Word: wildebeest
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Only a small part of Masai land has been set aside as reserve. Most of it lies in communal and private hands, where cattle graze alongside herds of eland and antelope. During the annual migration, floods of zebra and wildebeest arrive from Tanzania, and more elephants feed outside the protected area than in it. "Wildlife is just as good as any other gold," says Jackson Looseyia, 41, one of the first Masai to work as a guide in the reserve and co-owner of Rekero, the eight-tent camp where we stay the night...
...annual wildebeest migration is one of nature's most spectacular photo-ops. More than a million wildebeest - also known as gnus - crossing from the Serengeti in Tanzania to Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve and then back again in the search of fresh grass makes for some dramatic action shots, as massive herds travel across the plains before plunging into the Mara River to swim to greener pastures...
...photos from this year's migration are just as dramatic, but for a different reason. This time, piles of wildebeest carcasses line the riverbanks, after 10,000 of the animals drowned trying to cross the Mara at the start of their journey back east to the Serengeti. The deaths are natural: each year, crocodiles and the strong current claim some victims. The numbers, though, are bizarre. The migration rarely leaves more than a few thousand dead; but this year, an estimated 10,000, or about 1% of the wildebeest population, were wiped out. Conservationists say the wildebeest simply chose...
...while conservationists at the Masai Mara work hard to protect the wildebeest from poachers, they were helpless against the combination of bad luck and global warming. Brian Heath, head of the Mara Conservancy, which covers one-third of the reserve, told Britain's Daily Mail: "In a couple of days, tens of times more animals have died than were killed by poaching." According to a blog entry by Terilyn Lemaire, who works at the reserve, they considered blocking off the point where the wildebeest were crossing but then decided "It's nature. And who are we as humans to interfere...
...early to tell how the mass drowning will affect Africa's wildebeest population as a whole. But it's safe to say that as the weather gets more erratic, these kinds of freak deaths will become more common - early last year, the Masai Mara had the opposite problem, and a drought left almost 100 hippos dead. These days, it looks like the only alternative to letting nature take its course is to change the course of nature...