Dear Jack,

Karani Olenkaiseri was just a boy when his people were forced from their homeland in the Serengeti plains. The Maasai had long grazed their cattle in these rolling grasslands, but in the 1950s the British authorities evicted them, having turned much of the Serengeti into a national park.

Karani and his family found themselves dumped on unsuitable land, where their cattle – the heart of Maasai culture and the source of their livelihood – weakened and starved.

Karani is old now, and over the course of his life he’s seen many more of his people evicted, often violently.

In 1992, the Tanzanian government handed over part of the Maasai's land to a trophy-hunting firm linked to the United Arab Emirates’ royal family.

“We were told that the company shall rule this land, whether we like it or not,” Karani says.

Then in 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2022 there were further operations to force the Maasai from their lands. Security forces burned down Maasai homes and destroyed their belongings. Some who tried to save their property were pushed into the flames, others were arrested or even shot.

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.”

Karani and his people are just a few of the countless thousands of victims of “fortress conservation.” But the Maasai are tirelessly resisting the might of governments and conservation corporations with multi-million dollar budgets, and they need their friends to stand alongside them.

This Act for Survival week, please take action to support Karani and other Indigenous people abused in the name of conservation.

Thank you for acting,

Paul Renaut
Research & Advocacy