Karani told us that all this while, the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) – a German conservation organization – supported the government’s campaign against the Maasai. The FZS had first got involved under its long-time director Bernhard Grzimek, a former member of the Nazi party who was instrumental in the scheme to “conserve” the Serengeti. Like many outsiders before and since, he looked upon an Indigenous homeland as a “wilderness” in need of “saving” by Europeans. Karani now lives in Loliondo, where thousands of Maasai people have either been evicted from their land, or have the threat of it hanging over them. Survival researchers met him in 2022, shortly before a Maasai protest against the evictions was met with a volley of gunfire from the police. “Leave our Maasai land,” Karani urges FZS. “Stop the greed.”
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