Community-driven Conservation Reteti - Milk Mammas

Reteti is the first community-owned elephant sanctuary in Africa. The Reteti team work to rescue, rehabilitate and release orphaned and abandoned elephants and are based in Namunyak Conservancy in Northern Kenya.

The sanctuary is a great example of community-driven conservation because this community are standing up for their elephants and directly benefitting from it.

All 60+ elephant keepers are from Namunyak Conservancy, and, as any of you who have visited can attest to, the care and dedication they put into their work is humbling. They’re all highly trained; looking after elephant calves is not easy work and they need 24-hour care.

What is also fantastic about Reteti, is that recently, in partnership with The Sarara Foundation, they have started a Milk to Market program. Through the program, Samburu mammas from Namunyak Conservancy sell excess goat milk not needed by their families, to the sanctuary. The initiative started during the pandemic when the milk powder they used to import was in short supply and it has been a great success. The goat’s milk is much more nutritious and cost-effective than the milk powder. It also directly supports and empowers the women in the community, who are often responsible for smaller animals like goats and for milking them.

Each morning the ‘Milk Mammas’ (as they call them) gather with their canisters of goat’s milk at collection points in different areas of the conservancy, and the Reteti team travel to these points to collect the milk and pay them for their contributions. The team then bring the milk back to the sanctuary, where it gets pasteurised and incorporated into the preparation of the elephant’s milk bottles. The sanctuary is now purchasing over 9000 litres of milk a month, supporting over 300 women and their families.