New Delhi: A court in Kenya Thursday blocked a plea by the lead plaintiff in a demolition lawsuit against a Ritz-Carlton luxury safari camp in Maasai Mara to withdraw his petition.
“The Petitioner herein wishes to withdraw the entire suit instituted by way of petition dated 8th August 2025 with no orders as to costs,” lawyers of the lead plaintiff, Kenyan environmentalist Dr Meitamei Olol Dapash, said in a filing before the Environment and Land Court in Narok the previous day. While no reasons were specified for the withdrawal, Dapash’s lawyers maintained that his concerns had been sufficiently addressed.
The request for withdrawal was filed before Justice Lucy Gicheru.
According to a report by Kenya’s Daily Nation, the Environment and Land Court blocked the attempt to withdraw the petition, saying before allowing the withdrawal, the court must be satisfied that “there will be no prejudice to any of the parties or to the public”.
Reacting to the lead plaintiff’s request for withdrawal Wednesday, Ledama Olekina, Senator from Narok County had in a statement on X said, “The matter is now closed, and there is no room for further interference”.
“Massai Mara is our heritage, and as Narok County, we are fully capable of protecting it,” Olekina added while also warning against prolonging the issue—“this is our final word.”
Respondent Lazizi Mara Ltd—the local developer for the project— through its lawyers, had objected to the withdrawal of the petition, arguing that in the months following the filing of the lawsuit its reputation was damaged substantially due to all the negative publicity. Citing its preference for a full hearing instead, seeking to clear its name, the contractor also sought the imposition of a penalty on the petitioner for vilifying the resort.
The controversy began when Dapash, co-founder of the Institute for Maasai Education, Research and Conservation (MERC), filed a lawsuit against Marriott International, Ritz-Carlton and Kenyan officials in Kenya’s Environment and Land Court, alleging that Lazizi Mara Ltd, a local partner of Ritz-Carlton, built a lodge along the Sand river, in violation of a 2023 Maasai Mara Management Plan moratorium on new structures in wildlife corridors.
The Maasai Mara national reserve in southwestern Kenya is home to large populations of iconic African species, including the African lion, elephant, leopard, and buffalo. The region is especially famous for the annual wildebeest migration, also known as the Great Migration. Each year, about 1.5 million wildebeest, zebras, and gazelles migrate from Tanzania’s Serengeti into Maasai Mara between the months of July and October, braving dramatic river crossings, grazing vast plains and recycling nutrients essential to the ecosystem before looping back towards the Serengeti.
The lawsuit argued that the lodge sits in a key crossing zone and fragments this pathway, which is described by conservationists as a “living highway”, running the risk of habitat loss and disrupting migratory patterns. The location, it said, is also incompatible with Kenya’s own management plans that identify sensitive zones where new construction should be paused or restricted.
Major environmental organisations had spoken out earlier this year, warning against placing luxury tourism above ecological integrity. Greenpeace Africa, taking note of the petition, had said, “The development threatens the balance of the Mara ecosystem and sidelines the rights of the Maasai people. This continues a long history of developments on Maasai land moving forward without genuine Free, Prior and Informed Consent.”
In November, however, the Kenya Wildlife Service issued a statement on X, dismissing these claims. “The Ritz-Carlton safari camp is situated within a designated tourism investment low-use zone, as provided for in the Maasai Mara National Reserve Management Plan, 2023 – 2032,” it said. Adding, “Migrating wildebeest are using the entire breadth of the Kenya-Tanzania border within the Reserve (approximately 68 km wide), without a specific preferred route or corridor.”
This is an updated version of the report
Disha Vashisth and Niyati Kothiyal are alums of ThePrint School of Journalism currently interning with ThePrint
(Edited by Niyati Kothiyal)
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