nocturnal bat-eared fox, rarely present elsewhere in Kenya, can be seen within the reserve borders.
More than 470 species of birds have been identified in the park, many of which are migrants, with almost 60 species being raptors.Birds that call this area home for at least part of the year include: vultures, marabou storks, secretary birds, hornbills, crowned cranes,ostriches, long-crested Eagles, African pygmy-falcons and the lilac-breasted roller, which is the national bird of Kenya.
Administration
Unlike most other National Parks in Kenya the Maasai Mara National Reserve is not administered by the Kenya Wildlife Service, but by local authorities. The more visited eastern part of the park is managed by Narok County Council and the western part, known as the Mara Triangle, by the Trans-Mara county council, which is contracting management to the Mara Conservancy, a local nonprofit organization formed by the local Maasai that contains several anti-poaching units.
The outer areas known as Maasai Mara Conservation area is administered by the Group Ranch Trusts of the Maasai community who also have their own rangers for patrolling the park area. The wildlife roam freely across both the Reserve and Conservation areas which are a continuous wildlife ecosystem.
Research
Maasai Mara, view of Mara River.
The Maasai Mara is a major research centre for the spotted hyena. With two field offices in the Mara, the Michigan State University based Kay E. Holekamp Lab studies the behavior and physiology of this predator, as well as doing comparison studies between large predators in the Mara Triangle and their counterparts in the eastern part of the Mara.
Since 2008, Amanda Subalu sky and Chris Dutton have been working in the Mara River Basin to help develop a trans-boundary river basin management plan between Kenya and Tanzania. In 2010, they had completed a flow assessment for the river to identify the
