The Kipsigis or Kipsigiis are a Nilotic group contingent of the Kalenjin ethnic group and speak a dialect of the Kalenjin language identified by their community eponym, Kipsigis. It is observed that the Kipsigis and another aboriginal group native to Kenya known as Ogiek have a merged identity. The Kipsigis are the biggest sub tribe within the Kalenjin community. The latest census population in Kenya put the Kipsigis at 1,972,000 speakers, accounting for 45% of all Kalenjin speaking people. They occupy the highlands of Kericho stretching from Timboroa to the Mara River in the south and the Mau Escarpment in the east to Kebeneti. They also occupy parts of Laikipia, Kitale, Nakuru, Narok, the Trans Mara District, Eldoret and the Nandi Hills.
Maasai Mara, also sometimes spelled Masai Mara and locally known simply as The Mara, is a large national game reserve in Narok, Kenya, contiguous with the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. It is named in honour of the Maasai people, the ancestral inhabitants of the area, who migrated to the area from the Nile Basin. Their description of the area when looked at from afar: "Mara" means "spotted" in the local Maasai language, because of the short bushy trees which dot the landscape.
The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting northern, central and southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, near the African Great Lakes region. The Maasai speak the Maa language, a member of the Nilotic language family that is related to the Dinka, Kalenjin and Nuer languages. Except for some elders living in rural areas, most Maasai people speak the official languages of Kenya and Tanzania, Swahili and English.
The Serengeti National Park is a large national park in northern Tanzania that stretches over 14,763 km2 (5,700 sq mi). It is located in eastern Mara Region and northeastern Simiyu Region and contains over 1,500,000 hectares of virgin savanna. The park was established in 1940.
Tsetse are large, biting flies that inhabit much of tropical Africa. Tsetse flies include all the species in the genus Glossina, which are placed in their own family, Glossinidae. The tsetse is an obligate parasite, which lives by feeding on the blood of vertebrate animals. Tsetse has been extensively studied because of their role in transmitting disease. They have a pronounced economic impact in sub-Saharan Africa as the biological vectors of trypanosomes, causing human and animal trypanosomiasis.
Lake Nakuru is one of the Rift Valley lakes, located at an elevation of 1,754 m (5,755 ft) above sea level. It lies to the south of Nakuru, in the rift valley of Kenya and is protected by Lake Nakuru National Park.
The International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology is an international scientific research institute, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya that works towards improving lives and livelihoods of people in Africa.
Njoro is an agricultural town 18 km west south west of Nakuru, Kenya situated on the western rim of the Rift Valley. Njoro town was the headquarters of the former Njoro District, hived off Nakuru District. It was declared as one of the constituencies of Nakuru County in 2010. It has a population of 238,773 people according to the 2019 census report that was published by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).
Kilgoris is a town in Narok County, Kenya. The town has a population of 70,475. Kilgoris is one of two major urban centres in Narok County, the other being Narok Town.
Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options is a United Nations report, released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations on 29 November 2006, that "aims to assess the full impact of the livestock sector on environmental problems, along with potential technical and policy approaches to mitigation". It stated that livestock accounts for 18% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, a figure which FAO changed to 14.5% in its 2013 study Tackling climate change through livestock.
Helen Wanjiru Gichohi is a Kenyan ecologist who was President of the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) from 2007 to 2013.
Brian Derek Perry, OBE is a British veterinary surgeon and epidemiologist renowned for the integration of veterinary epidemiology and agricultural economics, as a tool for disease control policy and strategy development, and specialised in international agricultural development. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh, a Visiting Professor at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford.
In the 1890s, an epizootic of the rinderpest virus struck all across Africa, but primarily in Eastern and Southern Africa. It was considered to be "the most devastating epidemic to hit southern Africa in the late nineteenth century." It killed more than 5.2 million cattle south of the Zambezi, as well as domestic oxen, sheep, and goats, and wild populations of buffalo, giraffe, and wildebeest. The effects of the outbreak were drastic, leading to massive famine, economic collapse, as well as disease outbreak in humans. Starvation spread across the region, resulting in the death of an estimated third of the human population of Ethiopia and two-thirds of the Maasai people of Tanzania.
Leela Hazzah is an Egyptian conservation biologist who works in Kenya and Tanzania. Hazzah grew up in Egypt, and completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees in the United States. In 2007, Hazzah founded Lion Guardians, which works to protect lions in East Africa along with the indigenous Maasai people. In 2014, Hazzah was named one of CNN's "Top ten heroes" of 2014.
The TarangireEcosystem is a geographical region in northern Tanzania, Africa. It extends between 2.5 and 5.5 degrees south latitudes and between 35.5 and 37 degrees east longitudes.
To the east and north of the Maasai Mara National Reserve, some of the former Maasai cattle-grazing areas have been converted into wildlife conservancies for tourism.
Between 2008 and early 2010, Kenya, one of the countries of Eastern Africa, was affected by a severe drought, which put ten million people at risk of hunger and caused a large number of deaths to livestock in Kenyan Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), constituting around 88% of the country.
Fatma Serap Aksoy is a Turkish–American medical entomologist.
Anita Soina is a Kenyan environmentalist by passion and also water and climate change advocate from the Maasai community. She is the author of the book Green War.
Delia Grace is an epidemiologist and a veterinarian. Grace joined the University of Greenwich in May 2020 as Professor of Food Safety Systems at the Natural Resources Institute. She is also Joint Appointed Scientist, Animal and Human Health Program at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya.
