Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
perhaps a few thousand dollars only 5 years earlier. The following section
examines some of the outcomes of these local ventures in greater detail.
Community-based tourism ventures in
Northern Tanzania: Outcomes and impacts
Community-based tourism in Tanzania has demonstrated the potential to gener-
ate significant returns on its conservation, socioeconomic and business objectives
as ventures have spread and evolved during the past 15 years. But major
challenges have also crystallized, mainly relating to the governance of these enter-
prises at both local and national levels. This section examines local experiences
with community-based tourism in the Serengeti and Tarangire ecosystems of
northern Tanzania.
Community-based tourism in the Serengeti
Serengeti National Park is the world's premier terrestrial wildlife area and forms
the core of the greater Serengeti ecosystem, which spans the Kenya-Tanzania
border and includes six formal state protected areas, including Kenya's Maasai
Mara National Reserve. The ecosystem's boundaries are defined by the annual
seasonal migration of wildebeest and zebra - approximately 1.5 million animals -
between the dry season refuge of the Mara to the north, and the wet season
calving grounds on the Serengeti plains to the south (Sinclair, 1995). Although
the Serengeti ecosystem contains about 30,000km 2 of state protected lands, this is
not enough to contain the entire annual range of the migratory ungulates. In
November, when the short rains usually arrive and the animals begin to head
south from the Mara, they pass through community lands in Loliondo Division,
which borders the northeastern side of Serengeti National Park. In May and June,
when the long rains end and the wildebeest head back north, they move in a clock-
wise pattern through the Serengeti's western corridor along the Grumeti River,
and then swing to the north-east on their way back to the Mara. Along this route
they pass through large expanses of community lands in Serengeti and Tarime
Districts. Both of these areas, to the west and east of Serengeti National Park, have
become foci of community-based tourism over the past decade, although this
review will only examine experiences in Loliondo.
The Loliondo area contains the eastern fringes of the greater Serengeti
system.The area is inhabited by Maasai agro-pastoralists, some of whom formerly
lived in what is now Serengeti National Park prior to the area's gazettement in
1959. Maasai communities in Tanzania co-exist extremely well with large wild
animals, as a result of both their mobile livestock-based land use systems and
traditions of not eating most species of wildlife (Homewood and Rodgers, 1991).
In the Loliondo area, game surveys have found no discernible difference in
wildlife densities on either side of the park boundary in Loliondo, at least as of the
early 1990s (Campbell and Borner, 1995). Other research has found densities of
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