Kuki Gallmann (Italian pronunciation: [ˈkuːki ˈɡalman]) (born Maria Boccazzi - 1 June 1943) is an Italian-born Kenyan national, best-selling author, poet, environmental activist, and conservationist.
They acquired Ol ari Nyiro, a 98,000 acres (400 km2) cattle ranch in Western Laikipia, in Kenya's Great Rift Valley which she would later transform into a conservation park.
To bring attention to major environmental topics through art, she 2006 founded the Great Rift Valley Trust together with her daughter Sveva and other Kenyan personalities.
Sveva, her daughter, holds an MSc in Human Sciences from New College, Oxford and coordinates the award-winning 4 Generations Project, an educational scheme to proactively protect local endangered cultures, by bridging the inter-generational gap.
Due to relentless protection, Laikipia Nature Conservancy is a biodiversity oasis that supports and protects an extraordinary variety of plants and animals, the only pristine forest in the area, which includes endangered species such as elephants, cheetah, over 470 species of birds and rare and endemic plants and insects, in addition to archaeological sites.
She has dedicated her life to the protection of the biodiversity of Ol Ari Nyiro where she lives, in memory of her late husband and son who both died tragically and are buried there.
Thanks to protection Ol Ari Nyiro with its springs and forests with endemic species is the water shed for the Great Rift Valley Lake System UNESCO Heritage site".