Kenya tourist lodge shuts after land invasions, wildlife killings

This comes after the ranch prop­erty had been over­run by her­ders for months and ahead of August polls in which some politi­cians have made land reform a cam­paign issue.

Tristan Voor­spuy, a Brit­ish army vet­er­an, was shot dead on Sosian in March, one of dozens killed and injured in Laikipia as armed her­ders search­ing for graz­ing drove their cattle from poor qual­ity com­mun­al land onto private farms and ranches.

“Since the begin­ning of the year Sosian, amongst oth­er prop­er­ties in West Laikipia, has been bat­tling mass land inva­sions, viol­ence and van­dal­ism,” the Laikipia Farm­ers Asso­ci­ation (LFA) said in a state­ment on Monday.

“Attempts by gov­ern­ment forces to rebuff the invaders on a large scale have been unsuc­cess­ful thus far.”

Many res­id­ents of the area accuse loc­al politi­cians of incit­ing the viol­ence before elec­tions in August. They say the men are try­ing to drive out voters who might oppose them and win votes by prom­ising sup­port­ers access to private land.

Her­ders have illeg­ally grazed more than 100,000 cattle on Sosian over the last five months, the LFA said, while also killing 13 ele­phants and shoot­ing zebra, impala and buffaloes.

Laikipia is Kenya’s second most import­ant wild­life area after the fam­ous Maa­sai Mara, and many large-scale landown­ers earn money from tour­ism as well as cattle ranching.

“We had a lot of ser­i­ous shoot­ing incid­ents in the last four months so it is not safe to bring any tour­ists,” Richard Con­stant, one of Sosian’s dir­ect­ors, told the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion in a phone interview.

Kenya dis­patched its mil­it­ary to the area in March to help restore calm and dis­arm com­munit­ies. The min­is­ter said the oper­a­tion was going as planned.

Gov­ern­ment spokes­man Eric Kiraithe told the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion the gov­ern­ment was doing all it can to restore order.

“Instead of invad­ing private prop­erty, pas­tor­al­ists should be will­ing to be taught how to man­age the land they cur­rently occupy,” he said.

With increas­ingly severe droughts, pop­u­la­tion growth, and the enclos­ure of pub­lic lands, many tra­di­tion­al nomads, who are often poor and illit­er­ate, do not have grass for their animals.

Although rains have brought an end to months of drought in north­ern Kenya, large num­bers of anim­als con­tin­ue to graze illeg­ally on Sosian and neigh­bour­ing ranches, the LFA said.

Source: Report­ing by Daniel Wes­an­gula; Edit­ing by Katy Migiro and Ros Rus­sell; Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, the char­it­able arm of Thom­son Reuters.

Image source: Sosian Lodge. Sosian is a 24,000-acre private ranch in the heart of Laikipia. The ranch house was built in the 1940s by Itali­an artis­ans and has been restored to accom­mod­ate up to 14 people in the atmo­sphere of a private home known as Sosian Lodge.