A HERD of bony cattle plods past the gatehouse of the Lake Naivasha Country Club and turns in single file down a cactus-lined path between electric fences.

On one side is the £150-a-night lodge. On the other, one of Kenya’s vast flower farms, where roses grown for Britain’s supermarkets mature in hothouse tents.

A young, bare-backed Masai boy is leading his cows to graze at the shores of Lake Naivasha in central Kenya, one of only two freshwater lakes in a string of soda pools that dot Africa’s Great Rift Valley.

His forefathers have brought their livestock to water here since they first arrived 10,000 years ago. But now the march of progress and profit could cause the lake to be closed off to the Masai and their cows. In the past two decades, a dozen or more sprawling commercial farms have sprung up around Naivasha, supplying planeloads of flowers daily to Europe and driving an annual £188 million in horticultural exports for Kenya. Flowers picked and packed under Kenya’s fierce noon sun appear two days later on the shelves in Marks & Spencer, Tesco or Morrisons bearing cosy names such as Mixed Posy Thatcham.

In a country where more than half the people live on less than a dollar a day and unemployment is 15 per cent, the lure of well-paid work has helped Naivasha’s population to grow from 50,000 in 1985 to 300,000 today. That has placed intense pressure on the area’s ecosystem, and the core of that is the 170 sq km (65 sq mile) lake.

Now a committee of local businesses, conservationists, the wildlife service and government officers has drawn up a plan to protect the waters. Masai cows on the shoreline are not part of the vision.

“When I was a boy I took my father’s cows and I was able to graze down there all the way to the lake,” said Andrew Kironko, 27, a representative of the Keekonyokie Pastoralists’ Council, a Masai herders’ group. “Now there is a problem. All this land here is farms, ranches, signs saying ‘Private, trespassers will be prosecuted’.”

The Lake Naivasha Management Plan, which its architects say was drawn up in consultation with two Masai elected to represent the tribe, suggests closing the lake to the cows and piping water for them inland to new watering points.

Sarah Higgins, secretary of the Lake Naivasha Riparian Association, which wants to preserve the lake, said: “If you herd 400 head of cattle down to the lake to drink and graze, they will strip vegetation vital to keep pollutants at bay and will add to the pollution in the water at the same time.

“The shoreline vegetation is like the kidneys of the lake; it takes up the excess nutrients, the chemicals and heavy metals before they get into the water. Without it, the water could become polluted and unusable within a year or less.”

Masai blame rising pollution on the flower farms, although many are switching from pesticides to greener methods.

As the population grows around Naivasha, more water is needed and some of the increased waste finds its way back into the lake.

“There’s less and less water coming down into our lake and more and more pollution,” Ms Higgins said.

The Masai brand their fellow tribesmen on the protection plan’s management committee as puppets of big business and sycophants. They have pledged to go to the High Court in Nairobi to stop the scheme.

“If we’d really been consulted, would we have given up our rights to this water or to graze this land?” Nixon Ngurruna, a Masai town councillor, asked. “They are not recognising the Masai; they are making us foreigners on our own land.”

IN THE TRIBE

Until recently, Masai men could not marry until they had killed a lion. Although less common, the practice still exists in more remote regions

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