81276037-COVID-19 emergency support to conservancies in Maasai Mara region

The project COVID-19 emergency support to wildlife conservancies of the Maasai Mara region, Kenya contributes to integrated landscape protection in southern Kenya. The Maasai Mara ecosystem is home to around a quarter of Kenya"s entire wildlife population and is world-renowned as one of the most important destinations for safari tourism. Some 70% of the animals live outside the Maasai Mara National Reserve (MMNR) protected by the state. Conservation-based management of the neighbouring land, that is the property of local landowners, is crucial to national reserve and integrity of the ecosystem. The landowners on the periphery of the MMNR in Narok County therefore came together and introduced a conservation-based form of land use: they voluntarily offered their individual plots of land to form 16 wildlife conservancies. The project provides COVID-19 emergency and recovery support to the 16 wildlife conservancies in the Maasai Mara region, which are not only one of the mainstays of Kenya"s tourism industry but are also particularly vulnerable. Funds from the COVID-19 emergency support project will stabilize the income of the Maasai communities, whose survival is largely dependent on income from the tourism sector and the lease payments to landowners that are financed through tourism. The project objective is that wildlife conservancies as a land-use model in the Maasai Mara region emerge from COVID-19 crisis more sustainable, resilient and representative than before. The project has four outputs: (i) the income of the conservancy bodies during the COVID-19 pandemic is stabilised (short-term emergency support), (ii) the conservancies" capacities for good governance are strengthened, (iii) the conservancy business model is improved for their post-COVID-19 recovery, and (iv) State institutions at subnational (county) and national level are strengthened in fulfilling their mandate to support conservancies.