As Band-Aid re-records their song Do they know it’s Christmas which helped Africans during a food crisis 30 years ago, this time to help fight Ebola, Tanzania is planning an expansion of a big-game hunting reserve for foreigners which will lead to the eviction of the Maasai people from ancestral lands.
According to The Guardian: “Tanzania’s ministry of tourism announced this week that it will set aside 1,500 square kilometers bordering the Serengeti national park for a “wildlife corridor”. The Maasai will as a result be prevented from getting to their pasture land in the corridor, destroying their traditional nomadic cattle-herding lifestyle. Access will however be granted to a Dubai-based luxury hunting and safari company.
“… Today, of the million-plus Tanzanian Maasai population, at least 66,000 live in the 4,000sq km Loliondo district. The proposed corridor will reduce their land by nearly 40%. The Loliondo highlands are nestled between two jewels of Tanzania’s tourist industry – the Serengeti national park to the west and the Ngorongoro conservation area (NCA) to the south. To the east lie the salt flats of Lake Natron, while to the north is the Kenyan border.
“Crucially, the reduction in land access would come at a time when climate change is already placing the tribe’s lifestyle under pres sure. Jill Nicholson, programme director for local NGO the Women’s Pastoralist Council, said: “The rainy seasons are coming later and that’s putting stress on water sources.”
This is not the first time the needs of people have been put aside for economic reasons or simply to favour animal welfare which has been promoted so much by the West, without much consideration for human ecology.
Avaaz is conducting a campaign of signatures to put pressure on the Tanzanian government to keep a previous promise to maintain the Maasai land available to the tribespeople.
