The Maasai Landscape Conservation Fund is a collaborative initiative designed to accelerate the impact of community-based conservation solutions across southern Kenya and northern Tanzania’s savannah landscapes by investing in high-performing local organizations.

For centuries, the Maasai living in Kenya’s South Rift Valley have used and managed the land in a way that supports both livestock and wildlife. This approach provides the foundation of community conservation and today this area serves as an important model of co-existence and wildlife restoration in Kenya and beyond, where people, livestock and wildlife live together and benefit from each other.

Secure community land rights and new market opportunities from carbon credits have enabled the Hadza hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania - one of East Africa’s most unique cultures - to develop an award-winning model for indigenous-led conservation, while protecting their territories and culture.

A prominent new paper in the leading journal Science documents what all conservationists in East Africa already know: that growing human populations, settlements and infrastructure are increasing pressure on even the largest protected areas, and making it even more important to develop conservation approaches that reconcile the needs of people and wildlife. Read the paper here.

A new paper published in the journal PLoS One provides important evidence for the conservation impacts of Maliasili partners working with the Hadza hunter-gatherers and other local communities in Tanzania’s Yaeda Valley. Read the paper here.