Borana Conservancy

Borana is 28,000 acres on the Laikipia plateau, on the northern slopes of Mount Kenya just north of the equator, and it is one half of something larger than itself. The fence that separated Borana from Lewa Wildlife Conservancy next door was taken down, joining the two into a single 93,000-acre rhino landscape held by two separate organisations. That decision is the thing that defines Borana and it is what makes choosing between the two a question about character rather than about wildlife.

A Ranch That Became a Protected Area

The land was granted after the First World War and formally established in 1928, and it was run as a livestock, wool and farming operation for most of the century that followed. Michael Dyer took over its care in 1984, and the family’s shift from ranching towards conservation happened gradually rather than at a stroke.

The two dates that matter are recent. In 2013 a founding population of 21 black rhinos was introduced to Borana. Those animals had a long route: rhinos were first reintroduced to Lewa in 1984, moved on to the community conservancy at Il Ngwesi, and reached Borana in 2013. In 2022, Borana Ranch became Borana Conservancy and was formally recognised by Kenya Wildlife Service and the Ministry of Tourism as a gazetted protected area, which is an unusual status for privately held land in Kenya and puts Borana on a different legal footing from most of its neighbours.

The Fence That Came Down

Once the Borana rhinos were established, the boundary fence with Lewa was removed. Nothing comparable had been done in Kenya by two privately run organisations, and the reasoning was ecological: a black rhino population needs room, and two separately fenced blocks of rhino habitat sitting side by side were artificially limiting both.

The combined Lewa-Borana Landscape covers 93,000 acres and, by Borana’s own count, carries over 250 black and white rhino. Lewa publishes a figure of more than 280 for the same landscape and states that this is 14 per cent of Kenya’s rhinos. Neither conservancy publishes a separate count for its own ground, because after the fence came down there is no meaningful way to produce one. The landscape also takes in Ngare Ndare Forest to the south, part of the World Heritage property that Lewa belongs to.

A rhino figure quoted for Borana alone, or for Lewa alone, is almost certainly a landscape figure with the wrong label on it. The animals move between the two properties freely and the conservancies count them together.

Cattle and Wildlife on the Same Ground

Borana has not stopped being a ranch, and that is deliberate. Cattle run on the same land as the rhino, and the conservancy’s stated approach commits tourism, ranching and other enterprises to building local livelihoods rather than treating livestock as something conservation has to displace.

This is the substantive difference from a pure conservation property and the reason Borana is interesting to travellers who care how the model actually works. The questions a visitor can usefully ask here are about grazing rotation, how many head the land carries, what happens in drought, and whether the cattle and the wildlife are competing. The answers are not rhetorical.

The community side runs on the same logic. Borana works with the Il Ngwesi people through the Group Ranch Act framework, and two community-owned tourism enterprises, Il Ngwesi Lodge and Tassia, sit on neighbouring community land. The conservancy also runs the Maiyanat land regeneration programme and a livestock sharestock scheme that gives neighbouring herders a stake in the ranching operation.

Wildlife and Terrain

Borana is higher, more broken and more dramatic than Lewa, with valleys, ridges and long views back to Mount Kenya. The ground favours walking and riding over long-lens photography from a vehicle.

The species are the shared northern set: black and white rhino, elephant, lion, leopard, African wild dog, reticulated giraffe, Grevy’s zebra and Beisa oryx. The Grevy’s are the nationally significant animal here as across the plateau, with the Grevy’s Zebra Trust’s 2018 count putting 2,812 of a global 3,042 in Kenya. Reticulated giraffe are assessed as Endangered, at 20,901 by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation’s estimate.

What There Is to Do at Borana

Because Borana is conservancy rather than park land, the activity set is the full Laikipia one and the terrain pushes it towards things done on foot or on a horse.

• Rhino tracking on foot, which works here because of the monitoring and ranger investment behind it rather than because rhinos are easy to find
• Walking safaris, from short morning walks to longer routes across the ridges
• Horseback safaris, with Borana among the established riding properties in Laikipia
• Cycling on conservancy tracks
• Night game drives, which park land does not permit
• Game drives with off-road latitude, which matters for wildlife photography
• Cultural visits to the neighbouring Il Ngwesi community

Getting There and Getting In

Borana is reached the same way as Lewa: roughly four hours by road from Nairobi through Thika, Karatina, Naro Moru, Nanyuki and Timau, or by scheduled and charter flights from Wilson Airport in Nairobi to a local airstrip. Nanyuki is where road logistics are arranged.

Access is by staying on the conservancy. Borana publishes no day entrance fee and no public gate tariff, and since it is private land in Laikipia County rather than a national park, no Kenya Wildlife Service schedule applies to it. Anyone comparing access models across the plateau should start with the Laikipia guide, where the split between open-gate and stay-only conservancies is set out.

Borana sits naturally between Mount Kenya to the south and Samburu or the Mathews Range to the north, and most trips use it as a leg of a northern circuit rather than a destination on its own.

When to Go

Year-round, with the usual Laikipia caveat that the long rains around April and May and the short rains around November affect what can be done on foot and on horseback more than they affect whether the animals are there. The dry months give firmer ground and concentrate game at water. The altitude keeps the days workable and the nights genuinely cold, so a warm layer matters more here than most first-time visitors to Kenya expect.

Questions Travellers Ask About Borana