A Critical Place. A Critical Time.
Nashulai Maasai Conservancy is a 5000-acre triangle of rolling savannah and woodland linking Kenya’s famous Maasai Mara National Reserve and two other large conservancies. It’s a keystone place in the heart of the Mara ecosystem--an ancient elephant nursery, wildlife refuge, and migratory corridor from the Serengeti up to the northern Mara. But until the formation of Nashulai in 2016, it strangely lay unprotected. And exceedingly vulnerable. Due to the destructive pressures of climate change, poverty, land commodification and fencing, this precious land was at imminent risk of being lost forever.
To understand the importance of Nashulai, it’s essential to understand that habitat degeneration is a pernicious problem with profound consequences. It creates a vicious cycle: wildlife suffer so then do the people whose lives depend on the land and so then does the wider ecosystem. Today, with the return of the elephants, giraffes, lions and herds of zebras, we see the positive impact of our young Conservancy not only at home but reaching far beyond our borders.
Nashulai is the last remaining wildlife corridor between the Maasai Mara National Reserve and other conservancies to the east, making it critical to the great migration, an annual spectacle when more than 2 million animals follow a circuitous route from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara.
As Dickson Kaelo, CEO of Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association, foresaw when praising the creation of the Conservancy: “Nashulai is the most critical connecting corridor for elephants, lions and other migrating Mara Serengeti wildlife. Nashulai is the missing link in the puzzle. Its establishment benefits Maasai families and supports Kenya’s conservation efforts.”
We are but a small part of the transnational Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem. The Keynan and Tanzanian governments, national, private, and community conservation areas; its indigenous people and the global community must all work together to preserve this biosphere.