MAASAI MARA TOUR 2025
In February 2025, three of our trustees James, Sophie and Sue along with other family members went to spend a week in Kenya to visit the Maasai Mara and to visit the team at one of our conservation partners, the Mara Predator Conservation Programme. While in the area they stayed in and visited the main national reserve and also the Naboisho Conservancy, both of these areas are part of the MPCP study area.
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James last visited the area 5 years ago in 2020 along with our friend David Southard from Wild Arena and Peter Johnson, carnivore keeper from Knowsley Safari and now a fellow trustee (as of 2023). They had the pleasure of meeting Niels Mogensen, Senior Programme Scientist for the MPCP along with research assistants Grace and Saitoti. We were fortunate enough to join them on their monitoring sessions to find lions within their study areas and to try and get photographs to help identify younger cubs. You can find out more about this trip by clicking on this link.​
The Greater Mara Ecosystem covers an area of more than 3,000km2 in southwest Kenya and consists of the famous Maasai Mara National Reserve which includes the Mara Triangle now run as the Mara Conservancy, as well as several privately owned conservancies towards the north. In total there are currently 15 privately owned conservancies and 1 mixed-model conservation area. These conservancies are owned by the local communities who benefit directly from tourism in those areas, they also allow controlled grazing for cattle and other livestock which is not allowed in the National Reserve. In the case of the mixed-model Pardamat Conservation Area, they still allow people to live amongst the wildlife but are encouraging people to take special measures such as removing fences from the landscape to allow free movement of wildlife across the area. On a wider scale the Greater Mara Ecosystem is connected to the Serengeti National Park and is as such one much larger entity spread across two countries of over 30,000 km2. Despite the wildness of the national reserve, when along the boundary, the infrastructure and buildings found in the settlements and towns were a constant reminder of how close these wildlife havens are to large communities and a rapidly growing and developing population and the challenges that the conservation organisations face working in these areas.​​​
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We were blessed with several lion sightings, including some large prides with many small cubs present, this made for great photographic opportunities and a great chance to observe the group behaviour.
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What did we learn?
Creating effective conservation measures means gaining an accurate understanding of the situation. The work of the Mara Predator Conservation Programme is to provide evidence-based, practical management recommendations, solutions and ideas. This can only be done by intensive monitoring and studying of current species behaviour, population trends and study on human influences on the land. This is exactly what the team are doing, but it requires a lot of patience and team as there is no easy solution and there are a huge number of variables and compromises to be made on all sides to create solutions that fit all of the stakeholders including the animals, communities, economies and tourists.
We had the privilege to meet Senior Programme Scientist Niels Mogensen who gave us a presentation on their current work and talked about the challenges that they face monitoring and conserving lions and other predators in the Mara. We also had the opportunity to meet Dominik Sakat, community outreach officer who showed us one of their pilot predator proof livestock bomas that was built in 2022. This was great as we have just sponsored the building of a new boma for them, so it was brilliant for us to see one in person. These bomas are made out of recycled plastic poles and triple twisted chain-link fencing. So far out of the many that they have built, none have been broken into by predators. These bomas, amongst other efforts of the MPCP including growing community involvement projects, are crucial to promote coexistence between communities and predators to try and secure predator populations in the Mara long term. The photo above shows three trustees with Dominik and Niels from the MPCP, safari guide Dama and the boma owner. The other photo shows the same boma more clearly and you can see that the owners have added extra wooden poles to it.
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Niels explained in his presentation how they have embraced technology at a quick pace to help their protection efforts by using the Earth Ranger software, shown in the photo left. MPCP staff, park wardens and other stakeholders all have access to these maps which shows them the location of the GPS collared lions and cheetahs as well as the tagged cattle as part of a new pilot project. These cattle have been used as a trial in the herds that live close to the reserve and conservancy boundaries. Each reserve and conservancy has a marker line 1km out from the boundary, if the collared cats cross this boundary, alerts are sent to the phones of those with access who can start to put mitigation efforts in place. This technology allows the team to work in real time to try and prevent incidents before they occur, to try and save the lives of cats and cattle. His talk was extremely interesting, and we are in complete admiration of the work carried out by his team. There is no doubt that community work has become even more important to the work of the MPCP, and that it has allowed them to put measures into place to try and resolve the conflict at homestead level with the communities.
Lake Nakuru
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Moja Moja
