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Kenya's Masai Mara game park faces a disastrous surge in tourism after a government decision to give away land around its borders.
Unscrupulous investors looking to sidestep a ban on new hotels inside the reserve are buying up 150-acre plots which had been given by the government to the formerly nomadic Masai tribesmen.
At least 23 new tented camps and larger lodges are now being built on the edges of the park, adding to 40 or more existing ones.
The immediate fallout is likely to manifest in a surge in tourism as the number of hotel beds jumps by a third, from 1,500 to an estimated 1,900.
The knock-on effect of another 300 to 400 tourists a day in the 600-square-mile reserve would be catastrophic, with greater harassment of wildlife, track erosion and pollution, conservationists warn.
At one Mara river crossing point on Thursday, where migrating wildebeest risk hungry crocodiles as they try to reach fresh pasture, 56 vans filled with camera-toting tourists lined both banks.
"That does really spoil the moment," said Katherine Maunder, 32, a fashion designer from Oxford on a honeymoon safari with her husband, Marcus, 34.
Ranches divided
The threat to the reserve started with a decision by Kenya's lands ministry to subdivide vast common ranches where the Masai have grazed their cattle for generations into tens of thousands of individual plots.
These are being handed to every adult Masai tribesman who registers - and some are then sold on to developers for 12,000 pounds (Dh87,463), a relative fortune.
Aside from the new camps, several of the new land-owners have fenced their plots, blocking wild-life migration paths.
Kenya's authorities have long been concerned about congestion in the park and uncontrolled construction on its boundaries.
Tourism officials tried to impose a moratorium on new lodges while they estimated how many visitors the reserve could take, as The Daily Telegraph reported in January.
Figures showed it was "counter-productive" as camps continued to spring up regardless, many without proper approval.
What is needed, according to hoteliers and conservationists, is a new approach to managing the Masai Mara. Small-scale camps outside the reserve with no more than one tent per 700 acres of wilderness should pay rent to the new Masai landowners, they say.
Fair income
"This will create protected areas for wildlife, prevent mass tourism, and generate a fair income for the Masai communities who own the land," said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board.
Two rental projects have already been established. A group of 156 Masai have joined their plots together to create the sprawling Olare Orok conservancy, 10 minutes north of the gates to the Mara reserve.
Three small camps, including one run by Grieves-Cook, pay 70 pounds monthly rent to each of the Masai, who promise not to graze cows there, or build villages or chop wood.
"They are sending their children to school," said Sammy Ole Mpusia, 32, who helped set up the Ol Kinyei conservancy.
Jackson Ole Sayialel, 23, who guides tourists at a 20-bed eco-lodge which is part of the rental scheme, said: "People who have sold their plots are finding that their lives are not good. They are wasting their money on alcohol, and in a few years they will have nothing themselves and nothing for their children's future."
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