PORINI ECOTOURISM

Eselenkei Group Ranch covers an area of about 75,000 hectares, lies North of Amboseli and has a population of approximately 10,000 Maasai people. The area has lagged behind in terms of national development and has few amenities for the local community apart from those provided by the Catholic mission at Lengesim. The people are entirely dependent upon their livestock and in recent decades have lost much of their traditional seasonal grazing areas outside the Group Ranch lands.

They are no longer able to range over all their historic communal areas including dry season grazing areas with permanent water such as Amboseli or Loitokitok. In the dry season they are dependent upon unreliable water sources including boreholes with pumping equipment which is no longer properly maintained. As a result there has been degradation of the environment through over-grazing and the community have suffered hardship during the increasingly frequent periods of drought. The Eselenkei area was previously an important wildlife dispersal zone and elephant migrated from Amboseli into Eselenkei during the wet season. There was also a resident population of black rhinoceros and a wide range of other species. However during the last twenty years there has been increasing hostility towards wildlife by the community. Rhino have been exterminated while elephant were harassed to the point that they stopped migrating into Eselenkei. There was also widescale snaring of wildlife for the "bushmeat" trade and leopard, lion and cheetah have frequently been speared.

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