The Crisis

We are fighting a war of space in the Greater Mara Ecosystem, one of the last major wildlife refuges on Earth. Most famous for its annual migration of nearly two million wildebeest and zebra, the ecosystem is also home to an estimated 40% of Africa’s large mammal species yet covers only 0.1% of the continent’s land surface. In the Kenya portion of the ecosystem, people and wildlife peacefully coexisted when space for both did not overlap; however, as the human footprint has grown, the rangeland demand for livestock and farming has increased, pushing wild animals into smaller areas. While poaching emerged as the number one threat to elephants in 2012, when 96 elephants in the Mara were killed for their ivory, now, the expansion of the human footprint resulting in increased human-elephant conflict and habitat loss is the crisis the Mara faces.