Kenya’s Community Conservancies are a Win for Nature and Livelihoods

From the dry grasslands of the north to the lush savannas of Maasai Mara, livestock are ubiquitous on Kenya’s landscape.

Goats scurry and cows saunter across the red dirt, munching grass while kids and calves follow closely alongside their mothers. Herders escort groups of livestock, equipped with nothing but a long wooden stick, guiding herds from sunup to sundown and beyond to graze.

On Kenya’s rangelands, livestock are everything. The foundations of one’s livelihood—wealth, career, nutrition, safety—are measured in cows and goats. And healthy livestock depend on healthy grass to thrive.

Grass, like communities, does best when it’s cared for. That’s where the community conservancy model comes in.

What Are Community Conservancies?

Community conservancies are lands owned by a community for the purposes of wildlife conservation and compatible land uses to improve livelihoods. For generations, these lands have been stewarded by the Indigenous peoples and local communities who live there. But before the 2016 Community Land Act, many of these communities couldn’t claim legal rights to their lands.

Now these rights are enshrined in Kenya’s laws and establish a framework for the management and administration of community land, enabling communities to formally own and manage their communal territories. The act also outlines processes for the conversion of other land types to community land and the allocation of land to community members, and with that comes the need for inclusive and equitable governance structures. Historically, women and young people were excluded from decision-making in many communities. Now, communities operate democratically, with decisions made by representative boards and benefits shared across the community.

Conservation is at the heart of community conservancies. With livelihoods so intertwined with the land itself, it’s vital that the land be protected by those who know it best. Communities lead conservation strategies like rotational grazing, carbon credits and water storage, with support from government and non-government partners including Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association, Northern Rangelands Trust and The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

In fact, community conservancies are vital for Kenya to reach its goal of putting 30% of its lands under conservation management by 2030. The government has maximized what it can do with its own lands; the only way to close the gap will be to support communities to manage their lands.

That’s where The Nature Conservancy and our partners come in, bringing in whatever is needed to help community conservancies get started, whether it’s financing, technical and science skills, capacity-building, communications support and more, to support communities as they build functional, sustainable systems centered on conservation and improved livelihoods.

TNC’s role is to provide the skills and support that empower local leaders and help kick start operations, then let the community conservancy operate independently. “What we pride ourselves in doing within these landscapes is working ourselves out of a job,” said Chantal Migongo-Bake, deputy conservation director for The Nature Conservancy in Africa.

Community conservancies are the foundation of TNC’s strategy to protect nature in Kenya. We are supporting communities to secure ownership over their natural resources, sustainably manage those resources and seed opportunities for peace, jobs and funds for community development.

Benefits of Community Conservancies

Communities across Kenya’s rangelands are lining up to establish conservancies. That’s because there are a lot of benefits to communities for organizing as a conservancy. For example, economic opportunities from conservation, such as carbon credits or increased tourism, can be optimized and fairly distributed across the community.

Funds that communities receive from the carbon stored in the soil beneath their grasses, carefully kept intact through grazing management plans, go toward schools, healthcare and other expenses in the community. Tourism operators sign long-term leases with communities to bring tourists to enjoy the wildlife and scenery on these stunning natural areas, bringing reliable income to the community and a motivation to protect grasslands and wildlife.

At an individual level, community members come together to set up systems to pool together resources earned from the economic returns of conservation and use them to set up individual small businesses that are improving livelihoods and helping to meet family needs.

The community conservation model also gives communities lobbying power at the national level. By unifying over causes that benefit community conservancies as a whole, communities can increase their influence and obtain what they need from the government.

But conservation does not come without challenges—the return on investment for conservation may take several years to arrive, whereas land uses like agriculture can have a payoff as soon as the first harvest. Coexisting with wildlife has always been a challenge for Kenya’s pastoralists. Lions and elephants may kill livestock; zebra and impala graze on the same grasses as cows and sheep. Community conservancies have a role to play in addressing these challenges by providing the resources for pastoralists to earn income from protecting their lands and by creating wildlife corridors and building predator-proof structures to deter human-wildlife conflict.

Looking Ahead

To achieve the ambitious goal of conserving 30% of Kenya’s land, we must replicate the community conservancy model in the most critical locations, like wildlife corridors and places with potential for restoration and carbon storage.

In December 2025, TNC is slated to close a deal to increase sustainable financing for new community conservancies to get off the ground, build business plans and explore sustainable revenue-generating options.