2025 November - Visit to three separate Game Conservancies in Kenya
We traveled to Africa in late November 2025 and spent time in three separate game conservancies. Two were community Conservancies, operated by the Maasai tribe - one in the Mara (south) and one in Samburo (North Central), and a third- Naboisho was privately owned and has the largest population of white and black rhinoceros the continent. All three areas are very large ranging from 60,000 acres to several hundred thousand acres, and are unfenced, allowing natural migration of animals at different times of the year. Typical days involved a sunrise/early morning game drive, and a late afternoon/sunset game drive leaving time for lavish meals in the "clamping" game camps and plenty of siestas. There was absolutely no walking in the bush except when escorted by armed rangers. The animals have become accustomed to the safari jeeps but are still unpredictable around people on foot. I had no problem with this rule as there was plenty of high grass and lurking lions about.
We traveled to and from Niarobi and between the conservancies by small bush plane and unfortunately never had the change to encounter life in a real village or town. At all the conservancies all the employees, guides, and rangers were from the surrounding tribes. Luckily for us, everyone spoke sufficient English to make the logistics and game education dialog understandable. Most days it was just Diane and I in our own guided Land Rover, with the same guide day after day. We had plenty of time to sit quietly with the engine off and observe the animal behaviors. The landscape was SO big and unobstructed, we often could watch the movement of a herd of animals from far off and then drive to position ourselves so that their natural travel path came right up to or adjacent to the vehicle.
The community conservancies operate on a very cool model - all the land owners (usually 100 acre lots at a time per family) agree to sign over their property to the conservancy in exchange for annual payments and rights to continue to sustainably graze cattle, sheep and goats on the land in designated areas, and to not build any fences or structures within the conservancy boundary. The only visitors to the preserves must stay in a game camp within the preserve boundary. There are some elephant fences in very select areas to protect the acacia trees from damage as they recover from an over population of elephants which occurred as they ran away from poachers in neighboring Somalia in the recent past. There are also fences at the conservancy boundary where the boundary runs adjacent to a road and around some of the camps. Between the neighboring adjacent conservancies there are no fences.
