The Wildlife Habitat Trust
Kenya · 1.29°S · 36.82°E
Protecting east Africa's wild landscapes by partnering with the Maasai communities who share them.
About The Wildlife Habitat Trust
The Wildlife Habitat Trust protects wildlife in Kenya by helping Maasai communities turn their land into thriving conservancies that pay their own way.
Some of Kenya's richest wildlife lives outside the national parks, on community land in the Maasai Mara and Amboseli regions. As populations grow and settlements and fencing spread into these areas, the open country that elephants, lions and the great migrations of wildebeest and zebra need is steadily being lost.
The trust supports a conservancy model that tackles this head on. Maasai landowners lease their land to be kept open for wildlife, free of settlement and fencing, and in return receive a reliable income. Low-impact tourism through Porini camps, kept deliberately small, funds the leases and creates jobs.
The benefits reach well beyond rent. Local people work as guides, wardens and rangers, and revenue helps pay for schools, healthcare, clean water and measures that protect livestock from predators. Conservancies such as Ol Kinyei, Naboisho, Olare Motorogi and Selenkay now safeguard vital wildlife corridors, with Ol Kinyei recognised on the IUCN Green List.
This approach shows that protecting wildlife and improving lives can go together. Supporting it, including through the Adopt an Acre scheme, helps keep land open, keeps communities invested in conservation and gives Kenya's wildlife room to move and breed.
Community conservancies
Leasing land from Maasai families to create unfenced wildlife havens beside the Mara and Amboseli reserves.
Adopt-An-Acre
Letting supporters fund the lease and protection of specific parcels of vital wildlife habitat.
Education and bursaries
Backing school fees, digital learning and the Koiyaki guiding school so local youth can build conservation careers.
Human-wildlife coexistence
Reinforcing livestock enclosures and funding water and bee-keeping schemes to ease pressure on predators.
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