Serengeti National Park is located in Tanzania which is on the Eastern side of Africa. Serengeti National park is the largest park in the Tanzanian park system, comprising of 14,763 square kilometers. The park is also a World Heritage Site and a Biosphere Reserve (Eagles, 2006). The Serengeti Ecosystem is famous for the continuous migration of over 1.4 million wildebeests, 0.2 million zebra, and 0.7 million Thompson gazelles. The ecosystem also contains one of the highest concentrations of carnivores in Africa, and the park is also home to the endangered black rhino and the African wild dog (Eagles, 2006). Out of Tanzania’s fifteen national parks, Serengeti National Park is the most developed and has the most elaborate network of roads and tracks. The park also has the highest number of visitor facilities within the park, the most park employees, the highest number of ranger posts, and has the most visitors than any other of Tanzania’s national parks (Kaltenborn, 2011).
In 1928, Serengeti National Park started out as a game reserve that also included the Ngorongoro conservation area and was created due to colonial hunting interests. In 1940, it was declared a national park, however, due to World War II, the national park existed as a “paper park” and no improvements were made to the park until years later. By 1959, the park was split into the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (see figure) and by 1981, the park became a World Heritage Site and a Biosphere Reserve (Kaltenborn, 2011).
Tanzania has around 120 tribal groups which make only around 33% of the population. Tanzania used to have the highest literacy rate in Africa in the 1980s, but that has unfortunately changed and is now one of the lowest ranking countries in terms of education. This is due to not enough trained teachers, not enough schools, and not enough money. For secondary level education, the main problems are too expensive school fees, and language as students learn Swahili in primary school and do not know enough English to succeed in secondary school.
The local people around the Serengeti are the Maasai people. These very family-oriented people make up 150,000 people in the country of Tanzania and by Western standards, they live a relatively simplistic life. The Maasai people are proud of their lifestyle and do not see a need to replace it with a modern lifestyle. The Maasai communities are a patriarchal society where they depend on cattle for food. The labor among the Maasai are clearly divided where the man’s responsible for protecting and taking care of the cattle whereas the women’s duty is to raise the children, upkeep the house, cook, and milk the cows. The children in this society help the parents with their jobs.
The greatest current challenge to the Maasai people are concerns of adaptation of rapid economic and social change. There is increasing intrusion on their land that is threatening their traditional way of life as semi-nomadic people. The Maasai people fear that they will lose their kids to Western schooling, and within the next decade, they will have to deal with the integration of modern economies and the political system of Tanzania. That being said, acquiring a higher level of education is becoming a necessity with the Maasai people so they can remain competitive with their neighbors and to survive. Ever since Tanzania gained independence from Britain in the 1960s, land ownership has greatly changed. Grazing boundaries, ranching, and wheat cultivation in the Maasai district is becoming increasingly common. Also, a cash economy is replacing the barter system in the communities. Due to all of this, the Maasai are starting to integrate themselves into the modern economy and the mainstream society of Tanzania.
There is also a growing residential population on the Western side of the park that is not a part of any tribes. In total, there are two million people that live alongside the borders of Serengeti National Park and we will go further in detail on the repercussions of this later in the paper.
For Tanzania, nature tourism is their number one foreign currency owner, and Serengeti National Park made about one-third of all the income generated from Tanzania’s national parks. Compared to other forms of tourism, park tourism has grown faster than national tourism in Tanzania, which shows how important the national parks, especially Serengeti National Park, is to the country’s tourism industry. Also, the park is a major source of employment for the local and national economy (Eagles, 2006). In the article, “Tourism in Tanzania: Serengeti National Park,” a survey was conducted that gives very valuable information about tourists who visited the park. Overall, 90.4% of people who responded to the survey gave the park an overall rating of “excellent” or “above average.” The survey additionally gives a great insight on the types of tourists and how the decide to enjoy the park. The greatest majority of tourists are ones that stay in privately-owned lodges and travel through the park through private safari vehicles, this group makes up 59% of the tourists who visit the park. The next group are tourists who travel in large groups in large trucks and stay in a campsite managed by the park and travel through several African countries, this group makes up 19% if the tourists. The next group are tourists who travel through the park with safari vehicles and stay in one of the campsites that is managed by the park, this group makes up 18% of the tourists. Lastly, the smallest proportion of tourists travel in small groups and stay in exclusive privately-owned campsites, this group makes up 4%. The camping and overland safari visitors have on average household income of less than US $25,000 a year whereas the lodge safari visitors and campers who stay in exclusive campsites usually have household incomes of US $150,000 or more (Eagles, 2006).
Around 150,000 to 200,000 tourists visit the national park per year which generates several million dollars in entrance fees. The mean age for a tourist visiting the national park is 40 years old and 83.1% of these visitors have completed college-level education, representing a well-educated community. The majority of the visitors to the park are from Europe: 20% from France, 17.6% from the United Kingdom, 14.1% from Italy, 7.4% from Spain, 5.6% from Germany, and 4.4% from the Netherlands. Visitors from the United States makes up 10.6% of the tourists and the other 12% is from 22 countries from South America, Asia, Southern Africa, and other European countries not previously stated (Kaltenborn, 2011).
The main issues for the park are poaching, poverty in the surrounding communities, increasing population pressure, habitat degradation, lack of infrastructure and upkeep, shortage of trained staff, the spread of wildlife diseases, and violence in the country. Poaching is a very big problem for the wildlife and the ecosystem of the Serengeti as a whole. There are around two million people that live in the surrounding area of Serengeti National Park and this growing population relies heavily on bushmeat, meat from wild animals, as a source of protein. The key reason for bushmeat hunting is the lack of abundant protein and because of bushmeat hunting, 70,000 to 129,000 wildebeests are killed each year. Since the residential populations around the park, especially on the western side, is growing at a relatively fast rate, about 4%, bushmeat hunting will only become more prevalent, putting great pressure on migratory wildlife populations (Rentsh, 2013).
People with low economic status are forced to pursue economic options that are ecologically degrading in order to live and provide for their families (Kaltenborn, 2011). The Western Serengeti is one of the poorest regions in Tanzania with each adult making an average annual income of US $140 (Holmern, 2007). People in these surrounding communities do have livestock such as cattle, sheep, and goats, but people tend to prefer to buy bushmeat rather than slaughter then own livestock. Interestingly, this is because these communities believe that livestock equals wealth and if you killed one of your livestock, you are reducing your wealth (Eustace 2017). Due to the increasing population along the border of the park, there is also increasing rates of killing large carnivorous animals, some endangered, due to these animals attacking livestock around the park (Kaltenborn, 2011). With the combination of very high rates of poverty, lack of protein, unwillingness to kill livestock, and rapid population increase, it makes sense why bushmeat hunting is becoming so prevalent and becoming such an issue. Unfortunately, research has shown that, total consumption of meat, including bushmeat, is expecting to increase as households make more money through increased agricultural production and job opportunities (Rentsh, 2013). Poaching is already a very big problem and it is projected to get much worse in the upcoming years if nothing is done to fix this problem. If nothing is done to help drastically mitigate bushmeat hunting, migratory animal populations, especially wildebeests, will drastically decrease which will create a harmful cascade down the Serengeti food web. This could greatly hurt the biodiversity and populations of the animals in the park which in turn has the potential to greatly reduce the number of tourists and money going into the park.
The park is also facing habitat degradation as the population of people has been increasing over time. Roads and infrastructure has degraded the park, but most of the degradation is coming from livestock grazing and fires that are regularly set by the local people who live around the park. There is also some mining inside the park but is minimal. There is a direct correlation between population growth and habitat degradation as the growing populations are starting to use land more heavily near the park and inside the park for their livestock. (Kaltenborn, 2011). Tourism also plays a role in habitat degradation, but can be minimized as much as possible with strict enforcement and increased employment of rangers who make sure tourists stay on the path and pick up after themselves to increase the sustainability of the park.
Tanzania lacks the infrastructure necessary to be able to host the desired number of tourists while also providing a high rate of quality and satisfaction. A part of this problem is inadequate international access. Most of the tourists visiting the park, around 66%, arrive from Kenya, 12% arrive from Zambia, and only 18% arrive from Tanzania’s International airports. The road from Arusha to Serengeti National Park is so rundown, many tourists end up flying from Serengeti to Arusha. Additionally, there are very few signs or information along tourist routes, and many areas have been inaccessible and unconnected (Wade, 2001). This is a loss for both the tourists and the industry because it requires the tourist to pay more for the trip, have a harder time going places, and see less of the area. It is bad for the industry because it could deter potential tourists from going to the park due the difficulty of navigating to the park and the surrounding areas, and the extra costs involved because of this, resulting in a loss of income.
From one of the surveys conducted in the park, over a quarter of the people who filled out the survey mentioned issues with the public campsites, poor restroom facilities, and trash. Many of the park’s services were ranked lower than those offered in protected areas in Kenya and South Africa and overland campers, visitors who travelled through several African countries, were especially unhappy with the hygiene issues, rating the restroom facilities very inadequate. Another under-looked issue is that there is evidence that gate attendants are charging Tanzanian visitors with the foreigner fee than the national citizen fee which is much more expensive, and they gate attendants keep the difference in price. This is a bigger problem than people realize because this detracts Tanzanian citizens from coming to the park and leads to less money going into the park (Eagles, 2006).
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