**1. Introduction**

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) approach is one that seeks to integrate all ecosystem components, functions, interactions, processes, and all related dynamics of a given resource or area. For wildlife protected areas (WPA), the approach aims to sustainably manage natural resources, their environment, and the services they provide to humans within a defined ecosystem, as opposed to arbitrarily defined ones, which is the way most wildlife protected areas were established and are being managed.

Many protected areas in Africa had their boundaries demarcated depending on availability of land that could be set aside for respective conservation purposes or that was deemed necessary for some specific conservation purpose. This is partly because many protected areas in Africa were established before the concepts of ecology and ecosystem were very well understood, and thus, their implications on wildlife protected area management relative to human land uses were not taken into account. Moreover, wildlife management problems arising from arbitrarily demarcated protected area boundaries such as protected animals being killed outside protected areas, on the one hand, and wild animals raiding people's farms and settlements or killing and maiming humans and domestic stock, on the other, had not grown to problematic proportions.

The situation has since changed. With human population having grown tremendously and still growing, while wildlife habitats are shrinking due to human development activities encroaching upon protected areas, or destroying natural vegetation, and consequently wild animals being compelled to seek food, water, and other necessities of survival outside protected areas. This is the essence of human-wildlife conflicts (HWCs), as we have come to label it, and the number one threat to the survival of certain protected areas and wildlife species. Various measures have been taken for years to combat or mitigate HWCs, but none seems to hold a lasting solution, and this is one of the major reasons for adoption of EBM strategies.

Other major threats to the survival of natural resources in protected areas include illegal hunting or poaching, various forms of habitat destruction, and climate change.

Tanzania has taken initiative to adopting EBM strategies since the 1980s; but, to date, none of the initiatives has brought a lasting solution yet. This is because there are challenges to adopting EBM strategies that must be overcome for the strategies to provide a lasting solution to threats to ecosystem survival. An analysis of the initiatives that have been tried out to date indicate the latest one, the Greater Serengeti Conservation Society (GSCS), if improved upon, could very well provide Tanzania with an effective instrument to overcome the major challenges to EBM and hence ensure Serengeti Ecosystem of eternal survival.

This chapter presents the premises for my conclusion and the proposals of what might have to be done for Greater Serengeti Conservation Society (GSCS) or any such initiative to help overcome the challenges to EBM and hence promote the survival of Serengeti Ecosystem.

This chapter gives an overview of the general challenges to EBM strategies in planning and managing protected areas. The case of Serengeti Ecosystem is then examined, and the need and challenges to EBM are analyzed based on experience and reality on the ground. This is done by presenting fairly detailed case examples to elucidate the situations in question so as to enable the reader to see the rationale for what is concluded and ultimately proposed towards overcoming challenges to EBM adoption in the Serengeti Ecosystem.

The selection for case examples, both for challenges and solution initiatives, is based on representativeness or centrality of the case to the subject in question. What is finally proposed for action towards overcoming the challenges to EBM strategies for the Serengeti Ecosystem is based on the analysis of what has worked and what has not

*Towards Overcoming the Challenges to Adopting Ecosystem-Based Management Approach… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113998*

worked for the initiatives that have been tried to the effect, and my experience and knowledge of the workings of the legal and institutional landscape and arrangements for conservation matters in Tanzania.
