How did the Massais lost their grazing lands? Explain any five reasons.

The Maasai community lost their grazing lands due to the following reasons:
(i) In 1885. Maasailand was cut into half with an international boundary between British Kenya and German Tanganyika.
(ii) The best grazing lands were gradually taken over for white settlement’ The Maasai lost about 60 per cent of their pre-colonial lands.
(iii) They were confined to an arid-zone with uncertain rainfall and poor pastures’
(iv) The British colonial government encouraged local peasant communities to expand cultivation. As cultivation expanded, pasturelands were turned into cultivated fields’
(v) Large areas of grazing land were also turned into game reserves like the Maasai Mara and Samburu National park in Kenya and Serengeti Park in Tanzania which was created over 14,760 km of Maasai grazing land. Pastoralists were allowed to enter these reserves. They could neither hunt animals nor graze their herds in these areas.