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Adopt an Acre® Today!
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by Tom Dunkel
Nature meets metropolis at 45-square-mile Nairobi National Park. Lions, leopards, zebras and rhino commingle with more than 400 species of birds, all within sight of Kenya’s capital city. This is where tourists get their chance to photograph giraffes feeding against a backdrop of skyscrapers.
To the west, north and east, a cement factory, rows of tin-walled shanty houses and even a railroad line have popped up along the park’s boundaries. To the south lies the only open migration route. Zebras, wildebeests and other large mammals roam hundreds of miles south following the rainy season’s lush grasses, and they retrace their steps during the dry season, to take advantage of the watering holes in Nairobi. The city creeps ever closer, threatening to encircle the animals and seal their getaway corridor.
Ogeli Ole Makui is driving off-road along the still untamed southern fringe of the park known as Kitengela Conservation Area. His bouncing Suzuki spooks a few Thomson’s gazelles, which bolt through the brush. “We used to chase those when we were young,” he says excitedly.
Makui, age 36, was born, and today lives, in one of the Masai villages clustered nearby. A civil engineer who once played a part in erecting Nairobi’s airfields, bridges and office buildings, he now works for The Wildlife Foundation, a small Kenyan nonprofit trying to save this vital corridor.
Six years ago, Makui’s group, with the help of the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), launched a land-lease program with the Masai communities living in Kitengela. This type of program is a first for Kenya and for much of Africa, where techniques for protecting private lands are relatively new. The project pays families living in the shadow of Nairobi National Park $4 an acre per year if they leave that land alone, only grazing their own livestock and promising to protect any wildlife.The idea is to strike a mutually beneficial balance: keep the migratory corridor intact while keeping the Masai lifestyle viable.
Makui handles the project’s lease arrangements. He began in March 2000 with two families and 214 acres. More than 100 families in Kitengela currently participate, accounting for 8,500 acres.
“The park is critical to the community,” he says. “If we have to fence Nairobi National Park and we don’t have rain … there will be hostility from the Masai because they get water from that park.”
Makui’s goal is to expand the lease arrangements to 60,000 acres and sign families to 15-year, rather than the prevailing one-year, leases. That should be enough to ensure that migrations into the Nairobi Park continue unimpeded for the foreseeable future.
“The biggest threat in Kitengela is land-use changes and lack of planning,” Makui says. If nothing were done to stop the city’s encroachment, he says, the endgame could come within 15 years.
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Mitsuaki Iwago/Minden Pictures (Elephants); Photo © Frans Lanting/Minden Pictures (Lion); Map © XNR Productions; Photo © Bruce Davidson/Naturepl.com (Masai)
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