Kenya's Masai Mara Game Reserve under threat 4/9/01

ANDREW HARDING:
It's 6.30 in the morning, and another perfect sunrise lights up the Masai Mara. These gentle hills in south-western Kenya are home to perhaps the most spectacular concentration of wildlife in the world. This morning, like every morning, the tourists are out in force. The Mara is big business, a multi-million-pound industry. But what the foreigners don't know is that, for years, the money they've paid to come here has been squandered and stolen. The Masai Mara is no African Eden. Instead it's become a symbol of the corruption that is strangling this country and this continent. Bouncing along the neglected pot-holed roads is Brian Heath, a Kenyan wildlife consultant who's seen the corruption at close range.

BRIAN HEATH:
Chief Executive, Mara Conservancy
The Mara is seen as a cash cow. All the revenue from the Mara goes out and nothing gets ploughed back into it, really. What money was being remitted was then being taken by corrupt officials within the county council. When we came down to take over, there were some people that hadn't been paid for 16 months, employees in the reserve who had not received a salary for 16 months.

REPORTER:
Because some politician had stolen the money?

HEATH:
Essentially. There was money to pay those in power but none to pay the people on the ground.

ANDREW HARDING:
Today Brian is trying to put that right. A few weeks ago his company, the Mara Conservancy, was granted a contract to manage one third of the whole reserve, a highly controversial move. It's the first time ever that the private sector has been allowed to take charge of a Kenyan wildlife park. There is a huge amount of work to be done, clearing away the accumulated grime of years of mismanagement.

BRIAN HEATH:
When we took over, we were told that about 5 million shillings was collected a month. Within a couple of months we were collecting double that. We aim to publish once a month in the newspaper what has been generated by the Conservancy. I think it will be an interesting new departure to be open and transparent.

ANDREW HARDING:
The new regime is already in place at the nearby hotel. The Conservancy has hired a fresh team of accountants to collect the entry fees. That is £20 per tourist per day.

TONY OLUOCH:
Revenue Collector, Earthview Ltd
Tourists used to come and pay the money and we couldn't trace where the money went. It just disappeared.

ANDREW HARDING:
Not any more. Soon the Conservancy could be collecting £4 million a year, a lot of money for a poor country in deep recession.

TONY OLUOCH:
A lot of money is coming in. We hope it will make change in the Mara, build new roads. Even the community around might benefit from the money. That's what we're hoping.

ANDREW HARDING:
It's the famous migration season. Something like a million wildebeest are heading north from Tanzania in search of fresh grassland. There's nothing quite like it anywhere else on Earth. But here, too, mismanagement and crime have taken their toll. A local pilot, Andy Roberts, took me up in his plane to show me the problem, poachers. We flew towards a huge cloud of smoke rising from burning grass.

ANDY ROBERTS:
We are right on the boundary of the park between Kenya and Tanzania. It's in these areas that the poachers burn the long grass. Then the new growth is short, green and lush. It attracts all the game to those areas, and then they can poach them with ease.

ANDREW HARDING:
Today, the Mara Conservancy is finally fighting back. Late in the afternoon, a team of rangers heads out on patrol. For the first time in years, they have proper uniforms, salaries, radios and a vehicle to drive in. The Conservancy has bought five. We stop in a gully and set off on foot. The patrol here is hunting for poachers. They've caught about 15 in the last few weeks. They say there are some snares up ahead. We'll try to find them and perhaps catch some more poachers. For years the poachers have had a free reign here. As a result animal numbers are falling fast. Some species have vanished from the reserve altogether. The Conservancy is in a race against time. If it can't stop the poaching, there may soon be little left to attract the tourists.

UNNAMED WARDEN:
We are going by the bush, so if they're looking, they don't see us.

REPORTER:
You think they are watching?

UNNAMED WARDEN:
Yes, it's most likely.

REPORTER:
Keeping an eye on their snares?

UNNAMED WARDEN:
Yeah.

REPORTER:
We have to keep quiet so we don't get spotted by them. OK.

ANDREW HARDING:
Five minutes later we find the snares, eight in all.

UNNAMED WARDEN:
When the animal goes through it, it tightens it and it entangles the animal. It is strongly tied on this and I think the animal cannot come out, even a big hippo.

ANDREW HARDING:
By now it's getting late. The rangers prepare to set their own trap for the poachers. The men here have set an ambush and it should be dark in half an hour. We'll sit tight and wait to see if the poachers come. We don't have to wait for long.

UNNAMED WARDEN:
They are coming.

ANDREW HARDING:
They're coming. Three poachers.

UNNAMED WARDEN:
They are coming exactly here.

ANDREW HARDING:
The trap snaps shut. There is one down here. The rangers have caught one of the poachers. The other two manage to run away. Papere Chachaa is 18 years old. He tells his captors he's from neighbouring Tanzania. This is his fourth poaching trip, hunting for hippo or wildebeest meat to sell in the local markets. He might have earned £5 for a week's work. Now he'll get a fine and perhaps two months in prison.

PAPERE CHACHAA:
Poacher (TRANSLATION)
We were living in the bushes over there. Lots of people come here to get meat. I came to earn money to pay for a court case back home.

ANDREW HARDING:
The Conservancy's rangers can't hope to catch every poacher, but it's enough that the word spreads. For the first time in years, poaching in the Mara is a risky business. But who can blame the local tribes for trying to make a little money out of the reserve? After all, it's their land. At the edge of the Mara, on the slopes of the giant Rift Valley, Masai herdsmen bring home their precious cattle for milking. Technically these people are all due a share of the profits from the tourist industry, but for years they say their own county council has cheated them. It's a familiar cry in Kenya. As the wealthy foreigners race past, the men of the village complain there isn't even a school nearby.

BEN RAMET:
Masai Herdsman
The next school from here is about six kilometres and they walk every day with these dangerous animals.

REPORTER:
Your children do?

BEN RAMET:
Our children.

REPORTER:
You would like a school here?

BEN RAMET:
We'd like a school. And these politicians, they make sure that nothing can be going on here like a school. They want to make us go down, down, down and down.

ANDREW HARDING:
I asked them if they had any faith in the Mara Conservancy and its promises to manage the reserve and the money properly.

JAMES KIPIKO:
Masai Herdsman
They cannot help us. The people who are running the county council are also running the Mara Conservancy. So they can do there what they are doing in the county council.

REPORTER:
You think the corruption will continue?

JAMES KIPIKO:
Yeah.

ANDREW HARDING:
The Conservancy has certainly faced plenty of criticism and even court cases in its short life. There are powerful forces in and around the reserve who don't want their cash cow taken away from them. But Samuel Tanai is among the optimists. He's on the Conservancy's executive committee, and we met on the escarpment overlooking the Mara, a spot celebrated in the Hollywood film Out Of Africa.

REPORTER:
So Robert Redford and Meryl Streep sat here?

SAMUEL TANAI:
Mara Conservancy
Yes

ANDREW HARDING:
Samuel said he was confident that the Conservancy's political enemies would soon melt away.

SAMUEL TUNAI:
The politician does not exist in isolation. He needs the support of the local people. The local people have seen the benefits of the Conservancy and therefore what is happening is that they are slowly coming on board with the Conservancy.

ANDREW HARDING:
One extremely important figure has already made his position clear.

BRIAN HEATH:
The president has taken a personal interest in the Mara Conservancy. Before we signed the management agreement we had an interview with him in which he gave us his support. He said to us, "Sort out the corruption and fix the roads and I'll be along to see how you're doing in a few months' time." I think it helped in the beginning. Maybe there are a number that would like to see us fail, but there are a lot more that would like to see us succeed.

ANDREW HARDING:
The battle for the Masai Mara is not over yet. But, as the poachers are already finding out, things are changing here. It's a small but important step forward in a country and a continent blighted by corruption.