Serengeti Road Goes to Trial

Tanzania's controversial and damaging highway project bifurcating the Serengeti National Park is going to trial before the East African Court of Justice. The road would disrupt the migration routes of millions of herbivores. A 2011 study found that the wildebeest herd of 1 million could be reduced by a third. A leaked government study estimated that by 2015 800 vehicles per day could be using the road Tanzania's objections to the court that the road is a sovereign matter were rejected. The UN, the World Bank, and the German government have all raised concerns over the impact of the highway; at one point it seemed the Tanzanian's had given up on the project, however the government only retreated, not relented. It said the road would not be paved over the critical 50 kilometer segment through the Park. Not good enough for conservationists who say if the road is graded it will eventually be paved, widened and fenced given commercial pressures. Tanzania has rebuffed international offers to help build a Serengeti highway to the eastern shore of Lake Victoria along a less environmentally sensitive route.

The suit to stop the road was brought by the Kenyan organization, Africa Network for Animal Welfare. Judge James Ogala said in his ruling that the court has jurisdiction in environmental disputes which "touch on sustainable utilization of resources including terrestrial ecosystems". Since the migration routes cross Tanzania's border with Kenya [map], a road project having undeniable impacts on migrating animals and associated predators in a transnational ecosystem is clearly a regional, not solely national concern.

Tanzania has maintained that the road is a necessary element for its plan to develop western Tanzania, a relatively isolated part of the country that suffers from poverty. The road, government claims, would help businesses to develop and provide a needed route to markets in the eastern part of the country. Poverty, population growth, and little available protein in Serengeti communities has contributed to another conservation problem: poaching of protected wildlife. Research interviews with over a thousand community members in the western Serengeti show that village people are aware that wildlife hunting is illegal and conservation important, but hunt anyway out of necessity. Legal hunting in the Serengeti is largely restricted to foreigners because the price of licenses and equipment is too high for impoverished locals and there are no established hunting quotas local people. The chances of a poacher being caught and prosecuted are low, and outweighed by the economic benefits of bush meat so the problem is persistent one for wildlife conservation. The researchers conclude that "alternative livelihood opportunities may decrease dependence on wildlife." So there lies the conundrum.