WHERE ARE WE NOW?
The popularity of the Maasai Mara to today's wildlife-lover is totally understandable, and it has gained momentum steadily over many years.
When Kenya became a British protectorate in 1895, it was a statement of intent as much as it was one of control. Though weakened by drought, infighting and a rinderpest epidemic in the preceding decade, the Maasai people remained largely undisturbed in their strongholds, one of which was the area around today's Maasai Mara. There was no reserve back then. Nothing, in fact, to distinguish what we now know as the Maasai Mara from the other volcanic plains that extended across Maasailand (southern Kenya and northern Tanzania) from the foot of the Great Rift Escarpment.
Over the half-century that followed, the Maasai people lost land across the Rift Valley and elsewhere in Kenya. But they remained largely undisturbed in the Mara region. In the 1940s, the colonial authorities began to set aside land — much of it inhabited by the Maasai — for game and wildlife reserves. Nairobi National Park came first, in 1946, followed two years later by Amboseli National Reserve (as it was then called) and the Maasai Mara National Reserve.
At first, the Mara was a reserve in name only. The Maasai were allowed to graze their cattle much as they had always done. Despite repeated campaigns to persuade the Maasai to leave the area, they refused to give up their ancestral land. In 1961, just two years before Kenya became independent, the authorities expelled the Maasai from the reserve and it was brought under the control of the County Council of Narok. At the time, it covered just 520sq km (200sq miles). Soon after, it was expanded to nearly triple the size, to its current 1530sq km (590sq miles).
In the mid-1960s, tourist numbers were negligible. By the year 2000, there were 2,300 tourist beds, around 400 vehicles daily, and approximately 200,000 annual visitors. There have been peaks in screened in 1985, for example, or during the heyday of , which began in 1996. But the rise in numbers has been largely incremental throughout the Mara's history.
