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STI News Blog >> Blog Home Dave Blanton Serengeti on the Brink
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We’re in danger of losing the Serengeti. Once more, the cry “Serengeti shall not die” is being raised.
The most immediate threat – an outrageous plan to build a Serengeti highway. Does the struggle for sustainable tourism get any bigger than this?
Last May, my friend, writer and photographer Boyd Norton, called me with the news. He had just returned from the Serengeti, where he saw pink ribbons tied to the trees. His guide told him they were for the new highway to be cut through the park. His call launched an international opposition to the Serengeti that is going on today.
The Serengeti highway is planned to link the Lake Victoria region with eastern Tanzania, cutting across a pristine and remote wilderness. It will carve a swath across the migration path of millions of animals, bisecting and even removing a section of the Serengeti National Park.
This is not a track or a road — it is, astonishingly, a high speed highway for trucks that could quickly reach hundreds a day. According to Tanzania’s own 10-year management plan, developed in 2005 by scientists, Park officials, and conservation organizations, the northwestern part of the Park is particularly sensitive and should be left as a wilderness area. Yet this plan was ignored, Park officials lost jobs.
Scientists around the world agree – the road will have disastrous effects on the entire ecosystem. Northern Serengeti and the adjacent Masai Mara are critical for the wildebeest and zebra migration during the dry season, being the only permanent year-round water source for these herds. Recent calculations show that if wildebeest are cut off from these critical dry season areas, the population would likely decline from 1.3 million animals to about 200,000. The migration would collapse. Of course, roads always bring settlements, markets, towns, agriculture, industry, increased threat of poaching, and of course, human-wildlife conflict.
Why would the government vow to plow ahead with such a highway? That’s the $470 million dollar question. Speculation has flourished. Ostensibly and publicly, to link a population in western Tanzania cut off from the rest of the country, a political promise made during the presidential election five years ago.
But few believe that altruistic reasons are behind the decision. There are gold mines around Lake Victoria, perhaps other minerals as well, such as rare earth minerals used in cell phones. Who knows what else? Chinese are said to be interested in linking Central Africa to the Indian Ocean and, according to “informed sources” are willing to fund the highway. Others, including many Tanzanians, simply say that, as usual, greed rules. It is likely that there is a combination of reasons, creating a perfect storm of interests, most of them private and political. And no, as usual, it’s not likely that local people will be the winners.
Adding to the puzzle -- there is an alternative, a better, southern route well below the Serengeti National Park. It would not only link more areas of the country by connecting pieces of existing roads, but it would serve five times as many people.
The news of the highway quickly went viral. And the opposition has cut across nearly every conceivable human category. A Facebook page (Stop the Serengeti Highway) sprang up. A small group of us monitored and cultivated it, replying to tens of thousands of bewildered and outraged people around the world. And we built a website (savetheserengeti.org) documenting every facet of the campaign.
We organized a petition from members of the international travel industry. It warned the government about the disastrous economic consequences that would follow the highway. Included was an impressive survey of likely effects, including a spontaneous (even if undesirable) boycott of travel to Tanzania.
This we followed with a petition to the world’s big lending institutions, government donors, and aid organizations, asking them to lobby the Tanzanian government and “find and fund an alternative.” Now with more than 25,000 petitioners, we know it’s reaching its target.
We then created a petition and study from more than 300 world scientists. Their overwhelming consensus – the highway would likely end the migration and devastate the ecosystem.
Finally, we felt the need to formalize and focus this opposition, so we created Serengeti Watch, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Earth Island Institute. Its first goal, stop the highway and get the alternative southern route approved and funded.
Yet, the fact that the highway has even been proposed illuminates something deeper, a new and ominous vulnerability. The questions are obvious –
How could the Serengeti face such a threat? Where is the great pride, the ethic of conservation that has characterized Tanzania from its independence? Isn’t tourism, one of the most important economic assets Tanzania has, enough to protect its great natural heritage? And, if we can’t save the Serengeti, what can we save?
These questions are disturbing. They suggest that the Serengeti, and all World Heritage Sites, are more vulnerable than we ever thought. If they are to survive, we need to wake up, be animated by a new sense of urgency, and start building bulwarks against an onslaught of threats.
One of the most revealing aspects of our campaign: the economic argument – the loss of tourism jobs and revenue -- seems to have the most leverage. As with climate change, conservationists and scientists were dismissed by many Tanzanian politicians as “green activists.” But the economic impact, well, it can’t be so easily ignored.
We’re making some progress with the highway. But there are a host of other threats facing the Serengeti ecosystem. The highway, in fact, was proposed twice before, and even if stopped this time, could easily be resurrected.
Sustainable travel has never seemed more important than now. Serengeti Watch is responding by building a broad based coalition of the travel industry, and travelers themselves, to keep the Serengeti alive.
We’ll soon be launching Friends of the Serengeti, a membership organization for tour companies. For more information, contact me at:
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