A sanctuary reborn

Once pillaged by poachers, Kenya’s northern areas are returning to their former glory thanks in part to locals who know that nurturing their wildlife back for tourism is a win-win, writes Stuart Butler.

Zebras are often spotted in near Saruni Samburu lodge. Courtesy Cheli and Peacock
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The trampled vegetation, the smell of fear and the stringy, bloodstained cord indicated that just hours earlier something significant had occurred here. My guides, a group of bejewelled and feather-dressed Samburu tribesmen, talked in urgent whispers and poked about the scene like forensic scientists trying to piece together clues and work out what had happened. After some minutes a conclusion was reached and one of the Samburu turned to me and, like a proud father, announced that earlier that morning a new life had begun. This, he said, hand waving at the bloodied rubbery object, was the umbilical cord of an elephant. In a continent being ravaged by ivory and rhino horn poaching the birth of a new elephant was good news indeed. But then again, despite the Africa-wide poaching epidemic, this northern corner of Kenya is rapidly gaining a reputation as a place where conservation, local people, tourism and wildlife can all thrive. In fact, some say that northern Kenya represents the future of conservation in Africa.

It was to witness northern Kenya’s groundbreaking approach to combining the wishes and needs of local pastoralist peoples such as the Samburu with the needs of the heavyweight local wildlife into a successful conservation project that had drawn me here. I was a guest at Kitich Camp, a discreet tented camp that manages to combine comfortable living with a genuine sense of wild adventure, located deep in the remote Matthew’s Mountains. Known to biologists as a “sky island”, the Matthew’s, which clamber to a high point of 2,688 metres, rise up out of the semi-desert plains of northern Kenya and are carpeted in misty forests of juniper and cyclads (including the endemic Matthew’s Cyclad, a bizarre prehistoric looking plant that appears to be a cross between a giant fern and a palm tree). As well as Jurassic plants, the mountains also support a wealth of wildlife including elephants, lions, buffaloes and what might be Kenya’s largest wild dog population. The mountains fall under the protection of the Namunyak Wildlife Conservation Trust, a community-run conservation area that was established in 1995 by the Samburu people. Today, it’s one of Kenya’s most successful community conservation programmes and this accomplishment has seen animal populations rise dramatically.

As I stared in childlike wonder at the elephant umbilical cord, a deep, chesty rumbling brought my guides to attention. “Elephants,” they announced, “they’re still close by; maybe just 20 metres away and with a new born they will be nervous and dangerous. We must move away.”

The dense vegetation of the Matthew’s means that a safari here is a world away from the more famous open savannah reserves of east Africa. Safaris are conducted only on foot and the slippery trails and heavy forest cover means actual sightings of animals, even ones as large as an elephant, are rare and fleeting, but the delight is in the chase. The Samburu guides are natural-born trackers and they read the landscape for clues of passing animals in the way a crusty, seadog sailor reads the oceans; blades of grass bent in a certain angle indicate that a leopard passed by an hour ago, hoof prints and slide marks in the mud reveal how a bushbuck ran from danger the evening before and the scratch marks in the river bank show where elephants used their tusks to dig for salts in the middle of the night.

The Matthew’s Mountains and Kitich Camp were the final stops of my northern Kenya adventure. My journey had begun a week earlier and a day’s drive to the south-east in Meru National Park. The gold-tinted savannah grasslands and tangled riverine forests of Meru more closely match most people’s expectations of East Africa. But unlike most other classic savannah parks, Meru was free of the safari minibus circuit that can so blight many of the more famous parks and reserves. This wasn’t always the case though. In the 1970s Meru had been one of the jewels of Kenya’s tourism crown and upwards of 40,000 people a year flocked here to gawp at elephants, rhinos, lions and other Kenyan mega fauna. But by the late 1970s, and throughout the 1980s, Meru’s fortunes declined as its wildlife was wiped out by a surge in poaching.

Today, however, things are very different and Meru once again stands on the cusp of great things. Security has been massively beefed up, the parks infrastructure rehabilitated, a breathtaking lodge, Elsa’s Kopje, has been built onto, around and pretty much into the pinky-granite rock of a hill offering commanding views over the plains and, most importantly, elephants, rhinos and other large animals have been relocated from other Kenyan parks to Meru. In fact, so successful has the rebirth of Meru been that it’s now one of the most reliable places in Kenya in which to see both black and white rhinos with the joint population of the two expanding from around a dozen in 2002 to 77 today.

Government-run Meru is clearly a Kenyan conservation success story, but the government isn’t the only institution doing great things in this part of Kenya. According to the Kenya Wildlife Service, which manages the country’s national parks and oversees the nation’s general wildlife policy, up to 70 per cent of Kenya’s wildlife lives outside of the protection of the national parks and reserves. This is where the private conservancies step in – there are at least 15 in northern Kenya alone. Whether owned and managed by the local community or by a private landowner, the goal of all these conservancies is the same: preserve the region’s wildlife while allowing local people to benefit from the presence of large animals that previously were just a hindrance and danger to them.

Tourism is the key to such places. High-end lodges offering an exclusive safari experience have been established on many of these conservancies and the money generated through tourism is pumped back into the community, which means the locals now have a vested interest in the survival of wildlife on their lands. The community-run Namunyak Wildlife Conservation Trust is one such example of this fusing of man’s and nature’s needs, but for another example I headed next to Kalama Conservancy and the sublime Saruni Samburu lodge. Established by Italian journalist Riccardo Orizio, Saruni Samburu melts so perfectly into the rocky bluff on which it’s constructed that from a distance its seriously indulgent open-fronted cottages appear to be an organic part of the environment. But beautiful as the lodge is, it was the environment and wildlife I was interested in. This is tinder dry thorn bush country, a world away from the damp forests of the Matthew’s and the river-laced savannahs of Meru, and appropriately it’s home to a very different set of wildlife. Tightly striped Grevy’s zebra, half-giraffe, half-antelope gerenuk and the bright-blue-legged Somali ostrich are all classic animals of this environment.

This is also a vital migratory corridor for elephants travelling between the wetter climes of Meru and other reserves and the Matthew’s Mountains. But, unfortunately for the wildlife, this has long been prime grazing ground for the Samburu pastoralists and their livestock. In the past this meant conflict between wildlife and people and usually the people came out on top. Today though, as with the other conservancies in the area, by working with the local people, taking their wishes into account and working on solutions to the problems they face – all funded through tourism dollars – the quality of life for the Samburu is rising and at the same time wildlife populations, which not so long ago were dangerously low, are starting to rebound.

This means that despite the current crisis facing elephants and rhinos across Africa, there is a glimmer of hope that up here in northern Kenya Samburu warriors will continue to turn to startled tourists and, like proud fathers, announce the birth of a tiny baby elephant.