The National Parks are incredibly popular and offer an affordable holiday option, but this success comes at a price. Their popularity has resulted in large numbers of tourists and you may find convoys of mini vans all circling around the same animals. For a more exclusive experience ‘conservancies’ were established where tourist numbers are controlled with accommodation in small safari camps. Gamewatchers Safaris, a tour operator in Nairobi, was a pioneer in creating some of the first conservancies on Maasai community areas in Kenya. Here, they set up Porini Camps to accommodate visitors, starting on land leased from the local people near Amboseli National Park in 1998. In Kenya, because the parks are comparatively small in size in relation to the greater ecosystems that they are part of, the majority of wildlife is found outside of the parks. These outer buffer lands, crucial to the parks’ survival, are generally community areas for grazing. But in the last decade, land-use has been changing rapidly. With the establishment of each conservancy by Gamewatchers Safaris, it took a long time to meet with the community and reassure them that they wouldn’t be losing their land. Instead, working with the company would be an opportunity to create employment in their Porini Camps and provide income from the land lease payments. The conservancy model proved to the community that the wildlife they have is valuable and through a partnership with a safari company it is possible to protect and benefit from