The Greater Maasai Mara ecosystem in southwestern Kenya is globally unique but it is now under severe threat from a multiplicity of interconnected and complex challenges ranging from climate change, a rapidly growing human population, and unsustainable land use trends.

The Maasai Mara is also home to the Maasai people, who today are facing many social, economic, political and environmental challenges.

The challenges for humans, wildlife and the environment of the Maasai Mara are thus a core example of a fundamental challenge faced by us all today: How can we create good living conditions for a growing human population while being proper stewards of nature and overcoming environmental changes brought about by climate change?
Maasai Mara is at the frontline of this essential question.

The Maasai Mara is globally unique and famous for the great wildebeest migration – the largest and most species-diverse large mammal migration in the world, including 1.3 million wildebeest, 200,000 zebra and hundreds of thousands of Thomson′s gazelle.

Large annual migrations of megafauna such as in the Maasai Mara were once common across the Earth. The Serengeti/Maasai-Mara migrations, however, survives only in a declining, small part of the continent. The Maasai Mara constitutes a unique and irreplaceable part of Africa’s natural heritage.

Biodiversity depletion and poverty of people are among the world´s greatest problems today. Climate change and a rapidly growing population put severe strain on world resources ad ecosystem services. Land use trends affect natural resources, cultural environments and social development.

The Maasai Mara ecosystem in south-western Kenya experiences all these challenges and faces great change in the coming decades.

Source: Dr. Irene Amoke & Charles Ngero, Kenya Wildlife Trust and Maasai Mara
Wildlife Conservancies Association