Legado: Mathews

Community meeting in the Namunyak Community Conservancy | Photo by Vivian Jebet, NRT

Legado: Mathews works to
create Thriving Futures with Samburu communities in the Mathews Mountain Range in Kenya

Legado: Mathews began in 2020 in collaboration with the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), and the Namunyak Community Conservancy Group, whose conservancies are home to Samburu pastoralists and the Mathews Mountain Range, one of the largest remaining tracts of forest in Northern Kenya.

As partners, we are working with the Legado Model to create a more inclusive framework and a legacy-based collective vision and plan for the Namunyak Conservancies. A particular goal is to better integrate the upper lands of the Mathews Range into the overall strategy to ensure this critical landscape is secured.

Elephants at Namunyak's Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, the first community owned elephant orphanage in Africa |
Photo by Jeff Waweru

Samburu homestead, Namunyak
Community Conservancy |
Photo by Vivian Jebet, NRT

NRT is a membership organization owned and led by the 39 community conservancies it serves in northern and coastal Kenya. NRT was established in 2004 as a shared resource to help build and develop community conservancies, which are best positioned to enhance people’s lives, build peace, and conserve the natural environment. NRT is tasked by community leaders to support indigenous communities in their own objectives to cooperatively develop locally-led governance structures that complement traditional, indigenous systems, run peace and security programmes, take the lead in natural environment management, and manage sustainable businesses linked to conservation. The Namunyak Community Conservancy group is part of NRT and includes Ngilai, Kalepo and Nalowuon community conservancies.   

Legado: Mathews is a unique partnership for creating Thriving Futures for the Mathews Range and will play a key role AS a pilot program which could then be expanded in other Northern Kenyan ConservAncies .

Photo by Vivian Jebet NRT