ONE DAY IN FEBRUARY 1995, Anthony Maina sat on a boulder on his farm, gazing at his last two goats. He used to have 10, but an ongoing drought had killed five and floods had killed three. Maina, a resident of Lake Elemetaita village, in Kenya’s Rift Valley, had seen the seasons change and the weather become unpredictable. Rains had become erratic, and yields of local crops — maize, beans, and potatoes — had diminished. There were fewer trees and less grass, and the village’s namesake lake was shrinking.

“It was a worrying trend to us,” Maina, who is now 80, recalled recently. “The rainfall sometimes was below average, resulting in crop failure and drought that killed our livestock, or too much, causing floods, destroying crops, roads, and houses, besides sweeping away people and livestock.”

Farmers were worried they would not be able to feed their families, let alone produce a surplus for sale in the nearby town of Gilgil. They asked their children to stay home from school, to help earn a living, and farmers and herders began to argue with each other about the land.

The village was once beautiful, shaded by acacia and olive trees, visited by hundreds of species of birds, the center of the once-thriving area. Something had to be done. So the people of the lake decided they had to save it.

ELEMETAITA LAKE IS a shallow, salt-water lake, located about 75 miles west of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. Today, it is part of a three-lake World Heritage Site and a Ramsar designated wetland of international significance. In the days before it dried up, it used to be surrounded by woodlands and was home to a host of bird species, including pink flamingos and pelicans.

Maasai pastoralists were the first people to live here. The Maasai called the area “Ol Muteita,” meaning “Dusty Place,” and echoes of their language are found in its name today: Elemetaita. Life was simple here, and the climate was good. People produced enough food, and herdsmen also had enough fodder for livestock.

Francis Mwaniki, 72, a village elder, remembers the change in the area as drought crept in. “By 1995, the land was no longer productive and was turning semi-arid,” he said. “Poverty levels in the village surged. Families were no longer able to educate their children, and many … dropped out of school, as food insecurity also became another nightmare.” Even divorces increased, he said. “There was near total collapse of social fabric in the village.”

This created something of a panic. Some residents hurriedly sold their land for as little as $100 per acre, relocating to other, far-away villages. But those who remained decided to turn things around. They began looking for a sustainable, long-term solution. Their ultimate goal was restoring the lost glory of the lake and its birds, rehabilitating the land and the scenery. With this in mind, they formed a welfare group and began to hold regular meetings to discuss solutions.

At one such meeting, Anthony Maina, then a 51-year-old farmer and livestock trader, shared his thoughts with the other remaining 500 households. He described how farmers in Murang’a County in central Kenya were planting trees to save their farms from soil erosion.

Maina also told the residents about Kitui and Makueni counties, where people no longer relied on relief food supplies from the government and NGOs because their land, though semi-arid, had become productive after they planted trees. The farmers there now produced enough food from crops, including a variety of beans and fruits, for local and export markets, he told them. The people of Elemetaita decided they too, should give reforestation a try.

“They agreed with my opinion and elected me to chair a special committee formed to spearhead further consultations and an action plan,” Maina explained. “We, the committee members, led fellow villagers in the first six years of the project until other officials were elected to replace us.”

THE VILLAGERS OF Elemetaita belong to the Kikuyu tribe, the largest and most entrepreneurial in the country, well known for forming companies to buy land from fleeing Europeans, mostly British, in the early years of independence in the 1960s. This entrepreneurial spirit helped them as they approached the problem of the lake.

One of their first steps, in 1997, was to create a conservation group called the Lake Elemetaita Ecotourism Self-Help Project. The project required that the 500-odd households remaining in the area become members of the self-help group and that they contribute $0.20 per month for the reforestation and restoration of the lake.

Monthly cash contributions were paid to the treasurer and deposited in the project’s account at a bank in nearby Nakuru City. All the villagers participated in decision-making, including spending priorities. The committee presented cash receipts, expenditures, and balances at every monthly meeting.

“We also presented a copy of certified bank statements to the members,” Mary Wanjiru, who was then the treasurer, said.

Joseph Ndung’u, 47, who was a young villager at the time and is now a tour guide, said that in retrospect, the group acted to mitigate the advancing effects of climate change as it made use of common funds.

“We decided to approach the issue in three phases,” he said recently. “Phase one included the collection of indigenous tree seeds from forests and setting up tree nurseries.”

Residents looked for recognizable, beneficial trees, including those with medicinal and cultural value. They harvested seeds and seedlings from trees remaining in the village and those in nearby forests. These included acacia, broad-leaved croton, African olive, milletia, African cherry, and jacaranda.

They then established tree nurseries on roadsides and in public spaces. Women took care of the saplings in rotating shifts, while men went out in search of more seeds and seedlings. These nurseries exist even today, and villagers continue to replace dry and old trees. They also sell seedlings to the public and schools, as part of community-income generating project. The villagers began with 10 nurseries, each measuring about an acre. There are now more than 50.

Once the community had raised 10 million seedlings, in 1999, they began the second phase of the project. “We began planting them in the village, around the lake and schools,” Ndung’u said. “We also dug trenches and opened waterways directing rainwater to the lake.”

Five years later, the village had good shrub cover, with plenty of grass for livestock. The number of flamingos, pelicans, and other bird species rose, along with water levels in the lake. Even the insects, such as termites and mosquitos, came back.

The small, seasonal rivers, which had provided fresh water to the village before they dried up, began carrying water again. “These were positive signs for everybody in the village and motivated us to work hard for the project,” Ndung’u said. “The hope of achieving our goals, like the people of Murang’a, Kitui and Makueni counties, became even greater. Travelers, passing by, began to admire the new look of the village and the lake.”

The final phase was to market the village as a tourist attraction. Local youth documented the history of the lake and village. Teachers and students carried out research. They read history books and interviewed elders from their village and those neighboring.

Paul Kamau, 76, a retired geography and history teacher from the village, headed the documentation team. The history collection was the hardest part of the project, he said, because most of the village youth had limited literacy. “I divided them into five groups of four members each to go and interview residents of neighboring villages, who lived here many years before us,” Kamau said. “There was an educated youth in every group to take notes during the interviews.” Kamau met with the groups twice per week to discuss their findings.

He drafted simple and easy to understand questionnaires. “Ask your age-mates to tell you what their parents and grandparents told them about this area and the lake,” one such question reads. “Also ask the old people what they know about this area and the lake, and let them tell you what their parents and grandparents told them, too.”

“Our conservation style is a role model in the country,” Kamau said. “Schoolchildren come here for practical conservation lessons on harvesting seeds, preparing tree nurseries, and planting the seedlings.”

Eventually, villagers erected handwritten billboards by the roadside that informed visitors about the area’s history and culture.

According to Ndung’u, the growing popularity of the village and the lake attracted more history and geography researchers, as well as students from nearby towns. These included visitors from Egerton and Nairobi universities. The students took notes and asked questions as they listened to tour guides. The numbers of visitors increased.

IN 2000, THE INITIATIVE attracted the attention of the US embassy in Nairobi. The self-help group was given a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to construct a water tank in the village, train tour guides, and to build a main gate to the lake and an office for the group. Subsequent support from USAID included a grant to purchase tour-guide equipment. The project is now self-sustaining. (Unfortunately, the current Trump administration has effectively dismantled USAID.)

The group opened access roads to the lake and started charging entrance and escort fees to visitors, generating income for the community. Foreigners would pay $10, citizens $2, and students $0.50 per person. These fees are still in place today.

“We use the income to grow and maintain different species of tree seedlings and to support community projects, such as medical and school fees for the neediest families and the elderly in the village,” Ndung’u said. “We also sell seedlings to the public and institutions.”

Today, Lake Elemetaita is a healthy habitat for all manner of plants and animals. The trees that have grown here provide shade, medicine, and an income. The area around the lake has been designated an Important Bird Area, a global site for bird and biodiversity conservation, and home to more than 450 bird species, including 116 species of migratory water birds. The nearby wetlands are a national wildlife sanctuary. Visitors here not only experience the wonders of nature, but they are treated to a story of recovery, community, and climate resilience.

But many challenges remain.

The flip side of rehabilitating the ecosystem is that it is now a place where people want to live. Which means land prices here are going up.

In the early 2000s, the growing number of visitors to the lake attracted brokers who began buying up land in the area in anticipation of investors wanting to set up hotels and homes. Land prices rose from $150 to $750 per acre. Some early investors took advantage of the low prices, buying land and keeping it to sell after prices rose even higher, taking villagers aback.

“I bought 10 acres in 2005 at $250 each and sold them to investors in 2020 at $50,000 per acre,” John Njoroge, a land broker, said. “We, the brokers, bought the land from [the villager] at throwaway prices and sold it to investors for millions.” Today, investors have put up modern homes, hotels, lodges, and golf courses. Some of these developmetns are pushing out local residents who can no longer afford to live here.

In addition, a four-year drought in the country, the worst in 40 years, has set back a lof of the gains made in conservation, and climate change continues to put pressure on the region.

Elizabeth Wanjiru, 62, remembers the challenging moments the community experienced in the 1990s. But she’s happy with the outcome of their efforts. Last year, Wanjiru visited the first 10 tree nurseries the group planted in the early days of the project, where so much of the work took place.

“Sometimes we think ourselves ahead of climate change, only to discover later that we are behind it,” she said. “However, we have done all that is humanly possible, within our means, to conserve our environment.”