The legacy we leave

With each passing year, the wild edges of our world grow smaller. Time outdoors has been replaced with time online, and we’re now completely entangled in the digital, outsourcing our memories to apps and exchanging awe and wonder for efficiency and convenience. As our focus is stolen more and more day by day, we lose touch with the most essential thing of all: nature. And I don’t just mean nature as a landscape, but as a life force and a legacy. Entire species are vanishing from our planet with barely a whisper and the natural world, that great mirror of our humanity and the cathedral of our soul, is disintegrating. Can you imagine the loneliness of spirit future generations will suffer if there are no wild spaces and no wildlife left? When the endangered species of our time (besides animals) - freedom, space, stillness and silence - are gone completely?

Every so often, something extraordinary happens that fills me with gratitude – not that we can turn back the clock, but that we can at least slow its ticking. That moment came last week at Segera Retreat in Laikipia, Kenya, when critically endangered Eastern black rhinos were reintroduced to their ancestral homeland for the first time in over half a century. This extraordinary feat is an important phase of the Kenya Rhino Range Expansion project, a visionary plan in which the ZEITZ Foundation, Segera and other conservancies are working together to create one of the largest contiguous rhino sanctuaries in the world that could eventually span up to 840,000 acres.

In the 1980s, Kenya’s black rhino population plummeted from 20,000 to fewer than 400. Poaching, habitat loss and human encroachment brought rhino to the brink of extinction. That number is hard to fathom, yet through tireless conservation work, the population has rebounded to almost 5,000 today. A triumph, yes, but one that teeters on a fragile precipice. Many of Kenya’s existing sanctuaries are now at capacity, placing incredible pressure on already stressed and vulnerable ecosystems. Genetic diversity amongst rhinos is suffering, the breeding rates are slowing and without new, secure habitat, the risk of reversing decades of progress is high.

As we witnessed the trucks opening and the rhinos stepping back onto the sacred soil at Segera, it was the symbolism that struck me the most. The sheer hope and gratitude of it… The return of a keystone species not just to a landscape, but to a story we have had the privilege and power of rewriting.

I have watched in awe as Segera has transformed over the years from dust bowl to a oasis; I’ve witnessed communities change from merely surviving to thriving; and I have seen guests arrive, disconnected and distracted, and leave nourished, revived and restored. This land and these people that we share with you, our guests, are the result of deep trust, loyal friendships and the unwavering belief that luxury can (and must) serve a higher purpose. Taking good people to great places where the real work happens, where transformation is truly possible – that is what we do.

We have always believed that travel must do more than move us. It must create space for transformation, our own and beyond, and leave a long-lasting legacy and protected future. We do not take our commitment to conservation lightly, nor the access we have to places like Segera, and to moments like this.

If you are in search of fulfilling a deeper yearning and witnessing what’s possible when visionary leadership, scientific excellence and real, sustained investment converge, we would welcome you to Segera Retreat in Kenya. To begin your journey, please contact welcome@roarafrica.com