MAASAI MARA, Kenya: At dawn in a village in Kenya’s Maasai Mara wilderness, zebras rouse themselves and head away from the huts where they like to sleep as protection from lions.
Bernard Kirokor, 21, recounts watching an elephant give birth across from his village a few days earlier, showing a video of the mother protecting the newborn, its trunk poking up like a periscope to sniff for danger.
“The wildlife are our neighbors and we love them,” he said, as the villagers milked the herd of cattle gathered around their huts.
The village lies in the Nashulai conservancy, which prides itself on how the local Maasai community and their cattle continuing to live alongside the lions, elephants and giraffes for which the region is world-famous.
Community conservancies emerged in the 2000s to protect wildlife corridors, with locals pooling their individual plots and pulling down fences so animals could roam freely.
