andBeyond Beteleur Camp

Within the Olare Motorogi Conservancy bordering the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya, andBeyond Bateleur Camp occupies a private conservation area whose management model represents one of the most successful expressions of community-based wildlife conservation in East Africa: the Maasai landowners of the Olare Motorogi Conservancy have leased their land for wildlife conservation in preference to livestock grazing, creating a protected buffer zone that extends the Mara ecosystem’s effective wildlife territory and provides both the conservation outcomes and the economic benefits that sustain the model. The 18 tented suites are designed in the classic East African colonial safari style of green canvas and mahogany, with four-poster beds and Persian rugs that acknowledge the aesthetic tradition of the great Kenyan safari camps of the early twentieth century without irony or pastiche.

Game drives in the Olare Motorogi Conservancy benefit from the low vehicle density that the conservancy model maintains — a maximum number of vehicles per guest ensures that sightings are not overwhelmed by vehicle congestion — and from the conservancy’s specific wildlife character during the Great Migration, when the wildebeest herds move through the conservancy land on their way to and from the Masai Mara National Reserve. Walking safaris with Maasai guides whose knowledge of the landscape is rooted in ancestral familiarity rather than formal training, bush breakfasts in the long grass, and sundowner flights in a hot-air balloon above the plains are among the signature experiences. The kitchen draws on Kenyan produce and the camp’s own kitchen garden.

andBeyond Bateleur Camp’s community model at the Olare Motorogi Conservancy places the welfare of the Maasai landowners at the centre of the conservation equation: the lease fees paid to the landowners, the employment of Maasai staff and guides, and the andBeyond Africa Foundation’s community investment in education and enterprise give the conservation model a social sustainability that pure wildlife protection programmes rarely achieve on their own.