The Cottar family has faced a few challenges in more than a century of running safaris. Charles Cottar, who swapped the plains of Oklahoma for those of East Africa in 1909, had to salvage one of the first motorised safari vehicles after it fell off a ship upon arrival at port. He survived a mauling by a leopard in 1922 but was eventually killed by a charging rhino in 1939. In 1965 his grandson Glen set up one of the
The Cottar family has faced a few challenges in more than a century of running safaris. Charles Cottar, who swapped the plains of Oklahoma for those of East Africa in 1909, had to salvage one of the first motorised safari vehicles after it fell off a ship upon arrival at port. He survived a mauling by a leopard in 1922 but was eventually killed by a charging rhino in 1939. In 1965 his grandson Glen set up one of the first camps for tourists to photograph animals rather than hunt them. Not that the wildlife seemed grateful: that year Glen was gored by a buffalo.
Today running a safari firm is less dangerous, but more complex. The industry faces a difficult trilemma in balancing the demands of tourists, growing local populations and pressured nature. Some operators are trying new business models to resolve it. That is crucial, because in some of the most spectacular parts of Africa, the current model of tourism, if unchecked, will spoil the natural splendour upon which business depends.
Safaris are increasingly popular, attracting some of the 81m tourists who visited Africa in 2025, a record according to the UN. The global industry is valued at some $38bn, estimates Grand View Research, which assesses the market, rising to $67bn by 2033. Most safari-goers are from rich Anglophone countries, notes Go2Africa, a travel firm, but the number from emerging economies like India is growing. In the Maasai Mara, a popular destination in south-west Kenya, the number of lodges has increased from 95 in 2012 to 183 at the end of 2025. In the neighbouring Serengeti National Park, in Tanzania, the number of tourism facilities has increased by almost 800% over the past 20 years, notes Grant Hopcraft of Glasgow University.
Conservationists say the surge of tourists has affected wildlife. The population of large animals in “the Mara” has declined by 70-90% over the past 40 years. The famous migrating wildebeest spend approximately one and half months less in the core parts of the Mara and Serengeti than they did two decades ago, in part because they avoid buildings. Of these there are more than ever, including the first safari-focused branch of the Ritz Carlton, which opened last year near a popular animal-crossing point. Fewer cheetah cubs survive because safari vehicles that crowd around their parents’ kills attract lions and hyenas, which eat the young.
Rapid human population growth, meanwhile, means that there are more people living around natural hotspots. Africa has never been the empty Eden depicted in misty-eyed films and books. Many of its reserves and parks were created by colonial authorities who evicted indigenous people. Nevertheless the population of Narok County, which manages the Masai Mara National Reserve, has increased by 3,000% since 1947, or from 38,000 to 1.2m. The number within the whole Mara-Serengeti region has doubled over the past 20 years and is forecast to double again in the next 20.
About half of Maasai, the pastoralist group in the area, live below the official national poverty line. Their efforts to make ends meet are putting more pressure on land they—and tourism firms—depend on. They are increasingly fencing off hitherto communal land for farming or to sell grazing rights, blocking animals’ migration paths. Forests are being felled for fencing and charcoal. Cattle, sheep and goats graze on ostensibly protected areas. When your correspondent arrived in the Mara the first 300 or so animals he saw were cows. One third of the MMNR is degraded from over-grazing. Human-wildlife conflict is intensifying, with people killing elephants that trample on their land and, on occasion, poisoning carcasses to kill predators.
One potential way to reduce the pressure, at least from tourists, would be if places like the Mara became more exclusive. Some African countries have a high-price, low-volume tourism model. Typically only 100,000 tourists visit Botswana’s Okavango Delta every year. Rwanda charges $1,500 per person to see its gorillas, and is considering raising the price. Many conservationists working in the Mara argue that visiting it should become more expensive.
But it will be hard to change. “We would love to raise prices but we are competing with 250 other operators,” says the boss of one safari firm. Politicians are unlikely to embrace quotas or other restrictions. Narok County receives more revenue per year than any other Kenyan county (including Nairobi) through leases and a portion of the “bed fees” paid by tourists. Local bigwigs, who claim ownership of the land on which many lodges sit, also benefit from the fees.
On the other side of the border Tanzania is promoting tourism via what it calls the “voluntary relocation” of Maasai. Samia Suluhu Hassan, the president, says the point is to ease “population pressures” around key tourist sites. These pressures are real, but Human Rights Watch, an NGO, says the tactics, including stopping public services, equate to “forced evictions”.
Is there a better way? Many safari firms these days promise to “give back” to “communities”. But Sue Snyman of the African Leadership University points out that some firms pay little attention to what these people actually want, which is often cash. If there are financial benefits, they often go to the most powerful in the area.
Cottar’s Safaris pays to lease the land it uses from the Maasai-owned conservancy. The land is held in a community-owned trust. Annual lease payments are paid to the trust, which distributes the money to 6,500 members, whose title deeds have been paid for by the safari firm. The trust consults households about whether they would prefer social projects or money—and nearly all prefer the latter. Louise Cottar, the CEO, argues that local people cannot be “peripheral beneficiaries”. Unless they get more from helping to conserve the environment than from using it in other ways, tourism and nature will suffer in the long-term.
Elsewhere in Kenya many of the locally owned community conservancies organised in the Northern Rangelands Trust have deals with tourism operators. In South Africa &BEYOND, a luxury travel outfit, has returned 9,000 hectares to their ancestral owners as part of the post-apartheid process of land restitution. In Namibia’s Damaraland Wilderness, another safari operator, established a joint venture with a conservancy that involved the transfer of ownership as part of a ten-year agreement. Kenya and Zimbabwe are changing conservation laws to encourage more such arrangements.
The big question is whether there is enough money to go round to resolve the trilemma. In sparsely populated conservancies with expensive facilities, there may well be, especially if combined with other sources of income like regulated grazing or farming. But elsewhere the dividends may be too meagre. Hence the push by conservation NGOs like African Parks to explore “biodiversity credits”, where philanthropists or donors pay communities to preserve ecological hotspots. These will be hard to measure and verify, however.
For some critics safaris are colonial cosplay, where tourists are part of a long-running, extractive business model—like mining, but with more gin and tonics at the end of the day. That is unfair. Most visitors simply want to experience the wonder that these trips can stir. But without the right policies and business models, there will soon be little left for them to look at.
One Subscription.
Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines
to 100 year archives.
Archives
HT App & Website