Serengeti Highway Alert

Serengeti Highway Alert

Your urgent help needed to stop this.
The Tanzanian government has approved a major highway construction program that will bisect the northern Serengeti. It’s disaster. We need your help, now.

Click here to join the growing list of individuals and organizations opposing this move.

The US$480 million highway will travel just east and south of Ngorongoro Crater and around the eastern side of the Serengeti, cutting into the park east to west just north of the Kenyan border.

The road will sever a critical corridor for the annual migration of hundreds of thousands of wildebeests, zebra and other animals. It is absolutely reminiscent of the 1980s veterinarian fence that effectively ended the great wildebeest migration in Botswana.

The Serengeti’s principal donor and scientific NGO, The Frankfurt Zoological Society, says, “The entire Serengeti will change into a completely different landscape holding only a fraction of its species and losing its world-class tourism potential and its status as the world’s most famous national park – an immense backlash against the goodwill and conservation achievements of Tanzania.”

(Contrary to many media reports, it will not link the Serengeti with Kenya’s Mara. In fact last week Tanzania’s tourist officials pointedly denied a Kenyan report that the Sand Rivers border post at the Serengeti/Mara junction will open.

The highway will decrease the time it takes to drive from the Serengeti into the Mara through the Isbenia border post. Currently it takes approximately 5 hours to drive from the Serengeti’s Grumeti Gate into the Mara’s Isbenia gate. From the new gate exit in the northwest part of the Serengeti currently planned, this driving time to the Mara’s Isbenia Gate would be reduced to less than 3 hours.

Facilitating easier access between these two giant wildernesses is good, but in no conceivable way could justify this wild atrocity.)

Currently, the Serengeti/Mara/Ngorongoro ecosystem is a certified UNESCO World Heritage Site. This designation would be lost if the highway construction commences. This in turn will decrease ancillary operating revenues for the park and likely jeopardize the fragile anti-poaching programs currently in place.

This terrible development is not a surprise. Human/animal conflicts in Africa are growing and in East Africa were exacerbated by the last three years of bad weather and poor rains. Elections in Tanzania and Uganda, and a constitutional referendum in Kenya are fueling the debate. I concur completely with many politicians in these countries that for far too long the western world has ignored the serious problems arising from supporting tourism parks while not adequately developing the local populations, particularly those on the periphery of these areas.

But this is not the answer.

A modern road is absolutely needed between the city centers of northern Tanzania and Lake Victoria, the mission of this new road. Several alternatives exist for longer highways that would skirt the ecosystem altogether.

Since they would travel through more populated areas, you would think that these alternatives are attractive to the Tanzanian government.

The Frankfurt Zoological Society claims the alternate routes would not cost more, but local media reports have suggested otherwise. The lack of hard data is frustrating, but I think this may be part of a dangerous game of chicken Tanzania is playing with NGOs and foreign donors.

Please help. Click here to add your voice to the opposition, then petition your lawmakers and wildlife NGOs to help Tanzania raise the added funds for the alternate routes.

9 thoughts on “Serengeti Highway Alert

  1. please dol not distroy the great migration by creating this highway..We would not have gone to Tanzania to be on a highway ..what is the government thinking? tourism will go to Kenya..

  2. This is a short sighted decision that reaps little benefits while destroying the migration and their own tourism. If this highway is built, they will have shot themselves in the foot and destroyed the beauty of Africa! They should pay close attn. to what BP has done to our oceans and tourism and take a lesson from it. It always comes down to $$$ which will destroy the environment and the animals that live in it.

  3. Please don’t allow this to happen!!! This is “biting the hand that feeds you!!!” I was there a few years ago and can’t wait to come back again. Please learn lessons from other current catastrophic events happening around the world. You have such a gift to share with the world. Our own country is now suffering and losing so much money and so many lives have been destroyed because of corporate greed and government corruption. Please don’t let what has happened here be for not.

  4. Dear Jim,
    This is what a colleague of mine Chris McIntyre has to say about this:

    ************************************
    I’ve seen this and am obviously very concerned. I have tried to get sensible comments from people on the ground there that I trust, but haven’t got any really recent facts back on what’s happening.

    I can’t believe that the Tanzanians would have the finance for such a project.

    I also can’t believe that the likes of the World Bank would loan the money, given the dreadful PR that’s guaranteed.

    So unless the Chinese are backing it, which is always possible, then I can’t see who would fund it.

    And the route doesn’t seem to make that much sense either – as many pieces have pointed out.

    It seems from the footnotes to Olivia Judson’s excellent piece in the New York Times (June 15) that a road here has been mooted for some time – but even now it seems that there are virtually no government spokespeople available in Tanzania to talk about it.

    Even the Frankfurt Zoological (see piece here) cite only secondary sources for their concern, starting their piece with: “According to articles in the local press and a statement from the Communications Officer of Tanzania National Parks …

    So I’ll certainly be very happy to sign the petitions, and support anyone who wants to put the case for the opposition. However, I wouldn’t be giving the campaign too much personal time or energy until we confirm that it’s a serious development that’s being planned in earnest, and not just the pipe-dream of a low-level politician which hasn’t the legs to get further than a few headlines.

    I hope it turns out to be the latter.
    ************************************

    Obviously I am in agreement that this would be terrible if it actually happens. Are you certain it will “start soon” as you say? What is your source/evidence for this?
    Chris Morris

  5. Chris –

    Thanks for your email.

    Click here for a Telegraph news article which quotes Pascal Shelutete of the Tanzanian Parks Authority on the road. The government “go-ahead” is not formal, as McIntyre points out, and won’t be until the studies which are beginning this month are completed. Financing is still unknown, also as he points out, but I think his intuition about China involvement is right on. The new mining legislation that is law and record, and passed last month, requires a new road, and the Chinese are among those bidding for the failed Toronto management mine team who has put the main mine up for sale. So in a sense he’s right: it’s still speculation, but we do have a government spokesman, Shelutete, saying enough that a campaign against is now warranted.

    Regards,
    Jim

  6. I’ve signed many petitions against this highway but today I decided to research this as well as I could on the internet. This site and it’s comments so far provide some of the best perspectives on this issue. I wonder if Jim or Chris can say if this project has now aquired more legs? As for the chinese comment…It was one of the first ideas that jumped into my head when I started reading today. It has their signature all over it and if that’s the case I would resist with all my might since they will strip Tanzania bare if it’s asssets before you can blink. I would very much appreciate an answer from you guys. Thanks.

    Please excuse the nature of my comment as regards any Chinese who may feel offended and since I have no proof, it is conjecture on my behalf and no offence is intended. Time will tell I guess.

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