Conservation

In all that we do, we continue to be conscious of how we can preserve the pristine wilderness that we are privileged to live in. After years of negotiation and planning, the Siana Conservation Area was formally created in June 2010. The 29,000 acre conservancy borders the Maasai Mara Game Reserve and secures the area around Leleshwa Camp for future generations of our local Maasai community and visitors. The conservancy is home to all the main animal species found in the Mara ecosystem except black rhinoceros, and our recent guests have already seen an increase in the quality wildlife sightings close to camp.

At Leleshwa Camp we have long understood that no conservation project will succeed unless it is embraced by the local community who are directly affected by it. The Siana community is already seeing the benefit of the wildlife on their land and the new conservancy will ensure these benefits will only increase. The conservancy provides a good source of income to supplement, and even rival, livestock as the traditional source of Maasai wealth and tourism in general provides other benefits, such as employment – Siana now boasts a newly formed team of trained scouts, 2 of whom will be based at Leleshwa Camp, patrolling the local area, providing game sighting reports and controlling livestock movements.

Environmental Considerations

Leleshwa Camp is constructed as an eco-friendly camp and we take every precaution to ensure that we minimize our impact on the environment, including:

Garbage Disposal

Glass is separated and returned to Nairobi and disposed at Kitengela Glass for recycling and use in their products. Bio-degradable items are placed into a covered 12ft deep pit, which is completely inaccessible to wild animals. Non-degradable items are sorted and placed into an enclosed trash store in trash bags. These are returned to Nairobi on a regular basis and disposed of at BINS disposal company.

Drinking Water

We do not use disposable plastic bottles for drinking water in the guest tents or vehicles; instead we decant water from the 20 litre containers into glass bottles for use in our tents and sterilized Nalgene sports bottles for use in vehicles.

Water

Water is collected from a sub-subsurface 1,000 litre tank sunk into the sand in the adjacent river bed and is pumped to two 10,000 litre storage tanks where it undergoes a sedimentation process. From here it passes through fine particle filtration and UV light sterilisation, which renders it potable. This water is used for cooking, laundry, showering and staff drinking water and is piped around the camp in subsurface pipes.

Cooking & Heating

All food is cooked using gas. Water for use in showers and washing of dishes is heated in kuni boosters over log fires. Wood is collected from trees that have been damaged by elephants from the surrounding areas and supplemented with charcoal brickets as a fuel source. Our kuni boosters are insulated to ensure high efficiency; however, we plan to invest in solar water heaters to replace the kuni boosters in the future.

Power

Power for camp is generated by a 15.5 KVA silenced diesel generator which simultaneously charges a bank of batteries. A 3000W inverter provides seamless 240V power around camp when the generator is switched off . At present the generator is run for approximately 8 hours per day when guests are not in camp. It is planned for the future that solar panels will be installed to charge the batteries thereby reducing the amount of time the generator will need to be run.

Waste disposal

All waste water runs through our septic tank systems which includes waste water from the toilets and grey water from the showers, sinks, laundry and kitchen washing up station. Camp has 5 septic tanks at different locations, which all discharge into soak pits. All soak pits are located at least 50 metres from the river and clean water from the waste system is released back into the environment.