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Community
The Satao Elerai project is a community project that has been a long time in the making. The project has been a concerted effort between the Satao Elerai, The African Wildlife Foundation and The Elerai community. The concept is to provide a sustainable income from tourism for the Masai community in the area and to try and ensure that it is in the communities interest to protect the wildlife for generations to come. Amboseli has been a location where human-wildlife conflict has been an issue for many years, and it is projects like these that can over time ensure that communities start to benefit from wildlife and to ensure they invest in protecting and securing their future for their own benefit.
For each guest accommodated at Campi ya Kanzi for one night, $30 is set apart for the Maasai community. The money is spent on reimbursement of animal damages, education through scholarships awarded on merit and to those who are too poor to afford education, school supplies and teacher salaries, basic medical facilities and medicines and new infrastructures, such as schoolrooms, toilets and dispensaries. Guests also play an active part in the trust, as the $100 conservation fee charged per day goes toward some of the trust activities, such as employment of game scouts to make sure there is no poaching, no water courses diversion, no bush fire and no illegal cutting of woods. It also helps employing teachers, nurses and a doctor.
Environment
Campi ya Kanzi is an multi award-winning community ecotourism lodge and is amongst the top environmentally friendly camps in all of Africa. The ranch covers about 400 square miles of African wilderness, and is still owned by the indigenous Maasai herdsmen. The camp has been built with local materials and techniques only, and not a single tree was cut in the process. State of the art technology was applied for the use of renewable resources. 220-volt electricity is provided by solar power, water is heated with solar heaters. In the kitchen, meals are cooked using a special eco-friendly charcoal produced by the United Nations Environment Project. Food scraps are composted for use in a vegetable garden. Water, the most precious resource in Africa, passes through lava filters that cleanse it before it is used in the garden or put in a pond for the wildlife to enjoy.
Campi ya Kanzi is the living example of the policies of the Kenya Wildlife Service, which encourages local people to get involved in the conservation of the flora and fauna. This approach to conservation is based on the self-interested involvement of the Maasai, rather than the creation of laws and bans. For example, when lions kill Maasai cattle, the Maasai naturally wish to protect their livelihood by killing these cats. However, if the same lions produced profit through tourism for the local people to proper, the Maasai may realize that it is best to co-exist with them. The Maasai now see the benefit of having wildlife on their land, so they protect the animals and view them as an extension of their ranching activities.
The Galdessa camp works closely with Kenya Wildlife Service’s black rhino re-introduction project. Within Galdessa’s vicinity there are 51 black rhino; Africa’s largest unfenced black rhino population. The camp has been built with great care not to adversely impact the environment and recycles its waste, uses solar power for electricity and has installed a water treatment plant. Galdessa’s founder, Pierre Mourgue d’Algue, is a trustee of the TUSK Trust which works to protect the environment and habitats of Africa and distributes in excess of 90% of the funds it raises directly into the field.
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