Baringo community turns 2,000 acres into a shared haven for wildlife and livestock

On 2,000 acres of community land, the Endorois community living around Kiborgoch Community Wildlife and Wetland Conservancy is pursuing a different approach. Here, cattle, sheep and goats graze alongside zebras and ostriches, as well as antelopes like gazelles, kudu and waterbucks.

This is a community conservancy model where the local community owns the land and collectively decides how to manage it for their livelihoods, wildlife, and the wider environment.

Kiborgoch was established after community elders set aside the land as a dry season grazing area, recognising its importance during periods when pasture and water became scarce in the surrounding hills.

Joel Kiprop, the Manager of Kiborgoch Conservancy, says the decision was rooted in the community's need to protect a reliable grazing area.

“Kiborgoch means an open savanna where people can see far across the grass and shrubs. The name is also associated with a medicinal tree that was once found in that area,” Kiprop says.

“The community elders set the land aside so that during the rainy season, the livestock would graze around the hills and during the dry season, when there was no grass in the hills, the community would access pasture and water inside the conservancy,” he adds.

What began as a grazing reserve has since developed into a community-led conservation initiative built around coexistence.

“Kiborgoch conservancy is a place where we have come together as a community and agreed that wild animals and livestock will graze together,” Kiprop says.

Rather than restricting the community from accessing land traditionally used for only grazing, the conservancy seeks to manage the land in a way that allows both wildlife and livestock to share the available resources.

“It is possible for wild animals and livestock like cows, sheep and goats to graze together if you sensitize the community about effective grazing,” Kiprop says.

The conservancy has a grazing management plan, and local chiefs and other leaders from the community have been using public meetings to sensitise the community about co-existence, helping communities understand how livestock and wildlife can use the same grazing areas. 

Access to water is crucial to reducing human-wildlife conflict. The Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, through the State Department of Wildlife, partnered with the community to establish a large water pan for wildlife.

The water pan has reduced the movement of zebras and waterbucks to move into nearby settlements in search of water and pasture, helping to ease human-wildlife conflict.

For Johana Karato, former chairperson of Kiborgoch Conservancy, conservation is not limited to protecting wildlife, but also involves safeguarding the vegetation that supports the wider ecosystem.

“At Kiborgoch community wildlife conservancy we conserve all the animals and the trees because some of the trees found here are medicinal,” Karato says.

A growing conservancy movement

Kiborgoch is part of a wider community conservation movement in Baringo County. Other conservancies registered across its sub-counties; these conservancies and communities are combining indigenous knowledge with modern conservation practices to restore and manage degraded rangelands.

The Baringo County Conservancies Association (BCCA), established in 2017 by pastoralist communities including the Tugen, Endorois and Ilchamus, supports restoration initiatives across the county.

These include grazing management plans, grass seed banks, agroforestry, Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), bush thinning and enrichment planting.

Communities are also working to control invasive species such as Prosopis juliflora and Opuntia, which have contributed to the degradation of rangelands and reduced the availability of pasture for livestock and wildlife.

Susan Jepkemoi, CEO of BCCA, says the growth of community conservancies reflects a gradual shift in how communities understand and participate in conservation.

“If there is a success story about conservancies in Baringo, it is the number that have been established since our inception. The county now hosts  17 conservancies.” Jepkemoi says.

“Understanding conservation took time, but now communities recognise the uniqueness of the landscape and have formed conservancies to protect them.”

Conserving Baringo’s Wider Heritage

Baringo’s conservation agenda is extending beyond wildlife and rangeland management to include the county’s wider natural, cultural and geological heritage.

The county is pursuing designation as a UNESCO Global Geopark, with Lake Baringo, Lake Bogoria, the Paka, Silali and Korosi calderas among the sites being highlighted for their geological significance.

Baringo is also associated with Orrorin tugenensis, an early hominin fossil dated to about six million years ago.

Jepkemoi says bringing together the geopark concept and community conservation could create a broader tourism offering for the county.

“We are merging the concept of a geopark with conservation of our natural and cultural heritage. The geopark concept builds upon the conservancy model because they share the same sustainable development principles. While conservancies focus mainly on ecology, geoparks focus on geology. “We believe this brand will help Baringo promote its tourism and restore its legacy," she says.

Connecting conservation with equitable governance and livelihoods

Beyond conserving wildlife and promoting tourism, communities are seeking to create economic opportunities from their natural resources.

BCCA, in partnership with the Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association (KWCA), is supporting honey production as a nature-based enterprise to support communities to move beyond subsistence livelihoods and develop sustainable sources of income linked to conservation.

Kiborgoch conservancy is also working to make its governance more inclusive. A Site Assessment of Governance and Equity (SAGE) revealed that women and young people are largely excluded from the conservancy leadership and decision-making structures. 

In response, the community reviewed the conservancy’s constitution to provide for a more representative and effective board. When elections were held last year, three women out of 9 board members from each of the three locations that make up the conservancy were elected to the board for the first time including the youth.

The new governance structure includes a council of elders, which supports the conservancy in resolving conflicts and addressing boundary-related disputes. These changes are helping to strengthen the participation of women, youth and other community members in decisions after the conservancy. 

The County Government of Baringo is also strengthening support for community conservation. In 2025, it enacted the Baringo County Conservancies Fund to establish a formal mechanism for supporting conservancies and strengthening their governance, management and institutional structures.

What began as an effort by elders to secure dry season pasture has evolved into a broader conservation initiative that places community ownership and decision-making at the heart of conservation.

Kiborgoch conservancy offers a practical example of how conservation can be woven into the livelihoods of the people living alongside wildlife, rather than being treated as a separate activity.