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 Samburu are a Nilotic people of north-central Kenya. They are semi-nomadic pastoralists who primarily herd cattle but also keep sheep, goats and camels. They refer to themselves as Lokop or Loikop, a term varied interpretations among the Samburu. Some believes it means "owners of the land" while others have a different interpretations.
Alexander Martin Clunes is an English actor, director and television presenter. He is best known for portraying Dr Martin Ellingham in the ITV comedy-drama series Doc Martin, Gary Strang in Men Behaving Badly, and William Shawcross in William and Mary. Clunes has narrated a number of documentaries for ITV, the first of which was Islands of Britain in 2009. He has since presented a number of documentaries centred on animals. He has also voiced Kipper the Dog in the animated series Kipper.
The Matthews Range, also known as the Lenkiyio Hills, is a range of mountains in Kenya.
Samburu National Reserve is a game reserve on the banks of the Ewaso Ng'iro river in Kenya. It is 165 km2 (64 sq mi) in size and is 350 km (220 mi) from Nairobi. It ranges in elevation from 800 to 1,230 m. Geographically and administratively, it is part of Samburu County.
The Ilchamus, are a Maa-speaking people living south and southeast of Lake Baringo, Kenya. They numbered approximately 32,949 people in 2019 and are closely related to the Samburu living more to the north-east in the Rift Valley Province. They are one of the smallest ethnic groups in Kenya.
Michaela Evelyn Ann Strachan is an English television presenter. She is best known for her work with wildlife series such as The Really Wild Show and Springwatch. She lives in South Africa.
Saba Iassa Douglas-Hamilton is a Kenyan wildlife conservationist and television presenter. She has worked for a variety of conservation charities, and has appeared in wildlife documentaries produced by the BBC and other broadcasters. She is currently the manager of Elephant Watch Camp in Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve and Special Projects Director for the charity Save the Elephants.
Frank Pope is the chief executive officer for Save the Elephants (STE). After studying zoology at the University of Edinburgh he began his career in marine science before joining The Times newspaper as the world's only Ocean Correspondent to cover the fast-changing science, environment and geopolitics of the sea and help increase visibility of the crisis facing marine ecosystems. During this time he published two books, Dragon Sea and 72 Hours and hosted the BBC Series Britain's Secret Seas.
Mission Africa is a 12-part prime time television series produced by Diverse Bristol for BBC One and BBC Worldwide which follows fifteen trainees from the building trade, selected from hundreds of applicants across the UK, as they undertake various building and conservation projects. The 12 part series ran beginning of January 2007.
The wildlife of Kenya refers to its fauna. The diversity of Kenya's wildlife has garnered international fame, especially for its populations of large mammals. Mammal species include lion, cheetah hippopotamus, African buffalo, wildebeest (Connochaetes), African bush elephant, zebra (Equus), giraffe (Giraffa), and rhinoceros. Kenya has a very diverse population of birds, including flamingo and common ostrich.
Iain Douglas-Hamilton is a Scottish zoologist from Oxford University and one of the world's foremost authorities on the African elephant. In 1993, he founded Save the Elephants, which is dedicated to securing a future for elephants and their habitats.
El Molo is a possibly extinct language belonging to the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It was spoken by the El Molo people on the southeastern shore of Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya. Alternate names to El Molo are Dehes, Elmolo, Fura-Pawa, and Ldes. It was thought to be extinct in the middle part of the 20th century, but a few speakers were found in the later 20th century. Most of the El Molo population have shifted to the neighboring Samburu language. El Molo also has no known dialects but it is similar to Daasanach.
Life is a British nature documentary series created and produced by the BBC in association with The Open University. It was first broadcast as part of the BBC's Darwin Season on BBC One and BBC HD from October to December 2009. The series takes a global view of the specialised strategies and extreme behaviour that living things have developed in order to survive; what Charles Darwin termed "the struggle for existence". Four years in the making, the series was shot entirely in high definition.
Save the Elephants (STE) was founded in 1993 by Iain Douglas-Hamilton. A research and conservation organization, Save the Elephants (STE) is a UK-registered charity headquartered in Nairobi with its principal research station in Samburu National Reserve in northern Kenya.
Thure E. Cerling is a Distinguished Professor of Geology and Geophysics and a Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Utah. Cerling is a leading expert in the evolution of modern landscapes including modern mammals and their associated grassland ecologies and stable isotope analyses of the atmosphere. Cerling lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Shaba National Reserve is a protected area in Isiolo County in northern Kenya to the east of the Samburu and Buffalo Springs national reserves. Together, the three reserves form a large protected area.
The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (SWT) operates an orphaned elephant rescue and wildlife rehabilitation program in Nairobi, Kenya. It was founded in 1977 by Dame Daphne Sheldrick to honour her late husband, David. Since 2001, it has been run by their daughter, Angela.
Michael Kaczorowski, a nine-time nominated and three-time Emmy Award-winning producer and executive producer, is currently the creative director and producer of Bangkok Swagger. As executive producer, he is responsible for some of Animal Planet and Discovery's biggest and most iconic hits including Carrier: Fortress at Sea, Raising the Mammoth, and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts.
Rhodia Mann is a writer, researcher, bead and jewelry designer, and historian of several traditionally-pastoralist tribes in Kenya, including the Samburu and Borana tribes of northern Kenya. She has published six books and is the creator of a documentary, The Butterfly People.
