Tangled World

For travellers in a global society

No zoo in the Masai Mara

Many of travel industry colleagues in Kenya fought since late 2008 to stop a ‘cheetah zoo’ being built inside (of all places!) the Masai Mara. Building started quite a while ago, and even whilst conservationists and others fought to have this development stopped, it continued apace.

The idea was to have a captive breeding project here in a huge enclosure surrounded by an electric fence within the national park. They would try to reintroduce rehabilitated cheetah back into the wild (something which has not been achieved before in the world, so we’re not sure why they thought they could do it) and also allow visitors to stay at an adjoined lodge.

One of the loudest voices against the project was that of Riccardo Orizio, of Saruni Camp.

There is an increasing number of people who feel that the Mara is being over-developed anyway, but a cheetah zoo was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Thankfully, the permission to build (which was legally approved by the Kenyan government) has now been revoked after the relevant department was made aware of certain aspects of the project which they had not previously known.

But what of the future?  If something so patently wrong as a zoo was so very nearly allowed in the Mara, does this mean that we are going to see the Mara contuinally built on in terms of yet more lodges and other ‘attractions’?  If this is the case, then surely they don’t need to build a zoo here, it will simply become a zoo.

I realise there is a balance between keeping the wild spaces of the Mara and making money from such a valuable resource. What I don’t know is where the line is. I wonder where the Kenyan government feel it is? I very much hope that the change of heart which stopped the cheetah zoo fiasco will direct future decisions too, so that the line is very much on the side of keeping the Mara WILD.

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