She is recovering from the attack after surgery in Nairobi, friends and family say.
Kuki Gallman, the Italian-born author and nature conservationist, was shot and injured in an ambush at her Kenyan ranch on Sunday morning.
The 73-year-old was surveying her Laikipia property when herders reportedly shot her in the hip and stomach. The herders were searching for pasture as Kenya suffers an intense drought, local police chief Ezekiel Chepkowny said, according to The Associated Press.
She was airlifted to a hospital in Nairobi and emerged from surgery in stable but critical condition, Gallman’s friends and family say.
Herders have said they need land from Gallman’s 139-square-mile conservancy to graze their livestock. Authorities believe some of them recently set fire to a retreat on Gallman’s property favored by her late son.
“ Fear not, ” she wrote on her Facebook page after the alleged arson.
