Richard Leakey, the former head of the Kenya Wildlife Service, is no stranger to controversy. In the 1980s he stopped elephant poaching almost in its tracks with a “shoot to kill” policy that ruffled liberal feathers. Later, his burning of 12 tonnes of captured ivory was seen on television news bulletins around the world.

Now running Wildlife Direct, a group trying to save animals such as mountain apes in some of the world’s most conflict-ridden areas, Leakey is back in the headlines. In a series of speeches, including a recent address to the Royal Geographical Society, he has attacked some of the holy tenets of modern environmen-talism, including “eco-tourism”, which he dismissed as an “oxymoron” based on a “desperate race to make money while you still can”.

He has also called for the privatisation of the management of Kenya’s parks, including the Masai Mara, and even contemplated reversing a decades-old opposition to the return of hunting – an issue certain to attract the ire of foreign wildlife groups.

Now 63, and no longer involved in the hurly-burly of Kenyan politics, Leakey claimed in an interview with Times Travel that his views were being misrepresented. His opposition to eco-tourism, he says, is not so much to the concept, which he broadly accepts, but to its management. He fears that well-intentioned tourists are being ripped off by unscrupulous operators.

“People are being duped, people are pouring in as eco-tourists and we are just shrugging our shoulders,” he says. “In this part of Africa there is absolutely no regulation as to who is an eco-tourist and who is not.

“Can a lodge of 150 people really be eco-friendly? No. People worry about global warming and feel they should do their bit. They come back from holiday saying, ‘We’ve seen beautiful nature and worked hard to reduce our carbon imprint.’

“We need tourism, but we have to do a lot more about standards or we will lose the lot... Some operators are making real efforts, but these things have to be regulated. There has to be more than a fuzzy feeling about the environment. We need concrete things – listings, points taken off ratings if requirements are not attained. At the moment the word eco-friendly is being exploited in a way that is totally unjustified.”

Leakey says that he is particularly concerned about the situation in the Masai Mara – the Kenyan end of the Serengeti – which has been turned into a “theme park” by firms and lodges claiming to be environmentally friendly. “If you go to the Masai Mara, there are trucks all over it; the number of lodges and hotels is ridiculous, the pollution caused by untreated sewage, kitchen wastes and the like going to feed baboons and so on is out of control. It is a mere shadow today of the Mara that was created as a reserve,” he says.

Leakey wants to see greater use of the private sector in running Kenya’s parks and reserves, but says that these are a national asset and ownership should remain with the state.

“I think that private-sector management is needed to look after the parks as the public sector is simply not developed enough. The management [of the parks] is currently insufficient. The private sector would be much more efficient, but I mean private-sector management, not ownership.”

Eco saviours

A leading Kenyan tourist figure, Calvin Cottar, of Cottars Safari Service, agrees that there is a limit to how eco-friendly a 150-bed lodge can be, but says that the problem “boils down to the individual operator – and some are good, others are diabolical”.

“We have to find a way to help the Masai capitalise their land, and we must ensure they are paid a fair value for it. Tourism is the only way this can be done; if it isn’t, the land will not be preserved for wildlife.”

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