About the park

The history of the Masai Mara National Reserve

Name: Masai Mara National Reserve
Address: Kenya

The Masai Mara is Maasai land that became a reserve in stages: a small game reserve west of the Mara River in 1948, a county council reserve stretching far to the east in 1961, and the present boundary in 1984. It has never been a national park, which is why a county sets its fees, and in 2026 the questions are about management contracts, new camps and fewer wildebeest.

If you only want the answer

The reserve was first created on 24 November 1948, as the Mara National Reserve covering only the Mara Triangle, about 518 km2. Narok's African District Council took it over and extended it east in 1961, boundary changes in 1984 brought it to about 1,510 km2, and since 2013 Narok County has owned and run the whole reserve, with the Triangle managed under contract by the non-profit Mara Conservancy since 2001. The often quoted founding year of 1961 marks the takeover and extension.

Maasai country, and the land lost under colonial rule

Before 1900 this was Maasai pastoralist country, grazed by herds and shared with wildlife. The government census report that holds the reserve's legal history points readers to long histories of pastoralism without giving dates, and no primary source we read sets out the pre-colonial story in detail, so this page keeps it general.

The colonial era cost the Maasai most of their land. Under the Anglo-Maasai agreements of 1904 and 1911, signed by Maasai leaders and British administrators, two forced moves followed; the second took the northern Maasai from Laikipia into an extended southern reserve that includes today's Narok County. Elders interviewed by a historian at The Open University had been moved as children in 1912 and 1913, and it is estimated that the Maasai lost up to half of their land, perhaps as much as 70 per cent. The Maasai took the 1911 agreement to the High Court of British East Africa in 1913 and lost on a technicality.

Narok District was established in 1913, and it became Narok County in 2013. Until 1948 hunting with limited control was allowed throughout the district.

1948 to 1984: from the Triangle to about 1,500 km2

The Mara started small and on the west bank. Gazette Notice 1234 of 24 November 1948 created the Mara National Reserve, covering the Mara Triangle only, as a faunal reserve of about 518 km2; the county's management plan describes the same area as 520 km2 between the Siria escarpment, the Tanzanian border and the Mara River.

In 1961 the reserve was surrendered as a national reserve and re-established under the by-laws of the Narok African District Council, which extended the core area east to about 1,831 km2. It was declared a game reserve under national wildlife law in 1973 and redesignated in 1974. In 1984 parts were excised to give livestock access to water, and the census report records the area falling from 1,813 km2 in 1973 to 1,510 km2 in 1984.

Government documents still disagree on the present size: 1,510 km2 from the 1984 gazette notice, 1,530 km2 in the management plan's history section and 1,560 km2 in its tourism chapter. This site uses about 1,500 km2. The Mara Conservancy wrote in April 2025 that the boundary still needs to be surveyed on the ground.

Date	What happened	Source
24 November 1948	Mara National Reserve created, Triangle only, about 518 km2	Gazette Notice 1234, via the 2025 census report
11 February 1950	Amended	Gazette Notice 170
1951	Narok becomes a controlled hunting area; Block 61, covering most of today's conservancies, kept for photography and camping with no hunting until 1977	Wild Animals' Protection Ordinance No. 18 of 1951
1961	Taken over by the Narok African District Council and extended east to about 1,831 km2	Legal Notice 374 and council by-laws; management plan
5 July 1973	Declared a game reserve under the Wild Animal Protection Act	Legal Notice 123
12 October 1974	Redesignated	Legal Notice 271
20 May 1977	Kenya bans hunting nationwide; trade in wildlife products banned in 1978	Census report
9 January 1984	Boundary revised to about 1,510 km2	Gazette Notice 145

Dates from the National Wildlife Census 2025 Technical Report, section 6.3.1, which cites the gazette and legal notice numbers, and the Maasai Mara National Reserve Management Plan 2023-2032, section 2.1.

Why the Masai Mara is a reserve and not a national park

The Mara is trust land held for the Maasai, run first by the Narok African District Council and county councils and now by Narok County, and never by the Kenya Wildlife Service. The management plan quotes oral testimony that the game reserve was meant to be Maasai owned and calls it a cultural and natural heritage of the Maasai.

That status explains the practical differences a visitor meets. The fees are set by a county finance act, not the KWS tariff, the tickets are not sold on eCitizen, and the revenue goes to the county and, in the Triangle, partly to the company that manages it.

Two managers: the Triangle and the Mara Conservancy

Since the mid-1990s the reserve has been run in two parts. The Mara Conservancy dates the split to 1994 and the management plan to 1995, after the creation of Trans Mara District: Narok County Council kept the land east of the Mara River and the new Trans Mara County Council took the Triangle.

The Mara Conservancy was set up as a not-for-profit management company. It signed a five-year agreement on 25 May 2001 and started work in the Triangle on 12 June 2001; the agreement was extended from 2006 to 2016 and a further ten-year agreement was signed with Narok County in 2016. In 2001, by its own estimate, up to 100,000 wildebeest were being poached in the area each year. When Kenya's 2013 devolution replaced the two councils with Narok County, the county took responsibility for the whole reserve and kept the contract for the Triangle.

The arrangement was unsettled at the dossier date of 6 October 2026. A separate Collaboration Agreement, under which the Conservancy also worked in the main reserve, expired on 30 June 2026. The Conservancy signed a new one in July and left it with the county; in August the county asked for changes and the Conservancy reported that it was operating without any agreement. This may have moved since, so check before relying on it.

The conservancies: Maasai landowners and tourism partners

Outside the reserve, Maasai landowners began leasing their land to tourism partners as conservancies. The first, Ol Choro Oirouwa, was established in 1991, and the main wave followed: Mara Siana in 2004, Ol Kinyei in 2005, and Mara North and Lemek in 2009, according to the Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association, which now lists 24 conservancies.

The idea has old roots. From 1951 to 1977, Block 61 of Narok District, the land bordering the reserve that covers most of today's conservancies, was kept for photography and camping as a no-hunting zone. The 2023 management plan builds on the split, leaving walking and horseback safaris to the community land outside the reserve.

Research in the Mara: counts, hyaenas, lions and rain

The Mara is one of the best-measured savannahs in Africa. Aerial counts began in 1958, and regular total counts of the Kenyan Mara started in 1984: twice a year to 2007, then in 2010, 2014, 2017, 2021 and 2024. The Mara Hyena Project, founded in 1988, studies seven clans in the reserve. The Maasai Mara Ecological Monitoring Programme ran 13 of the reserve's rain gauges from 1989 to 2003, and the Mara Predator Conservation Programme has surveyed lions every year since 2014.

Tourism has its own landmarks. Governors' Camp has stood on the same site by the Musiara Marsh since 1972, by its own account, and Governors' Balloon Safaris has flown over the Mara since 1978. The 84 km road from Narok to Sekenani Gate was finished to tarmac in October 2020 at a cost of KSh 2.2 billion.

Decline, crowding and the freeze on new camps

The long trend for wildlife is down. A 2011 study in the Journal of Zoology found that almost every species had fallen to a third or less of its former abundance between 1977 and 2009, inside the reserve and on the ranches around it, and the June 2024 census counted 26 per cent fewer large animals in the ecosystem than in 2021.

Tourism grew the other way. The management plan of February 2023 says the visitor carrying capacity of the central Mara is already greatly exceeded, and froze new accommodation, bed expansion and new balloon concessions inside the reserve. The Mara Conservancy counted 183 camps across the Mara in 2025 against 95 tourist facilities in 2012. Park fees rose to $100 for non-resident adults in January 2024 and to $200 in the high season from July 2024.

2025 to 2026: the Sand River camp and the court

The freeze was tested within two years. The Ritz-Carlton Masai Mara Safari Camp opened on the Sand River in 2025, and the Mara Conservancy's January 2026 report criticised camps for blocking a crossing point on the river. On 26 February 2026 the Environment and Land Court at Narok dismissed a petition against the camp on procedural grounds, without ruling on the merits.

Mongabay reported in April 2026 that the plan's moratorium had been set aside by an exemption, and that the Kenya Wildlife Service said the camps do not obstruct any wildebeest migration corridor. The Conservancy reports that the migration spent only about a month in the main reserve in 2025. These positions are as the sources stated them at 6 October 2026 and may have moved since.

What you can see of this history today

Drive from Sekenani to the Triangle and you cross the whole story: the eastern plains added in 1961, the Mara River at Purungat Bridge, and the 1948 reserve beyond it below the Oloololo escarpment, now run by a separate manager with its own cashless gates. Stay a night in a conservancy and you are on the Maasai land that the 1951 no-hunting block first set aside, where your conservancy fee goes to the families who own it.