# Laikipia and the conservancy frontier: ranches, wildlife, soldiers and pastoralists

Laikipia is the ranch-and-conservancy afterlife of the White Highlands: Maasai removal, settler ranches, BATUK/Nanyuki, Ol Jogi, Lewa, Ol Pejeta, Northern Rangelands Trust, armed rangers, drought invasions and green-colonialism critique.

*This story part of: Kenya: from the Swahili coast to the republic*
*This story parallel: The colonial map of Kenya: neglected regions and regional inequality*
*This story continues: Conservation and land: the conservancies of northern Kenya*
*This story parallel: Timau: Mount Kenya settler farms, flowers, and the Laikipia edge*
*This story part of: Ecology and environment*

## c. 1840 — The Iloikop wars break out among the Maa sections

From about the 1840s the Maa-speaking peoples fell into a long series of internal wars, usually called the Iloikop or Kwavi wars. The purely pastoral sections fought the sections that also farmed and kept fixed settlements. These were civil wars over cattle, grazing and water rather than a struggle against outsiders.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## August 1904 — The 1904 Anglo-Maasai treaty carves out two reserves

In August 1904 an agreement signed for the Maasai by Olonana moved them off the central Rift and into two reserves, a northern one on Laikipia and a southern one near the Tanganyika border, linked by a stock corridor. The document promised the Maasai the reserves for as long as they existed as a people. It also opened the fertile central highlands to European settlement.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

> Laikipia is made by treaty breach and removal.

## 1911 — The 1911 removal empties Laikipia for white ranchers

A second agreement in 1911 forced the northern Maasai to leave Laikipia and crowd into an enlarged southern reserve, breaking the promise that the earlier reserves would last as long as the Maasai existed. The move was pushed through so that settlers could take the well-watered Laikipia grasslands for ranches. Driving herds south cost the Maasai many more cattle along the way.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## 1913 — Ol le Njogo's land suit against the Crown fails

A group of Maasai led by Ol le Njogo went to court in 1913 to challenge the second move and hold Britain to the 1904 promise. The court ruled that the agreement was a treaty between the Crown and the Maasai and so lay outside its jurisdiction, and the case was lost on appeal. The judgment left the Maasai with no legal remedy for the loss of Laikipia.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## 1963 — Independence leaves the large ranches intact

At independence, Kenya transfers settler land on a willing-buyer, willing-seller basis rather than by redistribution. Resettlement schemes break up some highland farms, but the big ranches of Laikipia and the arid north are largely left in place. Many pass to wealthy Kenyans and foreign owners, and the colonial map of land ownership survives.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## c. 1974 — BATUK established as a permanent presence at Nanyuki

The British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) became a standing garrison based at Nanyuki, supporting infantry battalions and other units that rotate through Kenya each year. It uses ranges across the Laikipia plateau and surrounding conservancies for live-fire and jungle training. Decades after independence, a permanent British military footprint remained on Kenyan soil.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## c. 1980 — The Wildenstein family holds Ol Jogi in Laikipia

The Wildenstein family, a French-American art-dealing dynasty, holds the Ol Jogi ranch, tens of thousands of acres of Laikipia. The estate is later run as a private wildlife conservancy. It is a clear case of a former colonial ranch passing into foreign ownership and continuing as a fenced private landscape after independence.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## 1984 — Kuki Gallmann turns Ol ari Nyiro into a private conservancy

The Italian-born author Kuki Gallmann founds the Gallmann Memorial Foundation and converts her family's Ol ari Nyiro ranch, roughly 100,000 acres on the edge of Laikipia, into the Laikipia Nature Conservancy. It is one of the best-known examples of a single foreign-linked family holding a very large block of northern Kenyan land under a conservation banner.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## 1995 — Lewa Downs ranch becomes the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

The Craig family converts the whole of Lewa Downs, a former colonial cattle ranch of roughly 62,000 acres, into the not-for-profit Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. Lewa becomes a flagship of the model in which a settler-era ranch is reworked as a wildlife and tourism enterprise. It records strong rhino and elephant numbers and funds schools and clinics in nearby communities.

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## 2004 — Fauna & Flora International creates Ol Pejeta Conservancy

Fauna & Flora International, with funding from the US-based Arcus Foundation, buys the former Ol Pejeta cattle ranch and turns it into a conservancy of about 90,000 acres. The land had earlier passed through the hands of Lord Delamere and the Lonrho company. Ol Pejeta becomes the largest black rhino sanctuary in East Africa.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## 2004 — Ian Craig founds the Northern Rangelands Trust

Ian Craig of Lewa founds the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), an umbrella body to set up and support community conservancies across northern Kenya. NRT is funded largely by Western donors and foundations, including The Nature Conservancy, USAID, the Danish government, Fauna & Flora International, and the Tusk Trust. It grows into the central organization of the northern conservancy model.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## c. 2008 — Conservancy rangers are armed as police reservists

Private conservancies and NRT build ranger forces to guard wildlife, and many rangers are gazetted as Kenya Police Reservists. This status gives them government firearms and law-enforcement powers on and around conservancy land. Supporters call the rangers essential anti-poaching staff; critics say it puts armed, ranch-linked forces in charge of policing pastoralist areas.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## 2011 — Samburu evicted for a donated conservation park

A US conservation group, the African Wildlife Foundation, bought the Eland Downs ranch in Laikipia and donated it to the Kenya Wildlife Service for a national park. Around two thousand Samburu who lived there were forcibly evicted, their homes burned and property destroyed. A Kenyan court later found the eviction unlawful, making it a stark case of dispossession carried out in the name of conservation.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## 2014 — The Nature Conservancy buys Loisaba

The Nature Conservancy, a US environmental group, buys the Loisaba ranch of roughly 56,000 acres when it comes up for sale, and secures it as a conservancy. The purchase keeps a large private block in Laikipia under conservation ownership. Supporters see it as protecting wildlife land; critics see foreign money buying up contested territory.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## January 2017 — Drought drives the 2017 Laikipia land invasions

A severe drought pushes Samburu and Pokot herders to drive tens of thousands of cattle onto private ranches and conservancies in Laikipia in search of grass and water. The invasions come during an election year, and some politicians are accused of stirring them up. Clashes between herders, ranchers, and security forces leave people dead on both sides.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## November 2021 — NRT and donors reject the land-grab charge

NRT, conservationists, and Western funders reject the Oakland Institute report and defend the conservancy model. They say the community conservancies are locally governed, boost incomes and security, and have driven the recovery of rhinos and elephants. Both this rebuttal and the report's charges are documented, and the dispute between them remains unresolved.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## November 2021 — The Oakland Institute publishes Stealth Game

The US-based Oakland Institute publishes a report titled Stealth Game: 'Community' Conservancies Devastate Land and Lives in Northern Kenya. It argues that the NRT model amounts to a land grab, weakens community land rights, militarizes the rangelands, and is tied to abuses. The report is one side of a sharp dispute, and its central claims are contested by NRT.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*

## c. 2022 — The fortress conservation and green colonialism debate

Northern Kenya's conservancies sit inside a wider argument over fortress conservation, the practice of protecting wildlife by fencing off and policing local people, and over green colonialism, in which Western money and foreign owners shape African land use. Critics place the conservancy model in this frame, alongside cases like the eviction of Maasai in Tanzania. Supporters answer that community conservancies are different because local people govern and benefit from them.

*Source: Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure*

*Source: Lewa Milele*

*Source: Stealth Game: Community Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya*