The rolling plains of Kenya’s Maasai Mara and the millions of animals that live there face a shiny new intrusion: a gleaming Ritz-Carlton safari camp.

With private plunge pools, butler service and panoramic views commanding more than $5,000 a night, the 20-hectare lodge has become a luxury lightning rod for controversy.

Leaders of the Maasai — an ethnic group of traditionally nomadic herders with ancestral ties to the area — and conservationists warn the new tourist destination threatens a migration corridor vital to the movement of vast numbers of animals and have filed a lawsuit to halt its operations.

What’s at stake, they argue, is not just a new lodge, but the accelerating pressures of tourism on wildlife, biodiversity and the very spectacle that draws these tourists in the first place.

The camp opened on Aug. 15 during the height of the Great Migration, where millions of wildebeest, zebras and other grazing animals move back and forth between the Serengeti plains in Tanzania and the Maasai Mara National Reserve (MMNR) in Kenya, a process that researchers say allows animals to find food and water and maintain genetic diversity among herds.

Tourists have long flocked to the savannah by the hundreds of thousands, hoping to witness one of the largest movements of mammals in the world, as herds cross rivers and plains teeming with predators.

But the new camp, which boasts “front-row seats to one of the world’s greatest natural wonders” on its website, may threaten the migration that visitors come to witness, conservations and Maasai leaders say.

The Ritz-Carlton camp, on a bend in the Sand River, sits on “one of the most favored corridors for these animals,” Maasai elder Meitamei Olol Dapash told NBC News in an interview Sunday.

“Any guide will tell you, that is the crossing they use,” said Dapash, who filed a lawsuit in August in a Kenyan court against Ritz-Carlton’s owner, Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, as well as the project’s local owner and operator, Lazizi Mara Limited, and Kenyan authorities.

Dapash, executive director of the Institute for Maasai Education, Research and Conservation (MERC), who has a PhD in Sustainability Education from Prescott College in Arizona, alleges in the lawsuit that the 20-suite camp obstructs the crucial migration corridor and is asking the court to restore the land to its original condition.

He told NBC News in an interview there had been instances of wildebeest turning back to avoid the camp and that an elephant was seen struggling to find a path across the river after using the location for more than a decade.

“Attachment to the land and to the wildlife exists up to this very day,” Dapash said, adding that the Maasai had seen populations dwindling. The new camp, he added, “was the last straw for us, we just didn’t want to let this happen.”

The Kenya Wildlife Service government agency pushed back at claims the lodge has impacted wildebeest migration, citing monitoring data that it says shows it does not “fall within, obstruct, or interfere with any wildebeest migration corridors” and adding that migrating wildebeest “are using the entire breadth of the Kenya-Tanzania border.”

It said that “all ecological, environmental and regulatory requirements were thoroughly met and validated.”

Marriott International told NBC News that the development underwent an environmental impact assessment (EIA) “in full compliance with” Kenya’s environmental protections.

The company said it is committed to “the principles of responsible tourism” but declined to comment on Dapash’s claims that the Ritz-Carlton blocked a key route for local wildlife or its own steps to mitigate the construction’s impact, saying these were matters for Narok County, which manages the reserve on the Maasai’s behalf.

Narok County did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment. In court documents seen by NBC News, the county claims that the safari camp complies with the Maasai Mara Management Plan, which imposes a moratorium on new developments amid concerns that poorly regulated tourism was stifling wildlife migration and threatening the reserve’s ecosystem.

Lazizi Mara Limited said the moratorium is part of the case before the court, adding: “We wouldn’t want to comment on issues that are pending determination.”

Dapash told NBC News that he had “no issue with business, but this is not just about hotel, it is about the long-term survival of the game reserve.”

“We feel like we are losing the land, we are losing the wildlife,” he said.

The lawsuit comes amid mounting concerns about the health of the 580-square-mile reserve, where tourist numbers have nearly tripled in recent decades. The Maasai Mara National Reserve reported over 300,000 tourists in 2023. In 1980, total visitor entry was 114,000.

Tourism in the Mara generates an estimated $20 million annually and thousands more indirectly, according to the reserve. In 2023, tourism across the country contributed around 7% of Kenya’s gross domestic product, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

But the rapid growth in lodges and camps has sometimes clashed with conservation efforts.

“A hotel is never just a hotel,” Dr. Chloe Buiting, a vet and wildlife researcher working in the Maasai Mara, said in an interview. “It’s infrastructure, it’s roads, it’s changes to the water and the resources and the use of land.”

Seasonal variation in the availability and quality of food forces animals to move around, said Joseph Ogutu, a Kenyan researcher at the University of Hohenheim in Germany. But he said developments like the Ritz-Carlton are having “a negative effect on migration, because most of these facilities are close to rivers where animals either drink water or breed or seek refuge.”

Dapash’s cause has also found support among experts and tourism groups.

Grant Hopcraft, a professor of conservation ecology at the University of Glasgow, who has been collaring migratory wildebeest in the Serengeti-Mara since 1999, presented maps and data to the court in October showing “regular cross-border movement of wildebeest” at the location of the lodge, according to his affidavit.

RIDE International, a U.S.-based nonprofit providing cultural exchanges and immersive tours in East Africa, has also thrown its support behind Dapash’s lawsuit.

The Mara has been suffering for a long time, said Riley Jon Blackwell, the company’s executive director, with “large hotel chains coming in and trying to service the luxury guests who command to see the best of the best for wildlife.”

The Ritz-Carlton safari camp was “not surprising,” he added in an interview. “It’s just kind of a culmination of a long time, of a direction of things leading this way.”

The camp holds a 2.2-star rating on Google Reviews, with many posters criticizing its environmental impact. Others have praised their stay at the park.

A court is scheduled to hear the case in December.

If Dapash is successful with his lawsuit, Buiting said it could “set a very interesting precedent” for future developments in the reserve.

“From a legal perspective, this could actually be groundbreaking, a turning point,” she added.