The rolling plains of Kenya’s Masai Mara and the millions of animals that live there are facing a shiny new intrusion: a gleaming Ritz-Carlton safari camp.
With private pools, butler service and panoramic views costing more than $5,000 a night, the 50-acre lodge has become a hotbed of luxury controversy.
Leaders of the Maasai, an ethnic group of traditionally nomadic pastoralists with ancestral ties to the area, and conservationists warn that the new tourist destination threatens a migratory corridor vital for the movement of large numbers of animals and have filed a lawsuit to stop its operations.
What is at stake, they argue, is not just a new lodge, but the growing pressures of tourism on wildlife, biodiversity and the very spectacle that attracts these tourists in the first place.
The camp opened on August 15 during the height of the Great Migration, where millions of wildebeest, zebra and other grazing animals move back and forth between the Serengeti plains in Tanzania and the Masai Mara National Reserve (MMNR) in Kenya, a process that researchers say allows the animals to find food and water and maintain genetic diversity among herds.
Tourists Hundreds of thousands have long flocked to the savanna, hoping to witness one of the world’s largest movements of mammals, as herds cross rivers and predator-filled plains.
But the new camp, which boasts “front-row seats to one of the world’s greatest natural wonders” on its website, may threaten the migration that visitors come to witness, conservationists and Maasai leaders say.
The Ritz-Carlton camp, on a bend in the Sand River, is located in “one of the most favored corridors for these animals,” Maasai elder Meitamei Olol Dapash told NBC News in an interview Sunday.
“Any guide will tell you that’s the crossing they use,” said Dapash, who filed a lawsuit in August in a Kenyan court against the Ritz-Carlton’s owner, Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, as well as the project’s local owner and operator, Lazizi Mara Limited, and Kenyan authorities.
Dapash, executive director of the Maasai Institute for Education, Research and Conservation (MERC), who has a doctorate in Sustainability Education from Prescott College in Arizona, alleges in the lawsuit that the 20-suite camp obstructs the crucial migratory corridor and is asking the court to restore the land to its original condition.
He told NBC News in an interview that there were instances of wildebeest returning to avoid the camp and that one elephant was seen struggling to find a path across the river after using the site for more than a decade.
“Attachment to the land and wildlife exists to this day,” Dapash said, adding that the Maasai had seen their populations decline. The new camp, he added, “was the last straw for us, we just didn’t want this to happen.”
The Kenya Wildlife Service government agency rejected claims that the lodge has impacted wildebeest migration, citing monitoring data it says shows it does not “fall into, obstruct or interfere with any wildebeest migration corridors,” adding that migrating wildebeests “are using the entire width of the Kenya-Tanzania border.”
It said that “all ecological, environmental and regulatory requirements were exhaustively met and validated.”
Marriott International told NBC News that the development underwent an environmental impact assessment (EIA) “in full compliance” with Kenya’s environmental protections.
The company said it is committed to “the principles of responsible tourism” but declined to comment on Dapash’s claims that the Ritz-Carlton blocked a key route for local wildlife or its own measures to mitigate the impact of construction, saying they were matters for Narok County, which manages the reserve on behalf of the Maasai.
Narok County did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment. In court documents seen by NBC News, the county claims the safari camp complies with the Maasai Mara Management Plan, which imposes a moratorium on new development amid concerns that poorly regulated tourism was stifling wildlife migration and threatening the reserve’s ecosystem.
Lazizi Mara Limited said the moratorium is part of the case before the court, adding: “We do not wish to comment on matters that are pending determination.”
Dapash told NBC News he had “no problem with business, but it’s not just about a hotel, it’s about the long-term survival of the game reserve.”
“We feel like we’re losing the land, we’re losing the wildlife,” he said.
The lawsuit comes amid growing concerns about the health of the 580-square-mile reserve, where the number of tourists has nearly tripled in recent decades. The Masai Mara National Reserve recorded more than 300,000 tourists in 2023. In 1980, the total visitor entry was 114,000.
Tourism in Mara generates approximately $20 million a year and thousands more indirectly, according to the reserve. In 2023, tourism across the country contributed about 7% to Kenya’s gross domestic product, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.
But the rapid growth of lodges and campgrounds has sometimes clashed with conservation efforts.
“A hotel is never just a hotel,” Dr. Chloe Buiting, a veterinarian and wildlife researcher working in the Masai Mara, said in an interview. “It’s infrastructure, it’s roads, it’s changes in water, resources and land use.”
Seasonal variation in food availability and quality forces animals to move, said Joseph Ogutu, a Kenyan researcher at the University of Hohenheim in Germany. But he said developments like the Ritz-Carlton are having “a negative effect on migration, because most of these facilities are near rivers where animals drink water, reproduce or seek shelter.”
Dapash’s cause has also found support among experts and tourism groups.
Grant Hopcraft, a professor of conservation ecology at the University of Glasgow, who has been collaring migratory wildebeest in the Serengeti-Mara since 1999, presented maps and data to the court in October showing “regular cross-border movement of wildebeest” at the lodge location, according to his affidavit.
RIDE International, a US-based non-profit organization offering cultural exchanges and immersive tours in East Africa, has also supported Dapash’s lawsuit.
The Mara has been suffering for a long time, said Riley Jon Blackwell, the company’s chief executive, with “large hotel chains coming in and trying to cater to upscale guests who want to see the best of the best for wildlife.”
The Ritz-Carlton safari camp “wasn’t a surprise,” he added in an interview. “It’s just the culmination of a long time, of a direction of things going in this direction.”
The camp has a 2.2-star rating on Google Reviews, with many posters criticizing its environmental impact. Others have praised their stay in the park.
A court is scheduled to hear the case in December.
If Dapash is successful with its lawsuit, Buiting said it could “set a very interesting precedent” for future developments on the reserve.
“From a legal perspective, this could be really innovative, a game-changer,” he added.
