Is luxury camp, costing over Rs 3 lakh a night, in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, blocking migration route?

Marriott International has landed in legal trouble over its Ritz-Carlton luxury safari camp in Maasai Mara National Game Reserve in Kenya. Leaders of the Maasai ethnic group have approached a local court demanding the demolition of the high-end structure that they say blocks a vital path of the famous Serengeti migration.

The Ritz-Carlton Maasai Mara Safari Camp promises a “front-row” view of a river crossing on the route of the annual Great Migration. The camp, which costs about $3,500 (Rs 3.12 lakh) per night, opened in August. Conservationists say it damages one of the world’s most renowned ecosystems.

We take a look.

Maasai Mara Safari camp

The Ritz-Carlton Maasai Mara Safari Camp has 20 tented suites, each with “a separate living area, private sunken lounge, infinity plunge pool, and indoor and outdoor showers,” according to Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, which owns the Ritz-Carlton.

Located on the banks of the Sand River, the camp offers guests “a front-row seat to experience the majesty of the Great Migration”.

Every year, some two million (20 lakh) wildebeest, zebra, gazelles and other animals move back and forth between the Serengeti plains in Tanzania and the Maasai Mara in Kenya, seeking fresh pasture and water.

This Serengeti migration is one of the largest mass movements of mammals in the world. Researchers say migration enables wildebeest to find food and maintain genetic diversity among herds.

The Sand River is a key water source for animals from elephants to birds.

Kenya has turned the Great Migration, which occurs primarily between July and September, into a tourism campaign to attract lakhs of foreign visitors annually.

Why Maasai people oppose the luxury safari camp

Maasai leaders are hoping a court will order the demolition of the Ritz-Carlton luxury safari camp.

The Maasai, traditionally nomadic herders, have ancestral ties to the Maasai Mara. The Narok County government manages the reserve on their behalf.

In August, Meitamei Olol Dapash, a Maasai elder and the director of the Institute for Maasai Education, Research and Conservation (MERC), filed a lawsuit in a Kenyan court against Ritz-Carlton, its owner Marriott, the project’s local developer, Lazizi Mara Limited, and the Kenyan authorities to block the opening of the new lodge, reported Reuters.

The lawsuit questioned whether an environmental impact assessment had been conducted for the development on the Sand River. It alleged that the 20-suite camp that sits on a bend in the Sand River, which runs across the border between Kenya and Tanzania, obstructs the important migration corridor between the two countries.

In Kenya , developers have to consult local communities and get approval from the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) before beginning any project that could impact the environment.

This process includes carrying out an environmental land assessment to determine how a new camp or lodge will affect wildlife, vegetation, and water and air quality in the area, as per Reuters. 

“The Maasai Mara is a fragile environment that is already overpopulated with camps for tourists,” Dapash told New York Times (NYT). “The location of the Ritz-Carlton is one of the last places in the Mara that isn’t built on.”

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Dapash, who did his doctorate in sustainability education at Prescott College in the United States, said there have been instances when wildebeest had to turn back during migration to avoid the camp.

He alleged that an elephant was found struggling to discover a new path after using the location of the Ritz-Carlton safari camp as a crossing for more than a decade.

“Travellers are lured by the idea of travelling to this pristine, remote, exotic destination, but the truth is, as a traveller, you may well be contributing to the destruction of the very place you want to visit,” he said.

“The proposed lodge sits directly on one of the major wildlife corridors between Serengeti and the Maasai Mara,” Grant Hopcraft, an ecologist, reportedly wrote in July in a letter to Kenya’s Environment and Land Court.

He told Reuters in August that the project would “likely have large and long-term ecological implications for the migration”.

Joseph Ogutu, a Kenyan researcher at the University of Hohenheim in Germany who has studied wildlife migration in the Maasai Mara, agreed with Dr Hopcraft. “Data does not lie, specifically when it has been collected over a 50-year period and it says the same thing: That place in the river is critical,” he was quoted as saying by NYT.

In August, Ogutu had warned that the new construction would further impact the fauna in the Maasai Mara National Game Reserve.

The population of many species in the reserve have reduced by over 80 per cent since the 1970s, according to Kenyan government data. “It is highly ill-advised to build a lodge on one of the most critical paths of the Great Migration,” he said.

One-time exemption for the luxury camp

In 2023, Kenya placed a moratorium on the building of new lodges and camps in the Maasai Mara game reserve amid fears that ill-regulated tourism development was hampering migration and the ecosystem.

Dr Dapash and other activists say that the Ritz-Carlton camp should not have been approved, citing the moratorium.

“The county government has an agenda to bring in more luxury tourism at any cost and is willing to tramp on the rights of the community, violate the law, and even violate the wildlife and environment just to bring high-end tourism to the Mara,” he said to NYT. 

In a letter to the head of NEMA, Felix K Koskei, the chief of staff to Kenya President William Ruto , granted Marriott “a one-time exemption” from the moratorium “as part of the government’s commitment to cultivate a favourable business environment and facilitate both domestic and foreign investment," reported NYT. 

However, locals oppose this move, saying the exception would set a wrong precedent.

“If Marriott and Ritz-Carlton are allowed to stay where they are, it will set a precedent and a culture that anyone who wants to can operate this way, with no regard for the people and wildlife,” Emmanuel Sananka, 26, a software engineer who grew up in the Mara and lives about half a mile away from the game reserve, told NYT. “We need to send a message to our community that their voice matters even if Marriott has so much power.”

Researchers have raised concerns that restricting wildebeest routes could make the entire migration vulnerable. “Unless we regulate what we are doing, the Mara is going to die,” Dapash told WSJ.

The Maasai elder and other critics of the project are demanding that the camp be razed, the landscape be restored to its original state and native trees be planted before next year’s migration.

Developers deny charges

Marriott, which has a franchise agreement with the project’s local developer Lazizi, told Reuters in a statement in August that it was committed to respecting the environment, adding that Lazizi had received all necessary approvals.

Lazizi’s managing director, Shivan Patel, claimed Kenyan authorities conducted an environmental impact assessment, which had confirmed that the site of the safari camp was not a wildlife crossing point.

With inputs from agencies