The Loita Plains are a savanna and pastoral grazing ground in the southern Great Rift Valley in Kenya, just north of the Maasai Mara. The plains and nearby Loita Hills have been the territory of the Maasai peoples since the 19th century and now include ranches and fences. Extensive surveys of the Loita Plains ecosystem were carried out by Vershuren and Misonne, the later an experienced taxonomist, in 1962-3. Focusing on small rodents, they found that most specimens were African grass rats or Natal multimammate mice, but that overall species diversity was very high.