North of Talek on the Narok road, an enterprising woman has set up an impromptu charcoal stall beneath the Mara North Conservanc sign. A\u00a0150-year-old acacia tree lies slain on its side, prey to the charcoal trade. Once you take out these trees, the land can go over to wheat. Wildlife pays around 3,000 shillings per hectare per year, but wheat farming pays 8,000-10,000. Maasai society is increasingly monetised, steered by electronic communications, motorised transport and imported food. These people and many more are trying to make a living, and although the National Reserve makes millions, they’re getting little from it. Without incentive to protect it, they are destroying it. A\u00a0Japanese businessman has offered the council 42bn shillings (\u00a3235m) to relocate people on the edge of the reserve to 20km away, a\u00a0consultant for the council says, which would mean more forced evictions and an uncomfortable new chapter in the battle for the Mara’s billions.<\/p>\n
Wildlife pays around 3,000 shillings per hectare per year, but wheat farming pays 8,000-10,000. Maasai society is increasingly monetised, steered by electronic communications, motorised transport and imported food. These people and many more are trying to make a living, and although the National Reserve makes millions, they’re getting little from it. Without incentive to protect it, they are destroying it. A\u00a0Japanese businessman has offered the council 42bn shillings (\u00a3235m) to relocate people on the edge of the reserve to 20km away, a\u00a0consultant for the council says, which would mean more forced evictions and an uncomfortable new chapter in the battle for the Mara’s billions.<\/p>\n
Jackson Looseyia, a veteran guide of 26 years and presenter of the BBC’s Big Cat Diaries, is between safaris. I have come to meet him in a private house owned by a wealthy Briton. Looseyia wears rubber sandals made from old tyres, a red-checked shuka, red dress and beaded belt. “I don’t normally eat like this,” he says, feigning embarrassment at the elegant meal laid on. I believe him. However much time he has spent around westerners, Looseyia is Maasai to the core. What concerns him most about the future of \u00a0the Mara is the rocketing value of land. Africa\u00a0is rising, the media proclaim, but it is doing so unequally. Wealthy investors in the former Maasai rangelands 30km south of Nairobi have driven land up to 12m shillings (\u00a393,000) per acre. Both the Maasai, who “suffered big time”, Looseyia says, and the wildlife are gone. “It’s a threat to conservation, it’s a threat to the community. We are bordering the famous Maasai Mara National Reserve. That in itself is gold. It\u00a0could easily go,” he says.<\/p>\n
As well as the Serengeti wildebeest that convene every year in the National Reserve, around 300,000 wildebeest from Kenya’s Loita plains used to arrive concurrently and mingle with their Tanzanian counterparts \u2013 the “northern migration”. Calvin Cottar, whose family have been in the Mara for almost 100 years, has seen the Loita migration reduce by 90% to 30,000 animals in the past three decades. Wildlife populations crashed by up to 70% in that time, according to a\u00a0Journal of Zoology<\/a> study, while cows grazing illegally inside the reserve were up by 1,100%.<\/p>\nSource:\u00a0https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/travel\/2013\/aug\/23\/masai-mara-tourism-politics<\/p><\/blockquote>\n