New Threats Plague Herders in Tanzania

The Maasai once herded their cattle across the plains of what is now southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. The British colonial government split off a 2-million-acre tract for them to roam undisturbed when it created Tanzania's Serengeti National Park in the 1950s, laying the foundation for the country's modern-day tourism industry.

Now, Tanzania's government says the Maasai are a problem.

Specifically, it says the seminomadic cattle farmers are a threat to the savannas and watering holes in an area that sustains safari resorts and hunting reserves and, more recently, a swath of new carbon-credit projects.

To protect these areas, President Samia Suluhu Hassan's government has outlawed human settlement there and begun evicting some of the more than 110,000 Maasai from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area-the vast zone of grass-, wood- and wetlands adjacent to the Serengeti that the Maasai have used for herding and tourism for the past 65 years.

The area includes the famous Ngorongoro Crater, the world's largest, fully intact caldera and home of one of Africa's densest populations of zebras, gazelles and other large mammals.

More than a million wildebeest pass through the crater during their annual migration, a stunning natural phenomenon that has featured in countless nature documentaries and attracts tens of thousands of wildlife watchers every year.

The government argues that the number of Maasai living in Ngorongoro has expanded from just 8,000 in 1959, outpacing Tanzania's overall population growth.

The herders, along with their cattle, are overwhelming the area's fragile ecosystem, it says.

Similar warnings have been issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, which declared the Ngorongoro Conservation Area a World Heritage site in 1979.

But for the Maasai, the evictions are endangering a centuries-old way of life they say is much closer to nature than the rest of rapidly urbanizing Tanzania.

They accuse the government of giving priority to revenue from foreign tourists, investors and conservation groups over the lives and livelihoods of some of its citizens.

"The government is doing everything possible to suffocate local communities in order to earn more money from tourism and trophy-hunting," said Moloimet Olemoko, a Maasai herder from Ngorongoro. "They are not bothered about the livelihoods of the Maasai."

Olemoko and other members of his extended family received government notices in August telling them to move to a district some 300 miles away.

But he and his relatives have resisted leaving Ngorongoro, citing accounts from friends and relatives who have made the move that their animals have died from lack of fresh water in the relocation areas.

A Tanzanian government spokesman said the government is building additional water dams in the relocation area to address shortages and denied it was unsuitable for cattle herding.

Still, Olemoko joined tens of thousands of Maasai shortly after the relocation order, clad in their red shawls and colorful beaded necklaces and earrings, and blocked the Ngorongoro-Serengeti highway, stranding hundreds of safari Land Cruisers and tourists in a mileslong traffic jam.

Experts and activists focused on the rights of indigenous people say the Maasai are the latest group caught in the murky intersection of tourism, biodiversity protection and global climate goals.

Similar conservation-related evictions have also targeted indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon and the Nouabalé-Ndoki rainforest in the Republic of Congo.

"These so-called conservation plans are mainly driven by foreign interests, with little regard to the rights of the people," said Rob Williams, chair of the Indigenous People's Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona.

Tanzania was one of the first countries to adopt a 2022 U.N. pact on biodiversity, under which governments pledged to conserve at least 30% of the planet's land by 2030.

It has since passed regulations and guidelines on conservation and carbon credits that now attract more than $1 billion in foreign investments annually.

Revenue from tourism jumped 40% to $3.5 billion in 2023, about 17% of Tanzania's gross domestic product, and according to government projections could reach $6 billion by 2025.

The government has set aside swaths of land around the Ngorongoro Crater previously reserved for the Maasai for the construction of a China-funded geological park, where tourists and researchers can explore fossils, rock paintings and other archaeological artifacts dating as far back as four million years ago.

To the south of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a local company called Carbon Tanzania is selling carbon credits linked to about 273,000 acres of land that the Maasai and other pastoralist communities have also used for grazing and limited cultivation.

The project restricts the cutting down of trees as well as cultivation.

Carbon Tanzania said it respects the rights of indigenous people and that revenue from its projects have improved local education, health services and infrastructure.

To the north, local authorities in February signed a $120,000 deal with a Tanzanian company, Kilombero North Safaris, to run a carbon-credit project covering three forests where Maasai communities have grazed their herds, according to documents seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Kilombero didn't respond to a request for comment.