Events & Conservation

The Maasai and Wildlife: A Partnership That Protects Both

The Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania have coexisted with wildlife for centuries. Today, community conservancies managed by Maasai landowners are proving more effective at protecting wildlife than government reserves.

By Nikos Pocock Published October 22, 2025 Updated October 14, 2026 8 min read

The Masai Mara’s wildlife does not live only inside the national reserve. Approximately 65 per cent of Kenya’s wildlife moves across land that is neither a national park nor a formal reserve — it is community and private land. For the Masai Mara ecosystem to function, the Maasai people who own the land surrounding the reserve must have a reason to tolerate wildlife on their land rather than fencing it out and converting it to agriculture.

Key Message

The Maasai did not compromise their relationship with wildlife — they built a conservation model around it; community conservancies now protect more land than Kenya’s national parks.

About This Article

What it covers: Maasai community involvement in wildlife conservation and tourism revenue sharing.

Kenya Masai Mara vultures and marabou storks — Africa Calling Safaris — Masai Mara vultures and marabou storks — scavengers that thrive in Maasai community land. Photo: Africa Calling Safaris.

Sources and methodology: Kenya Wildlife Service community conservancy data, IUCN community conservation case studies, and Africa Calling Safaris’ community partnership records from three Maasai group ranches (2014–2024).

Key Facts — At a Glance

Approximately 65% of Kenya’s wildlife biomass lives outside formal protected areas, on community and private land

The Mara conservancy network covers over 300,000 acres across 12 private and community conservancies bordering the Masai Mara National Reserve

Conservancy lease payments to Maasai landowners: typically USD 30–90 per acre per year, depending on conservancy location and land quality

Lion mortality inside the Mara conservancy network fell by 61% in the five years following the introduction of livestock compensation schemes (Mara Conservancy data)

Traditional Maasai culture prohibited the consumption of wild game; cattle were the sole legitimate protein source — a dietary distinction that historically reduced poaching pressure from within the community

The Traditional Relationship

The Maasai are among the most photographed and written-about peoples in the world — a fact that community leaders are aware of, and that shapes how the most thoughtful conservancies manage visitor interactions. The question that Maasai group ranch chairmen and Northern Rangelands Trust community liaison officers consistently raise is not whether tourism is welcome, but whether it is equitable: whether the fees paid for wildlife on community land translate into school fees, water infrastructure and healthcare rather than accruing primarily to camp operators and intermediaries. National Geographic’s longstanding coverage of Maasai culture provides historical context, but the more current story — of land rights negotiations, conservancy lease renegotiations and community-driven conservation governance — is being written in the conservancy boardrooms of Narok County. The Maasai are traditionally agro-pastoralists. Their cattle-based economy placed them in natural coexistence with wildlife: they do not hunt wild animals for food (traditionally, only young Maasai warriors were permitted to kill lions as a rite of passage, a practice now officially discouraged) and their cattle grazing patterns left space for wildlife on the same rangeland. Lions occasionally took livestock; the relationship was one of managed tolerance rather than conflict.

Africa Calling Safaris community partner data (2014–2024): Three Maasai group ranches in our partner network distribute an average of USD 3,200 per family per year from tourism lease income — equivalent to approximately six times the annual income from the cattle those families previously ran on the same land.

Kenya Samburu National Game Reserve Grey Headed Kingfisher. Photo: Africa Calling Safaris.

The Community Conservancy Model

Maasai Mara conservancies — privately leased Maasai land — allow higher-end, lower-density tourism than the national reserve, with strict vehicle limits producing better wildlife encounters.

Beginning in the 1990s, Maasai landowners in the areas bordering the Masai Mara Reserve began leasing land to conservancies in exchange for regular payments funded by tourism. The Mara North Conservancy, the Naboisho Conservancy and the Olare Motorogi Conservancy now cover more than 300,000 acres of land that would otherwise be under threat from agricultural conversion.

Wildlife conservancy fees now represent the largest income source in most Mara communities.

In exchange for the lease payment, landowners agree to remove cattle from specific zones during the wildlife season, allowing the land to function as wildlife habitat. The payment — typically between $30 and $90 per acre per year — provides a stable income that competes with agriculture on a per-acre return basis. When wildlife is worth more alive than the ground it occupies is worth as farmland, the wildlife survives.

Wide open Kenya safari landscape — Africa Calling Safaris — Kenya open savanna. Photo: Africa Calling Safaris — used with permission.

The Benefit for Visitors

The conservancies adjacent to the reserve offer experiences unavailable inside it: night drives, walking safaris and off-road driving are all permitted on private conservancy land. Camp densities are controlled — most conservancies limit the number of tented camps permitted, ensuring that visitor numbers stay low and the experience remains exclusive.

“

“Genuine cultural engagement on safari is rare. Most camps offer a Maasai dance performance at the gate — it’s well-intentioned but it’s performance, not exchange. The community partnership we’ve built with three group ranches in the Mara North gives our clients a different experience: they visit bomas that are not set up for tourists, they sit with elders, and occasionally they help with livestock. That’s the interaction that stays with people for life.””

— Nikos Pocock, Managing Director, Africa Calling Safaris (Nairobi, 2024)

Africa Calling’s itineraries include conservancy stays with direct community benefit payments. Ask us about our community-engaged safari options.

Wildlife terrain in East Africa — Maasai community, Kenya. Photo: Africa Calling Safaris.

The Challenges the Model Faces

The community conservancy model works when the per-acre conservation payment exceeds what the same land could earn through alternative use — primarily smallholder farming, which has expanded rapidly across the Mara ecosystem’s buffer zones in the past two decades. As the human population in the region grows and agricultural returns improve, the payment required to retain conservation land use rises. Several conservancies that were established in the early 2000s have faced renegotiation of lease terms; a small number have been withdrawn from conservation use when lease payments fell below agricultural opportunity cost.

There is also the question of benefit distribution within communities. Conservancy lease payments go to the landowner — which, in Maasai land tenure, often means a male household head rather than the wider family. Women and younger community members who bear wildlife costs (livestock predation, crop damage near reserve boundaries) do not always receive proportionate benefit from the conservation payments. The better-managed conservancies have addressed this with community governance structures that require transparent benefit distribution; others have not.

Understanding this complexity does not diminish the model’s achievements — it is, by any realistic measure, the most successful mechanism for protecting wildlife habitat on community land in Africa. But it illuminates why the work of organisations like the African Wildlife Foundation in building governance capacity alongside land payments matters as much as the financial mechanism itself. Our article on northern Kenya’s community conservancies offers a parallel case from a different cultural context, and our guide to rhino conservation covers how the same ecotourism-funding model works in a fenced sanctuary setting.

Maasai Conservation and Tourism Revenue

The Maasai community conservancy model is the most replicated indigenous-led conservation mechanism in Africa. In the Mara North ecosystem alone, three group ranches covering 280,000 acres have converted from open-range cattle grazing to wildlife conservancy management, generating direct income for 1,200 landowner families while restoring the migration corridor that was narrowing in the early 2000s. Africa Calling Safaris’ community partnership with these conservancies involves direct lease payments, guide employment from community members, and a cultural programme that funds the Maasai elders’ oral history documentation project.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do the Maasai live alongside wildlife in Kenya?+

Maasai communities in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania have traditionally coexisted with wildlife on shared land. The community conservancy model — where communities lease land to conservation trusts in exchange for revenue and employment — has formalized this coexistence into a scalable economic model that protects both people and wildlife.

What is a community conservancy and how does it work?+

A community conservancy is land owned by a local community that is managed primarily for conservation and low-impact tourism. The community receives revenue from conservancy fees, lodge concessions and employment. Wildlife corridors are maintained on communal land that would otherwise be fragmented by agriculture or development.

Can I visit a Maasai community on safari?+

Most safari camps adjacent to Maasai areas offer cultural visits — a guided walk in a village, a demonstration of traditional practices, and often a women’s craft market. The best visits are ones where you stay long enough to have a real conversation through your guide and where the interaction is led by community members, not a tourist performance.

Are Maasai communities benefiting from tourism?+

Increasingly, yes. Conservancy models where communities negotiate directly with lodge operators — rather than being excluded from national parks built on their ancestral land — have transferred significant revenue to households. Schools, boreholes and health clinics have been funded by tourism income in several Maasai conservancies.

Do Maasai still practice traditional herding?+

Yes — cattle remain central to Maasai cultural identity and economy. The conservancy model does not eliminate herding; it manages where and when cattle graze to reduce conflict with wildlife. Many Maasai men combine herding with employment as game rangers, guides or camp staff, creating hybrid livelihoods.

Sources and Further Reading

Bedelian, C. & Ogutu, J.O. (2017). Trade-offs for climate-resilient pastoral livelihoods in wildlife conservancies in the Maasai Mara, Kenya. Pastoralism, 7(1), 10.
Mara Conservancy. Annual wildlife monitoring report 2023. maraconservancy.org
African Wildlife Foundation. Maasai Mara conservancy programme overview. awf.org
Homewood, K. et al. (2009). Staying Maasai? Livelihoods, Conservation and Development in East African Rangelands. Springer.

What to Remember

Maasai land is what makes the Mara work. Without the community conservancies surrounding the national reserve, the wildebeest, lions, and cheetah would have no dispersal area — the ecosystem would collapse.
Your conservancy fee goes directly to Maasai landowners. At US $80–200 per person per day, these fees represent the largest income source in most Mara communities.
The Maasai-wildlife partnership is the world’s most successful conservation model. It is not charity — it is a functional market where wildlife is worth more alive than any alternative land use.

Visited Africa Calling Safaris? We would love to hear your story.

Share Your Experience

About the author

Nikos Pocock

Nikos Pocock is the Managing Director of Africa Calling Safaris, a Kenya-based safari operator. With more than a decade of experience leading expeditions across East Africa, he combines deep field knowledge with a passion for conservation and responsible tourism. Nikos oversees all editorial content at Safari News.