About the park

The history of Amboseli National Park

Name: Amboseli National Park
Address: Kenya

Amboseli has been fought over for as long as it has been protected, because the water that makes it a wildlife park also made it vital dry-season grazing for Maasai herds. Its history runs from colonial game reserves through a bitter 1970s settlement with the Maasai, half a century of famous research, and a transfer of management to Kajiado County that the High Court suspended in December 2025.

If you only want the answer

Amboseli is the remnant of a colonial Southern Reserve that KWS dates to 1906. It became a national reserve shared with Maasai herders in 1948, a county council reserve in 1961 and a national park, gazetted on 1 November 1974, after a presidential decree took the swamps out of Maasai grazing. The baboon and elephant studies began in 1971 and 1972, UNESCO named the wider ecosystem a biosphere reserve in 1991, and the 2009 drought killed over 90 per cent of the wildebeest. A 2025 deed transferring management to Kajiado County was suspended by the High Court on 30 December 2025; KWS still runs the park.

The basin before the park: Maasai, caravans and an explorer

People used the Amboseli basin long before anyone drew a boundary round it. A 2018 review in Frontiers in Earth Science describes hunter-gatherers, then pastoralists and farmers, using the basin in the late Holocene, when Lake Amboseli was already shrinking from the far larger lake of the Pleistocene to the playa that now only fills in wet seasons. The same review records the Maasai account that during the 1800s groups of Maasai, many of them from what is now Tanzania, moved into Amboseli.

The swamps made the basin a stopping place. KWS's management plan notes that the nineteenth-century caravan route from Mombasa to Kilimanjaro used them as a staging site, and KWS links Observation Hill, the Maasai Nomatior, to the history of the Ndorobo hunter-gatherers.

The first European account is Joseph Thomson's. The Scottish explorer reached Amboseli in 1883 and asked how such enormous numbers of large game could live in such an extraordinary desert. The question is still the right one, and the answer is the springs under the swamps.

Colonial reserves, and the dates nobody agrees on

KWS's management plan describes the park as a remnant of the 27,700 square kilometre Southern Game Reserve established in 1906. The same plan's own historical annex gives a different sequence, an Ukamba Game Reserve created in 1899 and regazetted as the Southern Reserve in 1911, and Expert Africa dates the Southern Maasai Reserve to 1899.

This page uses 1906, the date in the main text of the KWS plan. If you meet 1899 or 1911 in another account, they come from the earlier and later notices the plan's annex describes for the same reserve.

1948 to 1971: a reserve shared with the Maasai

In 1948 the reserve was cut to 3,260 square kilometres, named Amboseli National Reserve and placed under the National Park Trustees; the KWS plan's annex gives 1947. Crucially, the Maasai kept their grazing and watering rights inside it, so the swamps remained shared ground.

In 1961 the same area became a county council game reserve run by the Kajiado County Council. From 1967 the ecologist David Western began the long-term work that became the Amboseli Conservation Program, and a 1969 park and land-use plan proposed that the Maasai community be a primary beneficiary of tourism.

1974: the national park and the swamps

The park was made in stages. A 1971 presidential decree set aside about 390 square kilometres exclusively for wildlife and tourism, the boundaries were demarcated and gazetted as government land in 1972, and Legal Notice 160 of 7 August 1973 established the park, which the KWS plan dates to October 1973. The gazettement KWS itself cites is Legal Notice 267 of 1 November 1974. The statutory area today is 392 square kilometres.

The decision cut the Maasai off from the swamps that had watered their herds in the dry seasons. The Amboseli Conservation Program's own history says the 1969 plan was overtaken by the presidential edict of 1974 and that a bitter stand-off between local and national government followed. The settlement left the 162-hectare Ol Tukai enclave in the centre of the park with the county council for lodge revenue, gave the community a share of gate revenue, and piped water from the park's springs to watering points outside so that the herds no longer needed to enter.

In 1976 the national parks and game departments were merged and the new wildlife department, the predecessor of Kenya Wildlife Service, took over the park. The Ol Tukai enclave, where Ol Tukai Lodge stands, has remained Kajiado County property ever since.

Since 1971: the research that made Amboseli famous

Two of the world's longest-running wild animal studies started here within a year of each other. The Amboseli Baboon Research Project began in 1971 and its records now cover 21 social groups up to 2023, which makes it one of the longest-running studies of any wild mammal population. A year later, in 1972, Cynthia Moss, who had moved from Newsweek to study elephants at Lake Manyara, formally established the Amboseli Elephant Research Project after finding, with Harvey Croze, ideal conditions for watching elephants in Amboseli.

The elephant project is now in its 54th year and has followed 4,076 individuals from birth. Its findings on the role of old matriarchs, on elephant voices and on lifespan fill more than 150 peer-reviewed papers. The Amboseli Trust for Elephants was created in 2000 as the project's legal body, and in 2015 it launched its Elatia programme, named after the Maa word for neighbour.

The research camp is a workplace and takes no drop-in visitors, but the Trust arranges a small number of lectures by appointment through its Nairobi office, for a donation.

1991: a biosphere reserve, and the ranches around it

In 1991 UNESCO designated the Amboseli Biosphere Reserve, which KWS describes as Kenya's fifth. UNESCO gives its area as 798,298.70 hectares, with the national park as the core and six group ranches as the buffer: Olgulului-Ololarashi, Eselengei, Mbirikani, Kimana, Kuku and Rombo. Protected Planet records a smaller area for the same reserve, so treat the size as UNESCO's figure. The park's first management plan was also prepared in 1991.

The designation recognised what the park's own history had shown: the 392 square kilometres inside the boundary only work because the animals can move across the ranches outside it. The elephant population alone ranges over about 8,000 square kilometres.

Droughts: 2009 and 2022-23

The 2009 drought is the disaster in Amboseli's modern history. The Amboseli Conservation Program reported that year that over 90 per cent of the wildebeest and 70 per cent of the zebra and buffalo had died of starvation within a few months, that elephant calves unable to follow their mothers into the swamps were starving, and that the losses were by far the heaviest of any Kenyan park. The Amboseli Trust for Elephants records that the drought killed many of the old matriarchs who led the families. No verified count of the elephants that died has been published.

The effects lasted. Collared lions spent much more time outside the park after 2009, and the elephant families lost leaders whose knowledge had kept calves alive. The KWS plan lists earlier droughts in 1975, 1977, 1980, 1983-84, 1991-92, 1999-2000 and 2004.

The next big one came in 2022-23, when 179 elephants died in 2022 and 67 in 2023. The recovery is under way: more than 220 calves were born in 2025.

Fences, subdivision and the conservancies

The biggest long-term change around Amboseli is on the land outside it. KWS's management plan records that group ranch subdivision has been adopted in all the group ranches of the ecosystem and calls it the biggest threat to the park's viability. The plan defines the ecosystem as the park plus the six group ranches, about 506,329 hectares, and the Amboseli Ecosystem Trust works with over 27,400 landowners.

The response has been conservancies and corridors. Maasai landowners lease land to conservancies such as Kitirua, Selenkay and Tawi, and the Kimana Community Wildlife Sanctuary is community-owned. The Kimana Corridor, which the Big Life Foundation says is only 46 metres wide at its narrowest point, links the park to the sanctuary, with a solar-powered crop-protection fence along it. In 2025 Big Life said it had secured more than 100,000 acres of habitat with local communities, and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants used 32 camera traps to identify fence-breaking elephants and trialled five ways of stopping them.

2023 to 2026: who runs Amboseli?

The oldest argument about Amboseli, whether it belongs to the nation or to Kajiado, came back in 2023. The Amboseli Trust for Elephants' 2023 report records that in August 2023 the President decreed that the park would be returned to the management of Kajiado County. The steps that followed are in the Kenya Gazette and the court record, summarised in the table below.

As of 4 October 2026 the position is this: Amboseli is a national park run by Kenya Wildlife Service, and the 2025 deed handing its management to Kajiado County is suspended by the High Court while a constitutional challenge is heard. Press reports in July 2026 gave 5 October 2026 as the date for the full hearing, and no ruling on the contempt summons had been published on Kenya Law by 4 October. The legal position may have moved since this page was written, so check before you rely on it.

Date	What happened	Source
August 2023	The President decrees that the park, administered by KWS, will be returned to Kajiado County management	Amboseli Trust for Elephants, Annual Report 2023
19 October 2023	Kajiado County sets up a technical committee to oversee the transfer and management of the park	Gazette Notice 14106, Kenya Gazette Vol. CXXV No. 230
23 February 2024	The Cabinet Secretary appoints an advisory committee on the transfer of the park	Gazette Notice 1939, Kenya Gazette Vol. CXXVI No. 22
14 October 2025	Deed of Transfer of management functions to the County Government of Kajiado signed, citing a presidential directive; gazetted on 24 October 2025	Gazette Notices 15230 and 15231, Kenya Gazette Vol. CXXVII No. 219
30 December 2025	The High Court, in Constitutional Petition E737 of 2025, suspends Gazette Notice 15231 and restores the position before the deed, pending a full hearing. It finds that managing national parks is a national function and that bypassing the National Land Commission and Parliament raises serious constitutional questions	[2025] KEHC 19235 (KLR)
7 July 2026	At Kimana Gate the Kajiado Governor gives KWS seven days to leave the park; the county's own affidavit of 20 July 2026 says KWS remained in full, exclusive and uninterrupted management	[2026] KEHC 13580 (KLR)
18 August 2026	The court summons the Governor to appear on 16 September 2026 to show cause why he should not be committed for contempt	[2026] KEHC 13580 (KLR)

The outcome of the 16 September 2026 contempt hearing and of the petition itself had not been published on Kenya Law at 4 October 2026.

What you can see of this history today

Climb Observation Hill and you are standing on Nomatior, the place KWS links to the Ndorobo, looking over the swamps the 1974 decree took out of Maasai grazing. Ol Tukai, below you to the east, is the county-owned enclave the 1970s settlement left with Kajiado, which is why Ol Tukai Lodge sits on county land in the middle of a national park.

Outside the boundary the newer history is just as visible: subdivided ranch land, the Kimana Corridor and its fence east of the park, and conservancies where Maasai landowners lease ground for tourism. KWS's brochure also lists the Lemong'o museum and Noonkotiak centre about 6 km from Kimana Gate.