Who owns it, who sets the rules, where the money goes

National park

Owned by the state, managed by a national wildlife authority, open to anybody who pays at the gate. Tsavo, Amboseli’s core, the Serengeti, Bwindi and Volcanoes are all parks.

The rules are statutory, which is the important part: they are identical for every operator inside the boundary, and no camp can negotiate them for you. In general that means no driving off the track, no driving after dark, walking only where the authority has specifically provided for it, and no limit on how many vehicles may attend a sighting.

What a park gives you in return is the thing it was gazetted to protect. The crossings, the crater, the gorilla families, the volume of animals in one place — those are park assets and a private lease cannot conjure them.

National reserve

Owned by a county or district government rather than the central state. The Masai Mara National Reserve and Samburu National Reserve are the familiar examples.

Practically, a reserve behaves like a park: same restrictions on driving, similar fee structure, open to all. What varies more is enforcement, because it depends on a county authority rather than a national one. The Mara Triangle — the western third of the Mara reserve, managed by a separate not-for-profit on the county’s behalf — is the well-known exception, and it is noticeably more tightly run than the rest.

Private conservancy

Land held in private or corporate title and managed for wildlife. Much of Laikipia is this: large properties, some of them former ranches, several of them still running cattle alongside the wildlife.

Because the owner sets the rules, this is the most permissive category in East Africa. Walking, night drives, riding, tracking rhino on foot, running dogs, fly camping, taking a vehicle anywhere sensible — all available where the owner allows it, and most do.

The trade is species. Laikipia is high, dry and beautiful, with excellent elephant, rhino and predators, but it is not the Mara in July and it does not pretend to be.

Community conservancy

Community-owned land leased to a camp or a group of camps under a contract. The conservancies bordering the Masai Mara work this way, as do much of Samburu and a growing amount of northern Kenya.

The lease is the mechanism that matters. It typically fixes a maximum number of beds per acre, caps how many vehicles may attend a sighting, and pays participating landowners a rent per acre every month whether or not a single guest arrives. That last clause is what makes wildlife worth more alive than the alternative use of the land, and it is why the category exists at all.

For a visitor, the effect is a sighting with three vehicles at it instead of thirty, permission to leave the track, and a spotlight after dark.

Private concession

An exclusive-use lease over state or community land, granted to a single operator. More common in Tanzania and southern Africa than in Kenya.

A concession is usually large and usually empty — one camp, sometimes two, across an area the size of a small county. Permissions come from the concession agreement rather than a statute, so walking, fly camping and night driving are typically available.

It is the most expensive arrangement per night and the most obviously different: you are paying for the absence of other people, at scale.

The exception worth knowing

A camp standing on private or community land may still run its game drives into the neighbouring public park. That is not dishonest — the park is often where the animals concentrate at a given season — but it does mean the morning follows park rules even though the bed does not.

Ask where the drives actually go. It is the single question that most often changes what a week will feel like.