Protecting wildlife in Kenya’s northern rangelands
Elvis, the black rhino who regularly visits the NRT/Lewa offices and opens the tap to drink water. Photo/Juan Pablo Moreiras/ FFI/Courtesy of Lewa Wildlife Conservancy
At the height of poaching in the 1980s, an unusual request was made at Lewa Downs, a cattle ranch with wildlife, in Laikipia, in Kenya’s Rift Valley, just over 200 km drive from Nairobi.
Anna Mertz, a guest, asked the Craig family if they would set some land aside for a rhino sanctuary. Kenya’s black rhinos were on the verge of extinction. Blood thirsty gangs armed to the teeth had poached nearly all the country’s 20,000 black rhinos. By the 1980s, only about 300 remained.
