Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Standing in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (Photo by Michel Renaudeau) Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) is world famous for the Ngorongoro Crater, an enormous unfilled caldera (a crater created by the eruption and collapse of a volcano). This part of East Africa’s Serengeti region is also renowned for wildlife, from rhinos to lions. These attractions have made Ngorongoro a popular international tourism destination.
Unfortunately Ngorongoro has also become a global example of something much less positive: an aggressive approach to conservation, sometimes called “fortress conservation,” that pushes out the Indigenous people who have been living alongside wildlife for centuries. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The NCA was established in 1959, under the British colonial government then ruling Tanzania.
Under a multiple land-use model, the NCA has three mandates: tourism, conservation, and safeguarding and promotion of the interests of the Maasai people. “Because of those three mandates, there has been a lot of tension since the creation of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area,” says Fredrick Ole Ikayo, a law researcher at the University of Arizona, whose paternal family lives in the NCA. This calls for some tough choices.
“There is no clear single causative agent or solution to improve conditions simultaneously for people, wildlife and tourism,” according to a 2021 paper published in the African Journal of Ecology . The NCA is by far the most profitable conservation area in the country, and thus very important to the national economy. In order to increase revenue from tourism and conservation, Ole Ikayo argues, “the government has resorted to kicking out the Maasai people from their ancestral homelands.
” MORE FOR YOU New And Dangerous Android Attack Warning Issued NYT ‘Strands’ Hints, Spangram And Answers For Monday, September 9th Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Monday, September 9 Several persistent myths are contributing to the pressure on the Maasai in Ngorongoro: Myth 1: Indigenous Peoples in Tanzania are not distinct. Emphasizing unity and solidarity , the Tanzanian government does not recognize Indigenous groups. Instead, it refers to “the vulnerability of some of the marginalized communities.
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render(randId); }); })(); However, other bodies, including the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, do recognize Indigenous peoples in Tanzania; and Tanzania itself supported the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, without having any specific domestic laws related to Indigenous groups. The Pastoralists Indigenous Non Governmental Organization's Forum (PINGO’s Forum) says that the Maasai have been uniquely targeted by the Tanzanian government. According to a 2022 report produced by Maasai community members in Ngorongoro, Maasai pastoralists have been present in the Ngorongoro area since the 15 th century, and now nearly 98% of the NCA’s human population is Maasai.
The Tanzanian Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism has said instead that Maasai people arrived later, replacing the Hadza people who were already present. Ole Ikayo doesn’t dispute the legal argument advanced by some people that the economic benefits from the NCA should extend to all Tanzanians, not just Indigenous groups. “But there’s a difference in who should benefit more,” he says—because this is ancestral Maasai land, and because of how heavily Maasai people’s lives are affected by NCA management, compared to people living outside the area.
A Maasai settlement around the Ngorongoro Crater (Photo by Patricia Lanza/Getty Images) Getty Images Myth 2: The Maasai are nomadic. “The Maasai, they’re not nomads per se,” Ole Ikayo says. Rather than being constantly on the move, traditional Maasai pastoralism has been more about strategic relocation.
People would generally leave behind homesteads while circulating with their animals according to seasonal patterns. Only on an exceptional basis, for instance during severe droughts, would people relocate permanently. This matters because it’s easier to justify moving people along if it’s believed that they were already on the move anyway.
But Ole Ikayo says that the Maasai people had settled in the area long before European colonialism—before the establishment of borders between Kenya and Tanzania, or between the Serengeti National Park and the NCA. Like other Indigenous groups in Africa, the Maasai have become more sedentary recently. Myth 3: The conservation area has no history of cultivation.
With Maasai settlement in the area also came some cultivation of crops in small plots, as well as beekeeping. These are secondary to the main livelihood of livestock grazing. One argument from the side of aggressive conservation is that if recent small-scale farming is allowed to continue, it’s going to mushroom and become unmanageable, threatening the wild nature of the conservation area.
But the NCA has not been a strictly wild place for centuries. The tourist-brochure vision of a pristine natural wonderland is at odds with the reality that Ngorongoro has long been shaped by Maasai settlement and grazing patterns. According to Ole Ikayo, Maasai residents of the area have been growing subsistence crops since at least the 1890s as a supplementary source of food when they couldn’t rely exclusively on their livestock for food.
Recently the importance of food crops has increased, as the growth in livestock has not kept pace with the human population’s growth. Climate change is another factor affecting Maasai livelihoods, with drought making it more challenging to keep cattle alive. The government and the residents have come up with very different figures for how much of the land has been cultivated.
In any case, cultivation is now illegal in the NCA. Mzee, a Maasai NGO leader living in Loliondo and Ngorongoro, supports this, saying that only a minority of Maasai people ever grew crops in the area anyway. (Mzee’s name has been changed due to a history threats and violence against him.
) The situation is creating more dependence on subsidized food provided by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA). According to the NCAA website , “The distribution of food, however, is getting less sufficient to satisfy the available household size as a result of the population rise.” (The NCAA declined to be interviewed.
) Maasai leaders have argued that this dependence is enabling the government to justify relocating people , even though the dependence is caused in large part by the government’s policies. These include the banning of livestock from some parts of the NCA, and restricted access to pasture, water, and mineral licks elsewhere. It’s been painful for Mzee to see the effects of the changes in food systems, including relatively new diseases like hypertension and diabetes.
“Most of the agricultural communities have lost their seeds,” Mzee says. At the same time, diets have shifted to include more staples like flour, while the quality of milk has been affected by changes in the quality of grass. This points to the interconnections of land, food, health, and lifestyles.
“We depend on land for life,” Mzee says. “It is not about food as a standalone. It is about food as life.
” Goat milking inside the NCA getty Myth 4: The Maasai are a threat to conservation. Some concerns about the Maasai presence are linked to the growing human habitation of the NCA. By one count, this has increased from 10,000 residents in 1954 to nearly 100,000 .
While the increase may seem significant, that’s 100,000 people over 8,300 square kilometers – a larger space than Delaware. Maasai settlements make up only 5% of this space . As for whether this growth of the human population has not been accompanied by an increase in livestock, these numbers are also contested.
They depend on the time of year and the type of animal. The National Bureau of Statistics has recorded a substantial rise in sheep and goats, to about 570,000 in 2017. A Maasai study reports that cattle numbers between 1959 and 2017 were essentially unchanged – a testament to the twin threats of climate change and government confiscations.
Mobility is one way to adapt to a changing climate, yet this adaptation strategy is being curtailed by the government. “Most of the Maasai are losing cows,” Mzee reports. Rather than exerting a heavy impact on the environment, journalist Stephanie McCrummen has described the Maasai as “among the lightest-living people on the planet.
” Homes are made of mud and dung, sandals are made of recycled tires, and there are taboos against cutting down live trees and eating wildlife . Further, “As a way of ensuring animal safety, all the wild animals have been divided according to clans and each Maasai clan has the responsibility to protect their animal against poaching or mistreatment,” notes the Maasai report The Truth, Falsity and Mismanagement: Need for an Interdisciplinary Community-led Multifunctional Landscape Management Model in Ngorongoro . Mzee’s photos show a giraffe looming alongside peacefully grazing cows, for instance.
This points to the ease with which wildlife and domesticated animals can share space in traditional Maasai territories. “After the colonial invasion and Tanzania’s independence, the traditional (pastoralism) practice of the Maasai people has generally been considered destructive in the NCA, even when it’s based on sound resource management principles and can be consistent with biodiversity protection goals,” Ole Ikayo says. Clearly, the Maasai are clearly extracting less from the environment than Emirati royals in adjacent areas landing in cargo planes to trophy-hunt wildlife using automatic weapons, or even tourists using lodges and roads that are degrading the land in fragile areas.
It’s not just that Maasai lifestyles aren’t a threat to conservation, Mzee says. They’re actually an asset to conservation. Maasai pastoralism and rotation of grazing land is “a strategy of conservation,” in Mzee’s words.
With restrictions to these and traditional fire management practices, the vegetation cover has changed : there’s less of some types of grass , and more invasive species like Mexican poppy have moved in. Indigenous knowledge of conservation is being disregarded both by the Tanzanian government and by international environmental organizations that take a very narrow view of conservation. Mzee says that environmental NGOs like the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are stoking the Tanzanian government’s concerns about population growth in Ngorongoro, in a continuation of colonial legacies of power.
“It is completely an extension of what we are used to in history,” Mzee says. IUCN disputes this. An IUCN spokesperson states, “IUCN is firmly against any forced evictions or the forced resettlement of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
..As the official advisor on nature to the World Heritage Committee, IUCN advocates for the continuation of multiple land use in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and we oppose any actions that would curb the rights of people.
This is part of IUCN’s long engagement on such issues, and we remain in contact with a range of local community representatives and Indigenous peoples regarding the matters of concern in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.” A spokesperson for a different conservation organization with influence in the Serengeti ecosystem , the Frankfurt Zoological Society, states, “The degradation of the landscape and the resulting conflict over resources are the main causes of tension in Ngorongoro.” Acknowledging greater pressures to balance the multiple land-use model in recent years, the spokesperson comments: “As part of the larger ecosystem, NCA provides a corridor (and calving area) for migrating wildlife such as wildebeest and zebra.
However, these areas offer less and less forage for all animals (livestock and wildlife) due to the intensive livestock grazing...
For the future of this area and the people, difficult decisions are on the horizon. It is important to find a way forward in a participatory way which fairly considers the rights and minimizes the negative impacts on the residents, as well as wildlife. What is clear is that the status quo will only result in increasing conflict with each passing year.
” However, Maasai community members have signalled a willingness to adapt to changing conditions. For instance, The Truth, Falsity and Mismanagement suggests shifting toward fewer but more resilient livestock. The report also recommends limits to the numbers of tourist vehicles, lodges and camps.
Myth 5: Maasai people benefit economically from the conservation area. The NCA is clearly a cash cow for Tanzania, and tourism has expanded substantially since its creation. For instance, road segments within the crater have increased from 3 in 1976 to 22 in 2022 .
Lodges and campsites have mushroomed as well. Mzee says that in the high season, there could be 500 vehicles descending into the crater on a single day. In an irony of tourism inadvertently destroying its own attractions, wild animals have been killed by drivers after traffic jams kick up clouds of dust.
Yet the benefits have been unevenly distributed. “The NCA has seen a significant increase of visitors generating millions of dollars annually, but what is trickling down to the community is really minimal,” Ole Ikayo says. “There must be a meaningful flow of benefits to the Maasai people in the NCA.
” This would be pragmatic. Meaningful community participation and new procedures for jointly managing and stewarding the area “would encourage continuity and support for conservation objectives.” Under the current system, there are limits who can benefit from this tourism.
Maasai in Ngorongoro aren’t allowed to have campsites or transport businesses. In bomas (homesteads for multiple families), residents might receive a few dollars from tourists, but it doesn’t go a long way. Further, the government’s pressure campaign on Maasai to leave the area includes discouraging private companies from hiring Maasai residents of Ngorongoro, according to PINGO’s Forum .
The UN agency UNESCO designated the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) a World Heritage site in 1979. This status has attracted many tourists to the area. Maasai residents have argued that their communities did not consent to the designation, and have called for the NCA to be delisted as a World Heritage Site .
There is some precedent for this: three World Heritage Sites have been delisted. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre contends that this designation “provides tools to defend the rights of indigenous peoples much better than when there are only national or local regulations.The inscription of a World Heritage site also places its management in the international spotlight: managers are subject not only to greater normative obligations but also to much greater pressure from public opinion than when it is a simple national park or similar status.
” UNESCO has not condoned evictions in and around the NCA. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre states, “the Organization has never at any time asked for the displacement of the Maasai people or other local communities. The Organization maintains that any management plan for a World Heritage site proposed by a State Party to the Convention should follow the principles underlined in United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, particularly the consideration of Free Prior and Informed Consent.
UNESCO also underlines that the protection of World Heritage sites must go hand in hand with improving the living conditions and means of subsistence of populations, and in no case be a constraint in their daily life.” The organization also states, “No maximum population has been set” for residents of the NCA. Yet critics say that the organization has influenced the Tanzanian government’s approach in the wider area.
For instance, after UNESCO and partners recommended voluntary resettlement and family planning to reduce the growing Maasai population, Tanzania’s government created the neighboring Pololeti Game Reserve (where people would no longer be allowed to live and work ), and called for the abandonment of Maasai settlements by 2027. This has led to what European politicians call “widespread evictions and depriving over 70 000 people of access to grazing land critical for their livestock’s health and their livelihoods.” (A judicial review of the game reserve has been requested.
) “UNESCO has been largely responsible for a lot of those policies,” argues Anuradha Mittal, the executive director of the nonprofit Oakland Institute. “I’m quite sure that if they put pressure and said that if you don’t respect human rights abuses..
.we will delist it, it would have an impact.” In July 2024, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre expressed concern about repeated reports from local communities that they were not adequately consulted during its advisory mission to the NCA in February.
The agency also requested an update on the NCA’s conservation status by February 2025. (The UNESCO National Commission of Tanzania declined to comment.) A protest in Nairobi against the eviction of Maasai residents of Ngorongoro and Loliondo (Photo by .
.. [+] Tony Karumba) AFP via Getty Images Myth 6: Maasai people participate meaningfully in decisions made about the conservation area.
Ole Ikayo argues that these are Maasai people’s lands based on historical use and collective rights. But Tanzanian jurisprudence takes a different view. NCAA officials have extensive statutory authority in managing the NCA.
“They have a lot of power in controlling where people go, what comes in, what leaves the Ngorongoro Conservation Area,” Ole Ikayo explains. They check people’s entrances and exits, and what they’re bringing in, which can extend to stopping the entry of goods or limiting grazing of livestock in certain areas. Ole Ikayo calls this micromanaging.
Mittal has seen plenty of examples of such micromanaging herself. “It is quite ridiculous: you would have rangers drive around just to see you could not put a pot. Because it’s a World Heritage Site, it needs to look a certain way rather than look like people live there.
” Only 10% of NCAA staff are resident Maasai . “The head of the NCAA is appointed by the president,” Mittal says. And according to Ole Ikayo, there is very little Maasai decision-making power on the NCAA’s Board of Directors, whose members are appointed by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism.
The combination of those two elements within the same government department points to the economic importance of both, as well as the potential for tensions between them. While the authorities do employ some members of the community, “employment and having that vital power of making decisions, it’s two different things,” Ole Ikayo says. (The ministry declined to be interviewed for this story.
) The Truth, Falsity and Mismanagement suggests the creation of a group responsible for a holistic approach to conservation, to be comprised of 50% community members and 50% NCA management, as well as more representative governance overall. More broadly, Ole Ikayo calls for the government to recognize the collective rights of Maasai people through constitutional and legislative safeguards. Participation needs to genuinely involve the Maasai, he says: “there must be free, prior, and informed consent before the establishment of any restriction, zoning laws, or any change in land use in the NCA.
” Because “the trust has really broken down” between the authorities and the Maasai residents, he feels “there should be an independent body that is separate from the government tasked to reconcile the tensions that exists in the management of the NCA, which might prove essential in rebuilding trust.” The lack of consultation is apparent in the limited approach to social services. This has to recognize the specific characteristics of a pastoralist population, Mzee says.
For example, since people will move away in the dry season, keeping a fixed water trough or school in a place that will be vacated for part of the year would not be in keeping with patterns of movement. Mittal doesn’t buy the argument that because Ngorongoro is a national resource, it needs to be managed by non-Maasai groups. “You cannot talk about the well-being of Tanzania by sacrificing one lot, and especially when there is no demonstrated way of showing how it has helped the larger common good.
” Myth 7: Maasai relocation is entirely voluntary. In January, the Tanzanian government announced that human habitation would no longer be allowed in the conservation area. The government’s aim is to resettle the Maasai population in the NCA to the village of Msomera, roughly 600 kilometers away, where reportedly more services and better living conditions would be available.
Proponents also say that this would reduce conflict between people and wildlife in the conservation area. But this would be an enormous displacement. It would also be a reversal of the deal made in the 1950s, when Maasai residents were displaced from the Serengeti National Park to the NCA.
The government has been pressuring the residents to leave through a combination of dramatically diminished health and education services , seizures of livestock, restrictions of access to water and grazing areas, destruction of homes, and violence. Recently there have been reports that voting stations will not be placed in the NCA for the 2025 presidential election, in contrast to previous elections. Tanzania’s government has also taken the Ngorongoro division off the voters’ register .
The loss of services would thus extend to political disenfranchisement as well. Despite this pressure campaign, the government has called this a voluntary relocation plan. Yet a recent Human Rights Watch report , based on nearly 100 interviews, has found that “authorities have used tactics that amount to constructive forced eviction in violation of international human rights law and standards.
” According to Human Rights Watch, proper consent has been obtained from neither the Maasai to be resettled, nor the residents of Msomera. Thus, land conflicts from Ngorongoro have been extended to another region of the country. Human Rights Watch has called for social services, including education and healthcare, to be reinstated in the NCA.
It has also urged the creation of an independent mechanism to deal with complaints for human rights violations related to resettlement. Some organizations are paying attention. The European Commission has cancelled funding for Tanzania worth millions of dollars, due to Maasai evictions.
This hasn’t been enough to reverse evictions policy so far. In the meantime, people have been departing from Maasai communities. Young men, in particular, have been leaving to scrape by a living elsewhere—leading to social and familial fracturing.
If some desperate people are forced to leave under such conditions, it isn’t really voluntary, Mzee says. “You cannot accommodate that pressure.” Maasai advocates like him are holding on, hoping that their communities will still be in Ngorongoro in some form in several years’ time.
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