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Legal action aimed at stopping luxury lodge opening on

Friday

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Maasai conservation group says venture blocks migration

corridor

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Marriott ( MAR ) says local developer had all necessary permits

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Developer says assessment found site was not wildlife

crossing

point

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Tourism development is flashpoint in East Africa's

grasslands

By Aaron Ross

MAASAI MARA NATIONAL RESERVE, Kenya, Aug 12 (Reuters) -

W hen Ritz-Carlton opens its first safari lodge on Friday in

Kenya's Maasai Mara reserve, guests will pay nightly rates

starting from $3,500 per person for tented suites with private

decks overlooking a river crossed by migrating wildebeest.

But the director of a Maasai conservation institute and

researchers say the true cost of those sublime views will run

much higher by damaging one of the world's most renowned

ecosystems.

On Tuesday, Meitamei Olol Dapash from the Institute for

Maasai Education, Research and Conservation (MERC) filed a

lawsuit in a Kenyan court against Ritz-Carlton, its owner

Marriott ( MAR ), the project's local developer Lazizi Mara

Limited and Kenyan authorities to try to block the scheduled

opening.

Dapash alleges in the lawsuit that the 20-suite camp, which

boasts plunge pools and personalised butler service, obstructs a

crucial migration corridor between Maasai Mara and Tanzania's

Serengeti. Researchers say migration allows wildebeest to find

food and maintain genetic diversity among herds.

The lawsuit also says there is no evidence an environmental

impact assessment was conducted. Dapash's lawyers asked the

Environment and Land Court in Narok to suspend the lodge's

opening and hear the case on a priority basis.

Marriott ( MAR ), which entered into a franchise agreement with

Lazizi, said in a statement it was committed to respecting the

environment and that Lazizi had obtained all necessary

approvals.

Lazizi's managing director, Shivan Patel, said Kenyan

authorities conducted an environmental impact assessment, which

had established that the site was not a wildlife crossing point.

The Narok County government and National Environment

Management Authority, which are also named as respondents in the

lawsuit, did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

The dispute is the latest flashpoint in East Africa's

grasslands between luxury tourism and Maasai herders who say

that the sector's development is harming their habitats and ways

of life.

In Kenya, local communities have complained about what they

say are land grabs by wealthy investors. In Tanzania, protests

against the eviction of tens of thousands of Maasai to make way

for hunting lodges have led to deadly clashes with police.

Dapash, who founded MERC in 1997 as a grassroots network of

Maasai leaders, said the Ritz-Carlton's development was the

latest in a long list of lucrative tourism projects that

government officials have green-lighted at the expense of local

wildlife and people.

"Without the county government regulating the tourist

behaviours, the tourist activities, we saw the habitat, the

environment degraded so badly," he told Reuters.

County officials have acknowledged that over-tourism has

harmed Maasai Mara's natural environment but have said that

focusing on "high-value tourism" can help address this by

bringing in more money at less environmental cost.

MIGRATION PATH

Announcing the new Ritz-Carlton in February, Marriott ( MAR ) said

it would offer a "front-row seat" to the annual Great Migration

of millions of wildebeest, zebras and gazelles.

The lodge lies along the Sand River, an important water

source for animals from elephants to birds, that snakes

back-and-forth across the border between Kenya and Tanzania.

Hotel staff declined to let Reuters reporters enter the

property.

Dapash, who is a PhD candidate in sustainability education

at Prescott College in the United States and has run

unsuccessfully for parliament several times, said the lodge sits

on a wildebeest crossing point well-known to locals.

Joseph Ogutu, a Kenyan researcher at the University of

Hohenheim in Germany who has studied wildlife migration in

Maasai Mara, said the new construction would deal a further blow

to fauna in the reserve. Many species' populations in the

reserve have shrunk by over 80% since the 1970s, according to

Kenyan government data.

"It is highly ill-advised to build a lodge on one of the

most critical paths of the Great Migration," he said.

Grant Hopcraft, an ecologist at the University of Glasgow,

said the project would "likely have large and long-term

ecological implications for the migration". Neither Hopcraft nor

Ogutu are party to the lawsuit.

Lazizi's Patel said it was the county government that

proposed the site to him. And he questioned why Dapash had only

started raising objections to the project in recent weeks.

"The project has been ongoing for a year," he told Reuters.

"We pushed it so hard to ... avoid any disruption, damage to the

environment."

Dapash said he only learned of the project in May because it

is far from the main population centre.

The lawsuit questions whether a required environmental

impact assessment was ever conducted.

Under Kenyan law, the National Environment Management

Authority must publish a summary of the assessment in the

official gazette indicating where it may be inspected.

Reuters could not find any such notice in the official

gazette. Patel said he could not share the assessment for

confidentiality reasons and referred Reuters to NEMA. NEMA did

not respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit also says the project violated a management plan

for Maasai Mara adopted by the Narok County government in

February 2023, which calls for "no new tourism accommodation

developments" before 2032.

Patel disputed this, saying the project was built at an

"existing" site that had already been in use for many years. He

did not say how it had been used. Narok County did not respond

to requests for comment.

Dapash said the public needed answers.

"The preservation of wildlife migration for us is a treasure

that we cannot afford to lose," he said. "We need to see that

due diligence was done."