One of the most important regions of conservation on the globe is the combined area of parks, conservation areas and preserves associated with the Great Rift Valley in Northern Tanzania and Southern Kenya. This is the Ngorongoro Crater/Serengeti/Masai Mara block of parks and conservancies that account for one of the last remaining undisturbed habitats of its type in Africa. It is here that the great migrations occur that are one of the wonders of the natural world, and a phenomenon that attracts thousands of tourists annually for a rare and increasingly unprecedented spectacle.
Serengeti & Mara
With such vast natural productivity available in a region of frenetic population growth and general human development, issues of conservation and protection are bound to be contentious. The Serengeti, before and after the establishment of a national park, has witnessed peaks and troughs of natural abundance and decline, and although adequately protected and managed today, has not always been the undisturbed natural wonderland it currently is.
Serengeti and its associated habitat is composed broadly of treeless plains that were formed by the layering of volcanic ash, and acacia woodland that define the northern reaches of the park and the adjacent Masai Mara in Kenya. The dominant herbivore species in wildebeest, with an estimated 1.3 million individual making up the combined population, and some 200 000 plains zebra as well as 400 000 of the smaller Thomson’s Gazelle. The region supports great biodiversity with a variety of predators, birds and smaller wildlife species.
The wildebeest population in the late 1950s hovered at around 300 000, with a rapid increase thereafter to a peak in the late 1970s of 1.5 million, a factor that illustrated increased awareness during this period of the fragility of this region and the need to apply greater protection. With this the numbers of predators such as lion also peaked, and the general health of the environment improved.
Arresting the Decline
However the fate of the elephants did not correspond at this time, and the lowest point for elephant populations in the Serengeti/Mara region was between the late 1960s and early 1980s. With increased market for ivory, widespread corruption and the proliferation of automatic weapons throughout the region, poaching for ivory reached such alarming levels that ecologists had begun to predict the imminent disappearance of the species from East Africa, along with highly endangered populations of black rhino, also relentlessly predated upon for their horns.
1989 saw the international ban on ivory trade, which effectively strangled elephant poaching, resulting in a dramatic rise in elephant populations. Black rhino, however, are no longer represented in the Serengeti National Park, and survive only as a remnant and highly protected population in the Ngorongoro Crater Reserve.
Serengeti is nowadays the focus of many international conservation programs, with the result that it is considered adequately protected, and that the preservation of the habitat and its ecological diversity can be regarded as safe. However that is not to say that no new threats exists, and that long standing threats have been extinguished. Human population pressure remains the principal threat to most of Africa’s dwindling natural habitat, and in particular along the east shores of lake Victoria, steady population growth and increased livestock ensure that the human/wildlife debate will continue to be divisive and fertile.
The Future
Currently it is estimated that 200 00 animals of various kinds are killed annually by poaching, and mainly for the meat trade, which in recent years has assumed highly commercial proportions. The current thinking in conservation circles, however, is less to attempt the total exclusion of indigenous populations from the control and management of wildlife, but to give them a greater stake in order that tourism revenues principally are more evenly distributed in order that an alternative value can be perceived than the simple and direct exploitation of wildlife to satisfy economic needs.
It is also true that such species as black rhino and wild dog that have disappeared from the park can be reintroduced if their populations can be protected.
So the future of this vital ecological region hangs in the balance, it is not in decline, but the assurance of its protection into perpetuity is not guaranteed. Modern concepts of conservation challenge old ideals, and remain to be proven, but the future of conservation in Africa cannot be to exclusion of human populations, and must increasingly be in partnership.
