Wildlife in Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba

Your odds, species by species

The bands below assume two or three days of game drives in the dry season across Samburu National Reserve and Buffalo Springs. Guaranteed means you would be unlucky to miss it. Very likely and good chance depend on your route and your patience. Takes luck means an animal worth talking about at dinner, and not here means the animal does not live in these reserves.

These are small reserves in dry country, and the game concentrates along the Ewaso Ng'iro. The river circuits are where most of the sightings happen, with the oryx as the exception because they prefer the open ground away from the water. One warning about the numbers on this page: the aerial counts quoted here cover the Laikipia, Samburu, Marsabit and Meru ecosystem together, which is far larger than the three reserves, so they are context rather than a headcount for the ground you are driving.

• Grevy's zebra Guaranteed 2,561 counted in this ecosystem in 2021
• Reticulated giraffe Guaranteed 4,531 in the ecosystem, 2025 reporting
• Elephant Guaranteed Tied to the river in the dry months
• Plains zebra Very likely Often mixed in with Grevy's, which makes the difference obvious
• Beisa oryx Very likely 2,414 oryx in the ecosystem, 2021
• Gerenuk Very likely Browses standing on its hind legs
• Grant's gazelle Very likely 10,022 in the ecosystem, 2021
• Olive baboon Very likely 2,085 in the ecosystem, 2021
• Nile crocodile Very likely In the Ewaso Ng'iro in numbers
• Vervet monkey Very likely Riverine vegetation
• Lion Good chance About 50 monitored across the wider landscape
• Spotted hyaena Good chance 5,189 counted in Kenya in 2021
• Lesser kudu Takes luck Only 85 counted in the ecosystem in 2021
• Leopard Takes luck Never counted nationally, so nobody knows how many
• Cheetah Takes luck Rated rare here, with no local figure published
• Wild dog Takes luck Mostly on community land outside the reserves
• Wildebeest Not here Missing from the 2021 ecosystem count entirely
• Thomson's gazelle Not here 1,862 in the ecosystem, almost all of them Laikipia animals
• Masai giraffe Not here 13,530 in Kenya in 2021, all of them in the south
• Fringe-eared oryx Not here That subspecies lives south of the Tana, in Tsavo
• Sable antelope Not here Kenya's herd is at Shimba Hills, on the coast
• Roan antelope Not here Not in this ecosystem at all

Species silhouettes from PhyloPic (CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA). Ecosystem counts come from the June 2021 aerial survey in the National Wildlife Census 2021 Report, which covers Laikipia, Samburu, Marsabit and Meru together.

Grevy's zebra, and the number that is going the wrong way

Grevy's zebra is the animal that makes this corner of Kenya matter. It lives in the dry northern rangelands of Kenya and southern Ethiopia, which is why the southern parks do not have it, and the National Wildlife Census 2021 Report states that the Laikipia and Samburu ecosystem holds 93 per cent of the world population. Samburu is one of the few places inside that range where you can see the species in a formal reserve.

The 2021 census counted 2,649 Grevy's zebra in Kenya, of which 2,561 were in the Laikipia, Samburu, Marsabit and Meru ecosystem, or 96.7 per cent of the national figure. Laikipia held 38 per cent of them and Isiolo 703 animals, 27 per cent. Kenya's second national census, counting between June 2024 and August 2025 and published on 11 December 2025, came out at 2,465. That is a fall of 184 animals in four years, and it is the single most important number on this page. The census team itself warns that some of the differences between the two surveys may come from different seasons and different methods, so the fall is a signal worth taking seriously rather than a precisely measured loss.

Other figures circulate and they do not agree. The Great Grevy's Rally, a photographic citizen science count, produced about 2,350 animals in 2016 and about 2,800 in 2018. The Grevy's Zebra Trust gives 3,042 worldwide, with 2,812 in Kenya dated 2018 and 230 in Ethiopia. The IUCN assessment of 2016 puts the figure at fewer than 2,000 mature animals, although the IUCN counts only adults while the censuses count every animal. Three methods running alongside each other explain most of the spread. The 2,465 from the 2024-25 census is the current official number.

One more fact explains why the conservancies around these reserves keep coming up. Less than 0.5 per cent of the Grevy's zebra range lies inside protected areas, so the species depends on community conservancies and ordinary community land for its survival. The reserve boundary is a line on a map that the zebra cross constantly.

In the field this is the easiest of the Samburu specials. You will see Grevy's on most drives, frequently standing in mixed company with plains zebra, where the narrow stripes, the white belly and the big rounded ears make the difference obvious at fifty metres.

Reticulated giraffe: 99.3 per cent of them are in Kenya

The giraffe here is the reticulated giraffe, with sharply outlined panels divided by narrow white lines. In southern Kenya and Tanzania you get the Masai giraffe and its ragged vine-leaf blotches. The two do not overlap here, so the contrast with a southern park is visible from the first sighting.

State of Giraffe 2025, published by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation in June 2025, puts the world population at 20,901 with a confidence range of 20,574 to 33,045. Of those, 20,746 live in Kenya, which is 99.3 per cent of every reticulated giraffe on earth. Ethiopia holds 101 and Somalia 54 and falling. This ecosystem holds 4,531 of them, 29 per cent of the Kenyan total, with the other strongholds in Wajir at 6,120 animals and Garissa at 4,830. The same figure of 4,531 appears in the 2021 national census under Giraffe for this ecosystem, which ties the two sources together.

The history behind those numbers is the reason conservationists watch this species closely. The population ran at 36,000 in 1995, crashed to 8,761 by 2015, recovered to 15,985 in 2020 and reached 20,901 in 2025. That is a rise of 31 per cent in five years and still 42 per cent below where it stood in 1995.

If you see a travel page claiming fewer than 16,000 reticulated giraffe, it is quoting the 2020 estimate of 15,985, which State of Giraffe 2025 has superseded.

On status the picture is unfinished. Muneza and colleagues assessed the animal as Endangered in 2018, at that point as a subspecies of Giraffa camelopardalis. In August 2025 the IUCN formally split giraffe into four species and the reticulated giraffe became Giraffa reticulata in its own right, so a Red List assessment at species level has not been completed. The Giraffe Conservation Foundation recommends keeping the Endangered listing under criterion A2, a population decline of more than 50 per cent over three generations.

Beisa oryx is Endangered, and half the travel trade has not noticed

The IUCN SSC Antelope Specialist Group assessed Oryx beisa as Endangered in 2018, reference T15571A50191877. Plenty of safari pages still describe the beisa oryx as Near Threatened, and that has been wrong since 2018. Some sources date the uplisting to 2024; the reference number points to 2018, and that is the assessment year we use here.

The Tana River divides the two subspecies. The beisa lives north of it in Kenya and on into Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. South of the river, in Tsavo and Amboseli, you get the fringe-eared oryx. Samburu sits well north of the Tana, which makes it one of the most accessible places to see the true beisa.

The June 2021 aerial count recorded 2,414 oryx in the Laikipia, Samburu, Marsabit and Meru ecosystem. Because that whole ecosystem lies north of the Tana, those are beisa, and it is the most useful beisa figure available. Treat the national total of 11,765 oryx from the same census with care, because the census reports under the single heading of oryx without splitting by subspecies, so that number includes the fringe-eared animals from Tsavo. Worldwide estimates put the beisa at 8,000 to 9,000 animals, published through secondary sources without an exact measurement year, against a survey in the 1990s that found at least 25,000 across the whole range.

Seeing them is not hard. Oryx stand in small mixed groups on the open plains away from the river, where there is nothing to hide behind.

The Somali ostrich, a species only since 2014

The Somali ostrich was recognised as a species separate from the common ostrich in 2014, after genetic work dated the split at 3.6 to 4.1 million years ago. It favours denser thornbush and browses rather than grazing, which is the ecological reason you meet this bird in Samburu and the Maasai ostrich in the Masai Mara. The field mark is the blue-grey skin on neck and legs, bright blue on breeding males, against the pinkish red of the common ostrich.

The 2021 census counted 6,483 Somali ostrich in Kenya, against 2,354 Maasai ostrich, so in Kenya the northern bird is nearly three times as numerous as its southern relative. That is the strongest hard number this species has. There is no published global population estimate at all: the IUCN Red List and the BirdLife DataZone both record the population size as unknown with a declining trend. The species is listed as Vulnerable, noted at 2022, and appears on CITES Appendix I.

A figure for the three reserves is unconfirmed. Ostrich does not appear as a separate line in the 2021 ecosystem count, which suggests the density here is low compared with Tsavo and Amboseli, where ostrich were counted separately. In practice, reckon on one or two sightings across a stay of two or three days, and not an ostrich on every drive.

Gerenuk, and why it is not endemic to Samburu

Part of the travel trade calls the gerenuk endemic to Samburu. It is not. The species occupies a large part of Somalia, Ethiopia and eastern Kenya. Samburu is a good place to watch one, which is a different claim.

What makes it worth the attention is the way it feeds. The gerenuk rises onto its hind legs and uses an extremely long neck to strip leaves above the reach of every other antelope, and it barely drinks, taking its water from the foliage. That habit suits the thornbush along the Ewaso Ng'iro exactly, and guides go looking for it because the upright pose is one of the fixed photographs of the reserve.

The IUCN lists the gerenuk as Near Threatened with a declining population, an estimated fall of 25 per cent over fourteen years and a position close to the threshold for Vulnerable. The global estimate is around 95,000 animals, although the year of the underlying assessment could not be established. Kenya held 13,400 in the 2021 census. The June 2021 aerial count logged 842 in this ecosystem, and an aerial survey systematically undercounts a small antelope standing in bush, so treat that as a floor.

Lions: about fifty, and two of them are famous

Ewaso Lions monitors roughly 50 lions including cubs across the Samburu and Isiolo landscape plus parts of Laikipia. A secondary account of the same research gives 40 to 50 animals in Samburu National Reserve itself, described as the highest figure in more than ten years. Nationally the census counted 2,589 lions in 2021, falling to 2,512 in the second census covering June 2024 to August 2025.

Ewaso Lions has run the first formal lion research in northern Kenya since 2003, and one local peculiarity comes straight out of that work. Prides here have a very loose structure and often break up into small parties of a few females with cubs. Since 2022 the lions have been forming larger prides again inside the protected areas, possibly as a consequence of the drought of that year.

Your odds are decent without being a foregone conclusion. A few dozen lions spread over 165 square kilometres plus the neighbouring reserves is nothing like Masai Mara density, so plan for a realistic chance across several game drives instead of a sighting on every outing.

The history here is unusually rich. This is the country where George and Joy Adamson raised the lioness Elsa, the story behind Born Free. Later the lioness Kamunyak became internationally known for repeatedly adopting oryx calves instead of killing them.

Leopard and cheetah, and the counts that do not exist

There is no population figure for leopard in Samburu, and that is not an oversight on this page. The National Wildlife Census 2021 Report explicitly leaves the species out, listing leopard among the animals that were not covered during this census, together with small carnivores and non-human primates. Anyone quoting a leopard number for these reserves has made it up.

Leopards are here and they are shy, and sources that sell Samburu as a reliable leopard destination are overselling it. The riverine strip along the Ewaso Ng'iro with its doum palms and thick bank vegetation is the best chance, early in the morning or late in the day.

Cheetah are rarer still. Independent wildlife assessments rate cheetah in Samburu as rare, and no cheetah figure specific to Samburu, Buffalo Springs or Shaba has been published. Nationally the picture is grim: 1,160 cheetah in Kenya in 2021 against 605 in the second census of 2024-25, roughly a halving in four years. The compiling report cautions that part of that drop may reflect different seasons and methods between the two counts, so it should be read with that caveat attached rather than as a settled biological fact.

Elephants: the best studied herd on earth, and a number people keep misquoting

Save the Elephants was founded in 1993 by the zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, and its Samburu Research Camp, built in 1997 on the edge of Samburu National Reserve, houses 30 researchers and staff. Since September 1997 the project has individually identified more than 900 elephants using the reserves along the Ewaso Ng'iro, and holds detailed life histories of close to 1,000 animals across 29 years. Researchers are said to recognise over 600 living elephants on sight, partly from sketchbooks of ear notches, although that last claim cannot be traced back to a primary source. Elephant Watch Camp, run by Saba Douglas-Hamilton, operates inside the reserve.

Here is the number to get right. The June 2021 aerial count recorded 7,475 elephants in the Laikipia, Samburu, Marsabit and Meru ecosystem. That figure is regularly attributed online to Laikipia County on its own. It covers all four areas together, and any page telling you otherwise has copied the mistake.

Nationally the 2021 census counted 36,280 elephants in Kenya, and the second census of 2024-25, published on 11 December 2025, counted 41,952. The widely repeated phrase of four per cent growth since 2021 does not reconcile with those two absolute figures, which differ by nearly 16 per cent, so we quote the absolute counts and leave the percentage alone.

For the visitor this is the surest sighting in the reserve. Independent assessments rate elephant here as abundant, and in the dry season the herds are tied to the Ewaso Ng'iro, where they come down to drink and cross every day.

Wild dogs: from one surviving female to nine packs

A rabies outbreak wiped African wild dogs out of this region in 1981 and 1982. A small group came back on its own in 2001 according to the Mpala Research Centre, while other sources date the recolonisation of the Ewaso ecosystem to 2003 after thirty years of absence. Then in 2017 the entire Laikipia County population, about 200 animals, collapsed to a single surviving female through canine distemper.

What followed is the recovery worth knowing about. Vaccination programmes and work with the communities brought the population back to nine packs and 80 to 90 animals in the Samburu and Laikipia area over the period 2018 to 2024. A broader estimate, without an exact year, puts more than 220 wild dogs across the wider Ewaso ecosystem taking in central Laikipia, Isiolo and Samburu. The two figures cover different areas, so they do not contradict each other, although the boundaries are not drawn sharply. Since 2021 no wild dog has been deliberately killed, and by the middle of 2024 the number of reported livestock killed by wild dogs had fallen to zero.

National figures for the species went the other way, from 865 in Kenya in 2021 to 310 in the 2024-25 census.

Your chance of seeing one is small and unpredictable. Wild dogs range over enormous distances and spend most of their time on community land outside the reserve, so a sighting inside Samburu National Reserve is a piece of luck, and never something a lodge should be promising you.

Birds: 350 species and a lot of dry-country specials

Wikipedia records more than 350 species for Samburu National Reserve, without giving a source for the figure. The travel trade widely quotes more than 450, and no independent primary source for that higher number could be found, so we use the cautious figure and flag the uncertainty. If you see 450 on another page, treat it as unconfirmed.

The characteristic birds are the dry-country ones. Alongside the five above, the lilac-breasted roller and superb starling are constants. From November to April, Palearctic migrants escaping the European winter add to the list.

One piece of national context belongs here. Kenya's second national census reported a fall of more than 80 per cent in waterbirds at eleven key sites in the country. That concerns wetlands elsewhere in Kenya, and it is the backdrop against which any claim about bird numbers in Kenya should be read.

Avibase maintains a checklist for the Samburu region, but the site blocked automated access during our research, so the exact Avibase total is unconfirmed.

What is not here

There is no annual mass migration in Samburu and no river crossing of the kind the Masai Mara is sold on. Wildebeest are absent: independent wildlife assessments rate them as none for Samburu, and the species does not appear in the 2021 aerial count for this ecosystem, while the same census counted 57,813 wildebeest nationally. Topi is missing for the same reason, with 8,627 counted nationally and effectively all of them in the south-west.

Thomson's gazelle does not occur in the reserves themselves. The census logged 1,862 across the ecosystem, and those are almost entirely Laikipia animals. The gazelle of Samburu is the Grant's gazelle, with 10,022 counted in the ecosystem in 2021.

Two animals get listed here by pages copying from elsewhere. The Masai giraffe, 13,530 of them in Kenya in 2021, lives in the south, and every giraffe in these reserves is a reticulated giraffe. The fringe-eared oryx lives south of the Tana River, in Tsavo, and every oryx here is a beisa.

Sable antelope, roan antelope, mountain bongo, sitatunga and hirola are all absent from this ecosystem. They live in Shimba Hills, the Aberdares, the west and the Tana region. Colobus monkeys are absent as well, because this is dry thornbush and riverine vegetation while colobus need montane forest. The monkeys you will see are the olive baboon and the vervet.

Greater kudu is a genuinely open question. A secondary source lists both greater and lesser kudu for Samburu, while the 2021 census records only lesser kudu for this ecosystem, 85 animals. The national figure of 2,524 kudu is given without splitting the two species. We are not publishing greater kudu as present or as absent until something settles it.

Unconfirmed on this page: any global population estimate for the Somali ostrich, any ostrich figure for the three reserves, any leopard figure for Samburu, any cheetah figure for Samburu, Buffalo Springs or Shaba, the exact number of bird species, the result of the 2024 Great Grevy's Rally (the photo analysis was still awaiting funding), and the area of Samburu National Reserve, given as 165 square kilometres by Wikipedia and 104 by Expert Africa.

Sources

• National Wildlife Census 2021 Report, WRTI and KWS
• Kenya's second national wildlife census, 2024-25, via IFAW (11 December 2025)
• State of Giraffe 2025, Giraffe Conservation Foundation (June 2025)
• IUCN: four giraffe species officially recognised (August 2025)
• Grevy's Zebra Trust: Conservation Status
• Save the Elephants: Research Centres
• Ewaso Lions: Lion Population
• Samburu-Laikipia Wild Dog Project, Mpala Research Centre
• BirdLife DataZone: Somali Ostrich factsheet
• Mongabay: Kenyan wildlife census reveals conservation wins and losses (December 2025)