Ol Pejeta Conservancy
The Ol Pejeta Conservancy is a not-for-profit wildlife conservancy in Central Kenya's Laikipia County. It is situated on the equator west of Nanyuki, between the foothills of the Aberdares and Mount Kenya. The Ol Pejeta Conservancy works to conserve wildlife, provide a sanctuary for great apes, and generate income through wildlife tourism and complementary enterprises for re-investment in conservation and community development.
The Conservancy boasts the largest black rhinoceros sanctuary in East Africa; in 2013, it reached a population milestone of one hundred eastern black rhinos. It also houses the two last remaining northern white rhinos in the world, who were moved there from Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic. The Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary is situated here which provides a haven for orphaned, abandoned, and rescued chimpanzees; It is the only place in Kenya where chimpanzees can be seen. The Conservancy is host to the "Big five game" animals among a large selection of other African animals. It also operates a livestock program that serves to benefit local pastoralists and wildlife. Through the conservancy's community development program, Ol Pejeta provides funding to surrounding communities to aid health, education, water, and infrastructure projects. They also support the provision of agriculture and livestock extension services and the development of community-based conservation tourism ventures.
History
During the colonial era, the Laikipia Plateau was used as an extensive cattle ranching area. Lacking the rainfall required to farm crops, cattle ranching was adopted as the next best way to utilize the land.John and Jane Kenyon took over the management of Ol Pejeta in 1949 when it was owned by Lord Delamere and together they spent the next 15 years developing the ranch. When the Kenyons first took on Ol Pejeta, they were joined by Delemere's school friend and business partner Marcus Wickham Boynton. Together they organized the then ranch into a successful beef-producing company. Over the next few years, they expanded the farm to cover an estimated. The Kenyons left Ol Pejeta for a year in 1958, then returned for a further ten years, before finally retiring to run their own cattle ranch to the north. Since then, the ranch has had a number of owners, including Marcus Wickham Boynton and Adnan Khashoggi, a billionaire arms dealer and businessman considered one of the richest men in the world in the early 1980s.
Over time, cattle ranching became less profitable. Elephant populations, which previously used the ranch as a transit area from the north to Mount Kenya and the Aberdares, increasingly took up permanent residence on the property. As a result, fences required to maximise cattle productivity were destroyed and became impossible to maintain cost-effectively. In the face of declining wildlife populations elsewhere and as a means to effectively utilise the land, the land has seen an increasing emphasis placed upon wildlife conservation. In 1988, the Sweetwaters Game Reserve was opened by another of Ol Pejeta’s previous owners, Lonrho Africa. Primarily started as a sanctuary for the endangered black rhino, wildlife populations have steadily increased since that time.
In 2004, the ranch and surrounding land were purchased by the UK-based conservation organisation Fauna and Flora International with the financial backing of the Arcus Foundation, a private international philanthropic organisation founded by Jon Stryker. The land purchase was wholly funded by a $15 million donation from the Arcus Foundation, which worked in tandem with FFI and the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy to secure the of open savannah grassland and convert it to a national land trust. The Arcus Foundation also gave $12 million to fund capital and institutional development costs at the conservancy, which allowed Ol Pejeta Conservancy to operate as a Kenyan-owned operation benefiting local community development and economic growth. In March 2022, Sad Rhinos, a Cardano NFT project, launched a partnership and began fundraising in aid of Ol Pejeta Conservancy.
Wildlife
All members of the "Big five game" can be found on the Ol Pejeta Conservancy. Both black and white rhino thrive here. In 2013, Ol Pejeta recorded the birth of its 100th black rhino. This means the Conservancy is now a "Key 1" black rhino population on the IUCN African Rhino Specialist Group categorization. It is one of only eight sanctuaries in Africa with this distinction.Other rare animals that can be found on Ol Pejeta include the endangered African wild dog, oryx, Jackson’s hartebeest, Grevy’s zebra, serval, cheetah and bat-eared fox. The more common African wildlife can be found too, including giraffes, vervet monkeys, baboons, hippos, impala, eland, Grant's gazelle, dik-dik, plains zebra, silver backed jackal, hyena. There are also over 300 bird species on the Conservancy.
All animals are free to move in and out of the Conservancy by way of specially constructed game corridors that only restrict the movement of rhinos. Knee-high posts in the ground, situated very close together, present no challenge for elephant, antelope and carnivores, who are easily able to jump or step over. Rhinos, however, are unable to do this, and as a result are restricted from moving into areas where they are in danger of being poached for their horn.
Northern white rhinos
The northern white rhino is one of the five rhino species still remaining. Closely resembling its southern white cousin, the northern whites were hit particularly hard in the poaching epidemic of the 1980s and early 90s and it is now considered extinct in the wild. On 20 December 2009 Ol Pejeta became home to four of the then seven rhinos left in captivity. Two males and two females were moved from Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic in the hope that the climate and rich grasslands of Ol Pejeta, a native habitat for the animals, would provide them with more favourable breeding conditions.The males and the females enjoyed 24-hour armed security and a 700-acre enclosure. Suni was seen mating with Najin in 2012, but tests have confirmed she is not pregnant. Ol Pejeta is trying to cross-breed the closely related southern white rhinos with the northern whites to preserve northern white rhino genetics in hybrid offspring. On 17 October 2014 Suni died from unknown causes but not because of poaching. On 19 March 2018 Sudan was euthanized after suffering from "age-related complications".
Poaching and security
Poaching and habitat loss are depleting rhino and elephant populations all over Africa. The African elephant is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN list, the white rhino as "Near Threatened" and the black rhino as Critically Endangered. Rhino horn is erroneously believed to have medicinal properties by many people in Asia and is used as traditional dagger handles in Yemen. As of January 2014, it can fetch US$60,000–100,000. One kilogram of ivory can fetch US$1,000–3,000. With the tusks of an adult elephant weighing up to 50 kg, the potential profits for poachers and traders are large.The trade in rhino horn and ivory is so lucrative that increasingly, poachers are gaining access to automatic weapons, silencers and night-vision to carry out their work. Protecting wildlife from these criminals is an expensive business. Convention has it that the cost of protecting wildlife habitat doubles with the presence of black rhino. Currently, it costs approximately US$17,300 per square kilometre to secure the Ol Pejeta Conservancy.