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Saiwa Swamp National Park

"Home of the Sitatunga"

A veritable haven for nature lovers, the Saiwa Swamp National Park is a forested paradise filled with exotic flowers, trees and birds. It is also the habitat of the rare and endangered semi-aquatic Sitatunga antelope and as a preserve for the rare De Brazza’s monkey. Within this tropical wetlands and mosaic of riverine forest, sedges and acacia woodlands, with fringing dense rushes and grass bedsBird life is abundant. Water birds include the lesser jacana, grey heron and the African black duck while the forest shelters the Narina trogons, the collared and orange-tufted sunbird, the yellow bishop, Hatlaub’s marsh widow bird and the Noisy Ross’s turacos which are difficult to miss.

Key features

  • Cool shaded and compact, the park offers an ideal dawn walk
  • An enchanting leafy cernithological,
  • Botanical safaris and revitalizing weekend away from the bustle of town.
  • The park offers an interesting mix of forest and swamp vegetation and extraordinary diverse plant habitat.
  • Dominated by bulrushes and other aquatic plants, Saiwa Swamp is fed by the SaiwaRiver which winds its way through the wetland, and by run-off from the sorrounding riverine forest.

Attractions

Bird Watching

  • Bird life is abundant. Water birds include the lesser jacana, grey heron and African black duck among others.
  • The forest shelters the Narina trogons, one of Kenya’s most spectacular forest birds.
  • Watch for the collared and orange-tufted sunbird, sipping nectar from the flowers of the forest edge.
  • The yellow bishop often whirrs above the reeds, its blazing yellow back on display.
  • Hatlaub’s marsh widow bird also frequents the rushes.
  • Noisy Ross’s turaco’s are difficult to miss.
  • Gonolek are easy to see along the trails.
  • Ludher’s bush-shrike is much shier while the square-tailed drongo and the double toothed barbet perch in the lower branches of forest trees.
  • Cinnamon-chested bee-eaters abound, as do crowned cranes, especially when the surrounding farms ploughed or harvested.

Plants

Within this tropical wetlands and mosaic of riverine forest, sedges and acacia woodlands, with fringing dense rushes and grass beds, are some of Kenya’s loveliestterrestrial orchids. The bronze and purple eulophia horsfallii, the fleshy pink satyrium crassicaule and crimson satyrium sacculatum orchids abound, including the cometorchid, with greny-white flowers afding to peach. Epiphtic fems flourish.

Insects

The swamp is exceptionally rich in dragonflies and damselfies.Butterflies include swallowtails and charaxes. The African mocker swallowtail, Papillion dardanus, is very common after the rains:ants swam the forest floor.

Reptiles and Amphibians

Frogs and toads abound, with many different kinds of tree frogs trilling and piping after rainstorms. Bell’s hinged tortoise, a forest-dwelling species, is found in the park and the blue-headed tree agama lizard is sure to cross your path. Snakes include the forest cobra and African rock python. As you follow the trails, watch for a side-stripped chameleon. They are common, but easy to overlook due to their excellent camouflage.

Park Fees

Saiwa Swamp National Park

Citizen

Resident

Non-Resident

Adults

KSH

Child

KSH

Adult

KSH

Child

KSH

Adult

USD

Child

USD

350

200

600

350

25

15

  • Birding Site

  • National Park

Saboti-Sosio Forest

It is located between 2000 and 3000 metres above sea level and on the slopes of Mount Elgon. The natural landscape of this area is thick tropical forest. This forest has been cleared in some areas to provide much needed farmland for the local people.

  • Birding Site

  • Forest

  • Lake or River

  • Lake or River

Kipepeo Butterfly Project

This project was initiated to help engage local farmers to obtain licenses to rear butterflies sourced from the nearby Arabuko forest reserve and export the pupae abroad. This is meant to in-build conservation energy that enables farmers to act as custodians of the forest, a breeding house for butterflies.

  • Butterfly Site

Kisumu Yatch Club

This is one of the finest clubs in the lakeside city of Kisumu. It provides a perfect opportunity for leisure boating. Its location provides a perfect view of sunset and visitors can stay late into the evening to witness the red splash of the evening sun go down to sleep.

  • Boating

  • Lake or River

  • Lake or River

Kit Mikayi

The legend behind Kit Mikayi, which in Luo dialect means "the stone of the first wife", is that: Long time ago, there was an old man by the name Ngeso who was in great love with the stone. Every day when he woke up in the morning, he could walk into the cave inside the stone and stay there the whole day, and this could force his wife to bring him breakfast and lunch everyday. The old man became passionately in love with this stone to the extent that when people asked his wife his whereabouts, she would answer that he has gone to his first wife (Mikayi) hence the stone of the first wife (Kit Mikayi).[citation needed]

An explanation of the shape of this unique stone is that the structure represents the Luo cultural polygamous family which had the first wife’s house (Mikayi) built further in between on the right hand side was the second wife’s house (Nyachira) while the third wife’s house (Reru) was built on the left hand side of the homestead.

This rock is also seen to have a nuclear family whereby the father (Ngeso) being the middle stone followed by the bulky Mikayi (first wife), then Nyachira (second wife) followed by Reru (third wife) and further in front they have the child which is representing Simba (which is the house for the first born boy in the homestead). From a long time, this stone has been a sacred place for the villagers to worship in times of trouble.

  • Community Tourism

  • Rock Formation

  • Shrine

Kitale Nature Conservancy

Kitale Nature Conservancy is located within Kitale Municipality, on the Kitale-Lodwar road on the Western part of Kenya and is situated on the intersection of the Western and North Rift tourism circuit strategically between the emerging cross border tourism between Uganda and Kenya
The Kitale Nature Conservancy region is bound by Mt Elgon on the West and Cherangani hills to the east. The grasslands and woodlands that were once the home of wildlife species such as Kongoni, Sitatunga, Bongo, Black Rhino, elephants, Reed Buck and Rothschild giraffes were wiped out through direct hunting and eventual loss of habitat.

Our mission has been reviving & restoring the original habitat and conserving the remaining dotted indigenous plants and animals

Park entrance fees

 
  • Citizens Kshs. 200 Students, Pupils Children above 2 years, Kshs. 100
  • Non-Citizen USD 10 
  • Researchers Local Reseachers Kshs 1500 per day
  • International Researchers USD 50 per day
  • Team buiding General Kshs. 500 per person per day
  • Tour Guides General Free for a group of over ten people & Kshs. 500 per hour for less than ten people.
  • Conference Halls Main hall Kshs. 500 per hour (when a meal is ordered for the participants) and Kshs. 700 per hour (when no meal is ordered).
  • Mini hall/Caves Kshs. 300 per hour (when a meal is ordered for the participants) and Kshs. 500 per hour (when no meal is ordered).
  • Fishing road Per person per day Kshs. 100
  • Tents Two-man tent Kshs. 750 per day
  • Four-man tent Kshs. 1500 per day
  • Camping ground Per day Kshs. 500
  • Horse riding per ride per head Kshs. 100

 

  • Wildlife Conservancy

Laikipia Wildlife Conservancy

This is a dynamic, membership led conservation organisation supporting, coordinating and facilitating pan-Laikipia conservation and natural resource management. It provides a platform for dialogue for a cross section of land owners and land users including local community groups, private ranchers, pastoralists, small scale farmers and tourism ventures.

Conservation 

Large mammals in Laikipia county are both diverse and numerous, perhaps more so than almost anywhere in East Africa. This includes half of Kenya’s black rhinos, the second largest population of elephants in Kenya, and the globally threatened grevy’s zebra. But what is perhaps most unusual about the wildlife numbers in Laikipia is that they are stable in the face of a sharp national decline.

To support Laikipia’s wildlife abundance, we helped develop the county’s first wildlife conservation strategy in partnership with the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Kingdom of Netherlands (EKN). This set off the process of mobilising communities to proactively take part in the county’s wildlife conservation initiatives.

We are implementing this strategy in order to achieve five broad objectives:

  • Secure and increase space for wildlife.
  • Strengthen security for wildlife in Laikipia county.
  • Maintain and enhance habitats and connectivity to maximize species diversity, ecosystem services and human well-being.
  • Promote effective collaboration among stakeholders to enable effective wildlife conservation in Laikipia county minimise costs of living with wildlife.
  • Conservation has no value without being relevant to the realities of the people who control and use the resources that need to be conserved. Achieving conservation goals is largely down to human choice.

We work with local stakeholders in wildlife conservation and build their capacity to undertake conservation activities. We achieve this by involving different clusters of stakeholders including the Kenya Wildlife Service, County government, the judiciary, the owners and users of land, researchers and conservation NGOs. Our partners typically work together with us on both species and geographic conservation themes.

Our efforts also ensure that information on wildlife conservation is widely shared; to galvanize partnerships in support of conservation campaigns and activities; and to support the regular monitoring of wildlife populations so that we can evaluate the impact of our partnerships and actions. We work with law enforcement officials to improve the efficacy of the laws that we have, and to improve the regulations that support implementation of our conservation laws.

  • Birding Site

  • Wildlife Conservancy

LAKE MAGADI

Lake Magadi is the southernmost lake in the Kenyan Rift Valley, lying in a catchment of faulted volcanic rocks, north of Tanzania's Lake Natron. During the dry season, it is 80% covered by soda and is well known for its wading birds, including flamingos.

Lake Magadi is a saline, alkaline lake, approximately 100 square kilometers in size, that lies inn endorheic basin formed by a graben. The lake is an example of a "saline pan". The lake water, which is a dense sodium carbonate brine, precipitates vast quantities of the mineral trona (sodium sesquicarbonate). In places, the salt is up to 40 m thick. The lake is recharged mainly by saline hot springs (temperatures up to 86 °C) that discharge into alkaline "lagoons" around the lake margins, there being little surface runoff in this arid region. Most hot springs lie along the northwestern and southern shorelines of the lake. During the rainy season, a thin (<1 m) layer of brine covers much of the saline pan, but this evaporates rapidly leaving a vast expanse of white salt that cracks to produce large polygons. A single species of fish, a cichlid Alcolapia grahami, inhabits the hot, highly alkaline waters of this lake basin and is commonly seen in some of the hot spring pools around the shoreline, where the water temperature is less than 45 °C.

Lake Magadi was not always so saline. Several thousand years ago (during the late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene), the Magadi basin held a freshwater lake with many fish, whose remains are preserved in the High Magadi Beds, a series of lacustrine and volcaniclastic sediments preserved in various locations around the present shoreline. Evidence also exists for several older Pleistocene precursor lakes that were much larger than present Lake Magadi. At times, Lake Magadi and Lake Natron were united as a single larger lake.

Lake Magadi is also well known for its extensive deposits of siliceous chert. There are many varieties including bedded cherts that formed in the lake and intrusive dike-like bodies that penetrated through overlying sediments while the silica was soft. Most famous is "Magadi-type chert", which formed from a sodium silicate mineral precursor magadiite that was discovered at Lake Magadi during the 1960s.

Magadi township lies on the lake's east shore, and is home to the Magadi Soda factory, owned by Tata India since December 2005. This factory produces soda ash, which has a range of industrial uses.

  • Birding Site

  • Community Tourism

  • Natural Springs

Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy works as a catalyst and model for the conservation of wildlife and its habitat. It does this through the protection and management of species, the initiation and support of community conservation and development programmes, and the education of neighbouring areas in the value of wildlife.

The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy (also known as Lewa Downs) is located in northern Kenya. It was formed in 1995. It is a wildlife sanctuary incorporating the Ngare Ndare Forest and covering over 62,000 acres (250 km2). The Conservancy is home to a wide variety of wildlife including the rare and endangered black rhinos, zebras and sitatungas. It also includes the big five (Masai lion, leopards, elephants, rhinos and Cape buffaloes). Lewa holds over 12% of Kenya's eastern black rhinoceros population and the largest single population of Grevy's zebras in the world (approximately 350 individuals).

The Conservancy is also home to the Northern Rangelands Trust, an innovative partnership with a number of communities to the north who have given land for the preservation of wildlife. Lewa has its own education program that helps develop schools and students. Lewa Wildlife Conservancy is located in Meru County, south of Isiolo town but north of Mount Kenya.

  • Wildlife Conservancy

Lumo Community Wildlife Sanctuary

LUMO is a community led animal sanctuary and was formed by the Lualenyi, Mramba Communal grazing area and the Oza group ranch. This combination is thus what gave it its name, thus the abbreviation LUMO. It is a vital wildlife corridor between Tsavo West and Tsavo East National Parks.

LUMO Community Wildlife Sanctuary came into being in 1997 when three of the Ranches situated in the Tsavo West Zone namely Lualenyi, Mramba and Oza merged to form a wildlife conservancy. Lumo is part of the historical elephant migration corridor linking Tsavo Ecosystem to the Shimba Hills in the neighboring Kwale County. Lualenyi was established in 1965 as a Limited Ranching Company, Oza and Mramba established in the 1980 and 1991 respectively, are communally owned. Together they add to 5288 shareholders.

In 1997, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed among the three ranches, formally establishing the LUMO Community Wildlife Sanctuary. The Sanctuary was registered as Self-Help Group in 1998 and later as a Trust in the year 2001.

LUMO membership is solely drawn from the Taita Ethnic Community. Organizational structure consist of the Board of Trustees is comprised of nine members (i.e. the chairman, secretary, treasurer and 6 others from member ranches equally). The sanctuary has a manager, accounts clerk and 14 game scouts professionally trained by KWS at Manyani field training school.

The area is rich in animal diversity with over 102 animals of which 61 are large mammals and over 350 bird species being recorded. The land is mainly rolling Savannah and the stunning views from over lodge (Lion Bluff) stretch to Tanzania pare mountains and legendary Mt. Kilimanjaro.

The Conservancy was establish to mainly to mainly benefit the community and it boasts of 100% employment of its staffs, from the manager, accounts clerk to its dedicated rangers. The community also gets bursaries from the sanctuary which is devoted to improvement in infrastructure, education and health to neighboring community. With the drilled borehole funded by AWF, locals from villages around do come to Lumo to fetch water.

The initial development of Lumo has been possible due to funding from two donors. The European Union, through the Biodiversity Conservation program (BCP) has financed LUMO for developing of the sanctuary’s infrastructure, while USAID through the conservation of resources through enterprise (CORE) program to develop a tented lodge which they now have leased to a private investor at a fee. African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) participated in the completion of the lodge (Lions Bluff) and is the development partner.

The objectives of the Conservancy are:-

  • To promote biodiversity conservation
  • To help in poverty alleviation and improve the living standards of the community sustainably.
  • To encourage tourism related enterprises and other environmental, economical and social complementary land use.

Vision:

“To be the leading tourist destination centre in eastern and southern Africa.”

Mission:

“Lumo is a community based conservancy that provides ecotourism services to protect the wildlife of Tsavo.”

Objectives:

The main object of the LUMO Community Wildlife Trust is solely for the purpose of the relief of poverty or distress of the members and the advancement of education within the Taita Community.

Other objectives include;

  • To promote tourism to LUMO around the world.
  • To carry out general public education in order to create conservation awareness in order to gain public support for conservation.
  • To encourage national and international co-operation in formulating laws that are friendly to conservation in all its aspects.
  • To encourage provisions of public recreation areas to help in preserving the objects of beauty, geological, prehistoric, historical archaeological and other scientific interests.
  • To liaise with the government, non-governmental organizations and international agencies involved in tourism development projects, including proposal writings,   evaluation of sustainable utilization of resources, protected areas, management plans  and harmonization of the various interests and parties affected by tourists in anyway.
  • To protect and manage all natural resources, living and non-living including wildlife and their habitats, including land for crops ores soil, air and water within the trust area.
  • To establish sanctuaries to protect wildlife species and allow wild animals and plants to breed in safety.
  • To protect water catchments and scenic areas in order to ensure that water is always available and soil erosion will not occur.
SANCTUARY ENTRANCE FEES 2015
CATEGORY AGE CURRENCY PER NIGHT
NON-RESIDENT 18 AND OVER
UNDER 18
US DOLLAR
US DOLLAR
$35
$17
RESIDENT 18 AND OVER
UNDER 18
KENYA SHILLING
KENYA SHILLING
800/=
400/=
CITIZEN 18 AND OVER
UNDER 18
KENYA SHILLING
KENYA SHILLING
250/=
100/=
VEHICLES UP TO 5 SEATS
6 -12 SEATS
OVER 12 SEATS
KENYA SHILLING
KENYA SHILLING
KENYA SHILLING
350/=
600/=
1200/=

  • Animal Sanctuary

  • Birding Site

Mara Naboisho Conservancy

Naboisho, which means "coming together" in the Maa language, is a community response to the challenges of the privatization of group ranches in the Greater Mara Region. The conservancy provides the opportunity to conserve the land and wildlife, whilst simultaneously creating wealth for the landowners.

Located in Kenya adjacent to the Masai Mara National Reserve, this private conservancy is a ground breaking project of tourism benefiting conservation and community. With its high concentration of wildlife, and generous personal space and freedom on offer, visitors enjoy exceptional wildlife encounters.

The Mara Naboisho Conservancy in Kenya is home to the big cats - in impressive numbers - and herds of elephant, giraffe, and wildebeest. Rare species such as Aardvark, Caracal, Serval cat, Aardwolf, and Ratel are occasionally found. Naboisho is a bird watcher’s paradise with several bird species rarely seen elsewhere in the Mara such as White-Headed Buffalo-Weavers, Northern White-Crowned Shrike, Pigmy Falcon, Von Der Deckens Hornbills, Bush Pipits. Unlike its neighbour, the Masai Mara National Reserve, this private conservancy strictly monitors the number of tourists who enter the area, reducing the number of vehicles and the human impact on the environment and wildlife.

While the charm of the Mara Naboisho Conservancy is its exclusivity, the philosophy of the conservancy is refreshingly inclusive. The conservancy was established not only to conserve the environment and wildlife, but also to protect and empower the local Maasai community. The 50,000 acre conservancy is made up of land contributions from 500 Maasai landowners and by visiting the Mara Naboisho Conservancy, you will be playing a part in protecting the cultural heritage of the local Maasai and improving their access to vital services. When you stay at Naboisho, a large part of the conservancy fee is channeled back into the community, making the project more sustainable.

In addition to this, there are also a number of community empowerment projects run by the Basecamp Foundation Kenya, a non-profit organisation. These projects - which include training locals to become guides, supporting local schools, improving access to healthcare and clean water, and empowering women - help to strengthen and uplift the community.

Key objectives

  • to conserve the biological resources and the socio-cultural heritage of the conservancy area;
  • to contribute to wealth creation for landowners, and;
  • to promote tourism through partnering with investors
  • Other ethical practices unique to Conservancy

Only guides employed by member camps conduct game-drives. All guides have signed an extensive Code of Conduct document with strict guidelines about ethics and etiquette on game-drives and other activities. This ensures that game-drives have a minimal impact on the environment, deters animal harassment, and increases accountability.

The conservancy management has set up a controlled grazing plan for landowners’ cattle, moving from one area to another during different seasons to eradicated hard wiry grasses and encourage new growth. This also creates immeasurable goodwill with the cattle owners as they are provided with good grazing while easing the pressure on the grasslands outside the conservancy.

  • Community Tourism

  • Wildlife Conservancy

Maralal

This sanctuary is a majestic scenery whose grandeur is enhanced by its consort with wildlife and by the calm dignity of the herdsmen and their herds. Resident games here include impala, eland, buffalo, baboon, warthog and zebra living in harmonious profusion but ever watchful for the leopard and hyena.

  • Wildlife Conservancy