ISIOLO, Kenya — A hot wind sweeps across the rocky brush of Camp Simpirre in northern Kenya’s Isiolo county. Baboons cross the pathway to the dinner hall; vervet monkeys patter across the tin roof that shades an assembled group of 47 researchers and academics from the beating midday sun. The night before, some were jolted awake by the sound of a lion’s roar, uncomfortably close to where they were sleeping. Camp Simpirre, just next to the town of Gotu, is an unusual setting for an academic conference, but the Drylands Summer School isn’t a typical conference. Isiolo county, a sparsely populated, arid acacia-studded range where most people make their living herding livestock, is right where researchers who study pastoralism want to be. Camp Simpirre in northern Kenya’s Isiolo county. Image by Ashoka Mukpo/Mongabay. Hussein Tadicha Wario, executive director at the Center for Research and Development in Drylands, a pastoralist research institute based in the area that planned and convened the conference, said the setting is part of the lesson plan. High-level conversations about pastoralism, a lifestyle that still dominates large swaths of East Africa, are often held in Nairobi and other big cities. Decisions made there can be out of touch and impossible to carry out. “Our [approach] is how can we bring the conversation down to the ground,” he said. That ground is dry, sandy and hot. It might not look it on first glance, but northern Kenya’s ecology is rich and intricately balanced. Savanna elephants bathe in nearby…This article was originally published on Mongabay