Ol Pejeta Conservancy
John and Jane Kenyon took over the management of Ol Pejeta in 1949 when it was owned by Lord Delamere and together they spent the next 15 years developing the ranch.
When the Kenyons first took on Ol Pejeta, they were joined by Delemere's school friend and business partner Marcus Wickham Boynton.
Since then, the ranch has had a number of owners, including Marcus Wickham Boynton and Adnan Khashoggi, a billionaire arms dealer and businessman considered one of the richest men in the world in the early 1980s.
Elephant populations, which previously used the ranch as a transit area from the north to Mount Kenya and the Aberdares, increasingly took up permanent residence on the property.
Primarily started as a sanctuary for the endangered black rhino, wildlife populations (including the "Big Five") have steadily increased since that time.
[2] In March 2022, Sad Rhinos, a Cardano NFT project, launched a partnership and began fundraising in aid of Ol Pejeta Conservancy.
Other rare animals that can be found on Ol Pejeta include the endangered African wild dog, oryx, Jackson’s hartebeest, Grevy’s zebra, serval, cheetah and bat-eared fox.
The more common African wildlife can be found too, including giraffes, vervet monkeys, baboons, hippos, impala, eland, Grant's gazelle, dik-dik, plains zebra, silver backed jackal, hyena.
Knee-high posts in the ground, situated very close together, present no challenge for elephant, antelope and carnivores, who are easily able to jump or step over.
Two males and two females were moved from Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic in the hope that the climate and rich grasslands of Ol Pejeta, a native habitat for the animals, would provide them with more favourable breeding conditions.
The trade in rhino horn and ivory is so lucrative that increasingly, poachers are gaining access to automatic weapons, silencers and night-vision to carry out their work.
In 2013, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy started to use a drone with the capacity to deliver real time video and thermal imaging feeds to a team on the ground.
Deployed in a poaching incident, this drone will have the capability to help armed teams on the ground, to record video for use in court, and also to help undertake a census of the reserve.
There is a coverage rate of one rhino patrol team to 14 square kilometres (1,400 ha) within the core conservation area of Ol Pejeta.
This close working relationship in return, provides security to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in the form of information gathering and recruitment opportunities.
The Sanctuary opened in 1993 in a negotiated agreement between the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the Jane Goodall Institute.
The facility was initially established to receive and provide lifelong refuge to orphaned and abused chimpanzees from west and central Africa.
An initial group of three chimpanzee orphans were brought to the sanctuary from a facility in Bujumbura, Burundi, that needed to be evacuated due to the civil war.
At the Sweetwaters Sanctuary, chimpanzees are nursed back to health and enjoy the rest of their days in the safety of a vast natural enclosure.
In accordance with national strategy and in liaison with the Kenya Wildlife Service, Ol Pejeta has developed a management plan for certain species.
They work with local government and a variety of elected community representatives across the district to identify projects that qualify for assistance from the Ol Pejeta Conservancy.
They aim to concentrate on the following core areas: health, education, water, roads, provision of agriculture and livestock extension services and the development of community-based conservation tourism ventures.
