A prominent cabinet minister has accused certain government officials of facilitating the illicit titling of 4,000 acres of land in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve in southwestern Kenya.
Minister William ole Ntimama told the press last week that Ministry of Lands officials “have colluded with bad elements in the Transmara County Council and they are stealing the land which belongs to the Maasai.”
Ntimama has threatened to mobilize his fellow Maasai to occupy the Reserve to protest the alleged appropriation of the land by a number of well-connected individuals.
The Mara Game Reserve dates back to 1948, when the Mara Triangle was declared a National Game Reserve. The Narok County Council assumed direct control of the Reserve in 1961 and its boundaries were extended roughly to the present size. In 1995 the boundaries were scaled back somewhat and the administration of the Reserve was divided between the Narok and Transmara County Councils.
Ntimama’s comments, corroborated by a former Transmara County Councillor, Peter Sapalan, suggested a well-organized group of government officials was working together to systematically shave off parts of the Reserve. He claimed title deeds were issued to a number of individuals for lands held by the government in trust for the people of Kenya. Sapalan claimed two companies, the Olololo Game Ranch and the Mara Conservancy, were being used as fronts for the titling.
The Mara Game Reserve is one of Kenya’s largest tourist attractions. Comprising 1510 square kilometers of savannah, it is home to a wide variety of wildlife, including large herds of wildebeests, elephants and lions. The Maasai inhabit parts of the ‘dispersal areas’ just outside the official boundaries of the park, where they have traditionally followed a semi-nomadic, pastoralist lifestyle for centuries. The concept of personal property has only recently been absorbed into the Maasai culture, leading to the establishment of communal ranching and herding operations based on fixed parcels of land.
Due to growing agricultural activity in the region, the Maasai are experiencing increased pressure on the limited amount of traditional productive pasturelands outside of the Reserve. With few options open to them -- the lands inside the Reserve support ever higher concentrations of wildlife, particularly wildebeests -- the Maasai are seeking to supplement their traditional livelihood by harnessing some of the benefits associated with the bustling tourist economy. The Maasai Environmental Resource Coalition is one of the organizations established to ensure that the Maasai community sees some of the profits from the tourism in their traditional homeland and that they are accorded a greater role in implementing responsible wildlife conservation practices there and in other parts of the region.
