The South Rift spans a wide elevation gradient and all but one of Kenya’s seven ecological zones. It links two of Kenya most important parks, Maasai Mara National Park and Amboseli National Park. Unlike the parks, the South Rift is representative of the problems facing pastoral communities throughout the horn of Africa where wildlife and pastoral people share open rangelands. The growing conflict with wildlife over diminishing land and resources in the South Rift is typical of the rangelands. Therefore solutions emerging from the South Rift apply to communities and landowners throughout eastern Africa.

ACC has begun community-based conservation initiatives in this landscape because of its broad application. ACC programs here began in 2002 by establishing conservation areas and setting up ecotourism lodges in Shompole and Okiramatian group ranches, as well as capacity and instutions needed to manage tourism enterprises and wildlife. In the last five years, ACC has parlayed these two pilot projects into a landscape approach that includes 15 group ranches under the South Rift Association of Landowners (SORALO) and over 8,000km2 of land linking up Amboseli and Maasai Mara. ACC is currently drawing in new partners to help SORALO develop and market the South Rift as a premier tourism destination and broadening its mandate and capacity to include livestock, range and water management on a landscape level. The goal of the program is to maximize sustainable benefits from natural resources and to ensure natural resilience to stress and change based on traditional and new mechanisms of land use such as drought refuges, drought insurance schemes and cattlemen’s associations to improve production and marketing skills.

Map showing the South Rift landscape