park.

Local communities always need to be central to conservation decisions. That's one reason why a conservancy is the best model for spaces like Illaingarunyoni, and it's why we work directly with the community's leadership.

Why conservationists need to have a long-term vision

The life expectancy of an elephant is long-60 to 70 years. Conservationists need to be planning decades into the future while also looking at what will protect species in the next few years.

When IFAW developed our visionary Room to Roam initiative, we knew we had to think long term. Backed by decades of scientific research and conversations with local communities, Room to Roam is conserving wild landscapes that had become fragmented or were at risk of becoming so.

One of the misconceptions about Room to Roam is that we're creating a wildlife highway, so elephants can walk from Kenya down to Zimbabwe. That's not what we're doing. But protecting Illaingarunyoni will allow wildlife to move uninterrupted over a vast distance, all the way from Amboseli to Loita and Maasai Mara. That's why the scale of the landscape is critical.

Creating connectivity on this scale requires a long-term commitment. The Kitenden Conservancy took over ten years to bring to fruition. First we had to negotiate the original lease and to discuss how land-leasing engagements work with the landowners. Then we developed management structures, governance, roads, and systems to attract investors for tourism. The investor, Conservation Equity, signed a 25-year lease agreement with the landowners last year.

The Illaingarunyoni Conservancy will also take time and investment, and so will other landscapes that are currently in danger of becoming fragmented.

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