**2. The need for and the challenges to implementing EBM approaches in protected areas: an overview**

#### **2.1 The need for EBM approaches**

A century ago, when many countries in Africa started establishing national parks and game reserves, protected areas were few and far apart, and human population was low and land uses were also few, and did not cover as much land as today. Thus, there was plenty of land for wild animals, and animals crossing protected area boundaries were not seen to be a problem if they did not raid farms or kill humans or livestock. Today, wild animals raiding farms and killing humans and domestic stock are rampant in countries like Tanzania, as is livestock grazing in protected areas and human settlements and farms neighboring protected areas. This is so much so to the extent that human-wildlife conflicts (HWCs) are probably the number one wildlife protected area management problem in the past one decade. HWCs are thus the biggest challenge to EBM, the ones threatening ecosystem management most, and hence raising the most concern and consequently receiving the most attention.

For communities living near wildlife protected areas, farm raids are a perennial problem, and wild animals maiming and killing humans and livestock is a common occurrence. Consequently, wide ranging animals such as elephants are costing the nation a lot in loss of crops and domestic stock, as well as human life and limb. On the other hand, the government is losing a tremendous amount of funds on the problem of human-elephant conflicts (HECs), for instance, in terms of money spent on research, consolation payments to victims, vermin control, and a variety of conflict mitigation measures. As I have pointed out in my article on human-elephant conflicts [1], the situation is dire and calls for institution of an integrative wildlife conservation strategy, which should also embrace a manipulative scientific wildlife management strategy [2].

For its part, the government has been fairly vigilant in addressing the HECs, largely by educating the affected communities on the problem and training them on how to live with the problem by taking mitigation measures. Government personnel are also involved in carrying out some of the mitigation measures such as conducting patrols and chasing away the problem animals from settlements. However, with a possible exception of insignificant local successes, the problem is still growing and the government has yet to find a lasting solution.

Apart from taking mitigation measures, the government has had to degazette portions of protected areas, including parts of Serengeti Ecosystem to resolve humanwildlife conflicts arising from human encroachment on protected areas, as has been the case for Maswa Game Reserve that has had parts of its area degazetted three times. In some cases, encroaching communities have had to be relocated at huge government expense to give way to wildlife conservation requirements, as has been the case for Ngorongoro Conservation Area and former Loliondo Controlled Area. At this rate, protected areas cannot be said to provide sustainable security for natural resources. This is why there have been calls for institution of ecosystem-based planning and management of protected areas in recent years.

Ecosystem-based management is indeed the widely recognized framework for promoting sustainable management of natural resources, especially for wildlife protected areas suffering from human-wildlife conflicts due to proximity of human settlements and wide-ranging nature of some animal species, as are cases of elephants and wildebeest of Serengeti Ecosystem.

#### **2.2 The challenges of implementing EBM strategies in protected areas**

Although the benefits of EBM approaches and related policies have been identified and acknowledged in natural resources conservation circles, there are also significant challenges in implementing these strategies in protected areas, Serengeti Ecosystem being the case in example. The magnitude, extent, and complexity of challenges depend on a number of factors. These include the *complexity of the ecosystem involved* in terms of the diversity of species and their interaction with each other and their environment, ecological processes, and changes over time. Consequently, an ecosystembased approach to managing protected areas requires comprehensive understanding of all the parameters of the ecosystem, which in turn requires extensive ecological research.

Apart from the challenges deriving from the complexity of the ecological environment, there are those that derive from *the human environment*. These, too, can be quite complex, depending on expanse of protected area and what constitutes its ecosystem, the socioeconomics of surrounding communities, the economics of the country, as well as the sociopolitical setting and dynamics. These challenges and their trends need to be studied, too, and be taken into account in planning as well as in management.

Another major challenge to practicing EBM is *the diversity of stakeholders.* Although this is basically part of the human environment, it deserves special attention, as it is the one that poses the most threat to managing many wildlife protected areas (WPAs). Major among stakeholders are the management, respective boards of directors or trustees, the local communities, conservationists, donors, researchers, local politicians, tourists, tour operators, respective government authorities, and non-governmental organizations. These stakeholders have diverse and often conflicting perspectives and goals in relation to the objectives and activities of WPAs, which can lead to disagreements regarding management decisions and make it challenging to implement EBM strategies successfully.

In addition, there are unpredictable but, nonetheless, certain-to-occur *climate change challenges*. It is usually not known exactly what form climate change events might take, but as they are already occurring in terms of extreme weather events like droughts, too much rain, and flooding and have impacts on wildlife populations, it is important to make anticipative plans regarding climate change. This is because some events result in deaths, others in increased births, while others result in migration in search of food, water, and other survival necessities. Migrations may result in farm raids and cause more conflicts with farmers. In view of the damages and losses that may be caused by climate change, it is imperative that WPAs should have anticipatory mitigation plans for such occurrences.

Another challenge shared by most wildlife protected areas is that *ecosystem-based management strategies are an add-on feature* to existing management of a protected area, a consideration that came after the protected area had been established. This may entail re-demarcation of boundaries, re-settlement of surrounding communities, and any other change in surrounding land uses that may be necessitated by the requisite changes in management objectives and shift in boundaries.

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

Serengeti Ecosystem is faced by all of the above challenges and much more due to additional attributes. Apart from its expanse, which entail encompassing a diversity of habitats and species, as well as a large number of surrounding tribal communities, Serengeti National Park, the protected area on which the ecosystem is based, is an iconic protected area with several superlatives in its description, international statuses, and a large number of local and nonlocal stakeholders.

An overview of Serengeti National Park's historical, natural, and socioeconomic features is presented here to give the reader some idea about the complexity of Serengeti Ecosystem and its management challenges and hence the challenges to practicing EBM strategies.

#### **2.3 Overview of Serengeti National Park**

Serengeti Ecosystem encompasses several protected areas of different protection statuses, the core being Serengeti National Park, from which the ecosystem derives its name. Others (see **Figure 1**), starting with the most northerly moving clockwise, are Maasai Mara National Game Reserve (in Kenya), Pololeti Game Reserve, Malambo Game Reserve, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Makao Wildlife Management Area, Maswa Game Reserve, Grumeti Game Reserve, Ikona Wildlife Management Area, and Ikorongo Game Reserve. The ecosystem also includes surrounding buffer zones.

Each one of the protected areas listed above has its own history, geography, and ecological features. For the purpose of this chapter, the historical and geographical notes in this section are of necessity centered around the Serengeti National Park, as it

#### **Figure 1.**

*A map of Serengeti Ecosystem showing the boundary and major protected areas. Source: Ref. [3]. Serengeti shall not die: Transforming an ambition into a reality.*

is the core of the ecosystem by geography and ecology, as well as management activities. Other protected areas will be described as necessary in covering respective issues.

#### *2.3.1 The history of Serengeti National Park*

Widely acknowledged as the iconic national park of Tanzania and branded as the most unique area in the world by the author of two of the most used field guides to Tanzania national parks and Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Lilla N. Lyogello [4]. Serengeti National Park is the oldest protected area that was initially established as game reserve in 1921, and later upgraded and gazetted as a national park in 1951, thus becoming the first national park in Tanzania [4–6].

The idea of establishing Serengeti as a national park originated from the colonial masters in England but was strongly opposed by local colonial administrators of the then Tanganyika Territory and local communities. According to Jaffari Kideghesho [3], the most important criteria in judging the suitability of an area as a national park were interests and priorities of the Europeans. The Serengeti was rated as suitable for creation of a national park, because of its insignificant mineral deposits, presence of the tsetse fly, and scant rainfall, which made the land unattractive to European miners as well as farmers. The idea of creating national parks, however, was opposed by the colonial administrators in Tanganyika, who felt that the strategy was infringing on natives' rights and thus was posing a risk to the political stability of the colony.

The colonial masters' wish was subsequently reinforced by the 1933 London Convention on Flora and Fauna of Africa. The convention required all signatories (including Tanganyika) to investigate the possibility of creating a system of national parks. Powerful individuals in London consistently overstated the problem of what they termed "destructive behavior of Africans to wildlife" as a way of pressing the colonial government to act.

In 1940, the first game ordinance that gave the governor a mandate to declare any area a national park was enacted. Serengeti was upgraded from a game reserve into a national park in that year. However, its implementation had to be delayed largely due to the World War II (1939–1945), and although it was gazetted in 1951, it remained a national park on paper only, without effective enforcement of the laws and regulations governing national parks. The fact that there were Maasai livestock keepers within the park was contradictory to the national park idea.

According to Kideghesho's narration of the events that ensued, the gazettement of the Serengeti as a national park precipitated conflicts and opposition from the natives. This was a consequence of conservationists' placing more value on wild animals than on human beings. For example, one of the former park managers of Serengeti stated blatantly that: "The interests of fauna and flora must come first, those of man and belongings being of secondary importance."

In the eastern part of Serengeti, the Maasai resisted the proposed park boundaries through violence and sabotage/vandalism. They speared the rhinos, set fires with malicious intent, and terrorized civil servants. The Ikoma hunters in western Serengeti, on the other hand, contravened the colonial conservation laws, which barred them from hunting, while swearing to use poisoned arrows against any wildlife ranger who would interfere with their hunting activities.

To resolve these conflicts, the Colonial Government divided Serengeti National Park into two parts, the western and the eastern; the former remaining as a national park we know today and the eastern becoming Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Whereas all human activities were proscribed in remaining park, livestock keeping

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

and a limited level of crop cultivation were allowed in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), thus becoming a multiple land use protected area. The Serengeti Maasai were relocated to NCA through a special agreement to that effect and as provided in the Ngorongoro Conservation Ordinance of 1959. The Ordinance applied to the Maasai as well as the original residents of the area that included a small population of Tatoga (Datooga) and Barabaig in the Crater and other Mbulu tribes in the highlands, altogether making an estimated total of 8000 residents. Soon after, the Maasai chased the original residents of the area and kept the area to themselves.

For about a decade or so, the Ngorongoro's multiple land use arrangement seemed to work. But as the population of humans and livestock increased, human activities threatened the environment, and the government had to forbid crop cultivation. This was effected by enacting the 1975 Ngorongoro Conservation Area Act Cap. 284 [7]. This gave rise to a conflict. The Maasai considered the law an infringement on their human rights and a default on the 1959 agreement. Meanwhile, the population of humans and livestock continued to grow beyond what could be sustained by the area and threatened the natural resources of the area. In June 2022, Morenda [8] published an article in the Guardian quoting the Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism, Madame Pindi Chana, to have said that by 2022, there were about 110,000 Maasai and one million head of livestock in NCA.

It is worth noting that the conflicts that existed in western Serengeti when the Park was gazetted have continued to date, whereas those that existed in eastern Serengeti have changed very little. Details on these conflicts are presented by case examples in respective sections below.

#### *2.3.2 Geography and ecology*

Though with the size of 14,763 sq.km, Serengeti comes in third after Nyerere National Park (30,893 sq.km.) and Ruaha National Park (20,226 sq.km.), Serengeti is the national park with the most superlatives in terms of characteristics, history, tourism, and management. As pointed out earlier, Serengeti is the first protected area and national park, the most visited, most researched, most filmed, and most written about. Still Serengeti National Park remains arguably the wildest [4], and its wildebeest migration the world's most renowned. The name Serengeti is derived from the Maasai word *siringet*, meaning "extended area," referring to a large expanse of plain that characterizes much of Serengeti National Park landscape.

Because of its size, Serengeti National Park, and hence Serengeti Ecosystem, is surrounded by over 30 communities of different ethnicity and hence different customs, activities, and impact on the Park and Serengeti Ecosystem, at large. Serengeti's border location with Kenya and Maasai Mara National Reserve is a unique ecosystem feature in that the ecosystem transcends the national boundary, an attribute that is amply demonstrated by the annual wildebeest migration by which the animals involved spend part of the year in Serengeti, and the other part in Maasai Mara. In fact, the boundaries of Serengeti Ecosystem are defined by the Serengeti Wildebeest migration route (**Figure 2**).

Ecology is what defines the boundaries of Serengeti Ecosystem beyond those of Serengeti National Park from which it derives its name. The boundaries of the ecosystem are defined by the route of the widest ranging Serengeti National Park animal species, which is the wildebeest (*Connochaetes taurinus*) and accompanying angulates, in the form of annual migration mentioned earlier (**Figure 2**). The so defined Serengeti Ecosystem covers about 25,000–30,000 sq.km [3, 9] in the northern part of

**Figure 2.** *Serengeti National Park wildebeest migration route. Source: Affordable AfricaSafaris.com.*

Tanzania (**Figure 1**), west of the Rift Valley, in a highland savanna region with plains and woodlands ranging from 900 to 1500 m above sea level.

In addition to Serengeti National Park, the Serengeti Ecosystem encompasses several different types of protected areas, with different management regimes and falling under four different institutions (TANAPA, NCAA, TAWA, and Kenya Wildlife Services). Protected areas include the Ngorongoro Conservation Area; several game reserves including Maswa, Ikorongo, Grumeti, Kijereshi, and Pololeti; wildlife management areas including Ikona na Makao (all in Tanzania); and Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya (**Figure 1**).

The ecology of Serengeti Ecosystem, particularly the Serengeti National Park, has been very much studied and written about by a number of researchers, much of it of higher academic interest and not easily available to readers for practical interests, even for conservation bureaucrats and practitioners. For the purpose of this chapter, the description in a small book titled "Serengeti," by David Martin for Tanzania National Parks [6], is sufficient to give the reader some idea about the ecological setting of Serengeti Ecosystem. In this book, the Serengeti Ecosystem is described as being bounded by the Rift Valley and Ngorongoro Crater Highlands in the east, Lake Victoria to the west, and Isuria escarpment to the north. The south east of the park is flat with open grass plains interspersed with kopjes. In the south and western parts, there are undulating hill ranges, which are broken and divided by open and grassland areas. The north and north-west are more undulating with heavier rainfalls and dense *Towards Overcoming the Challenges to Adopting Ecosystem-Based Management Approach… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113998*

tall grassland and woodland vegetation, and the north is fringed with hills bearing the densest vegetation found in Serengeti.

The Serengeti National Park is generally divided into three vegetation areas. In the south east are the open grasslands, to the north open woodlands, and in the west a mosaic of grasslands and woodlands.

It is the ungulates' ecological necessity for survival around the three major vegetation zones and water availability that gave rise to the annual migration of which Serengeti is best known. Consisting mainly of wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle, the migration begins on open grassland during the rainy season and head west and north in search of grazing during the dry season. A research by Eric Wolanski et al. [10] confirmed that wildebeest migration is determined by availability and quality of vegetation and water and hence the variation in the calendar when rainfall pattern and amount changes.

Sinclair et al. [11], a team of scientists who had studied Serengeti Ecosystem extensively, described the Serengeti Ecosystem as being of special importance because of being one of the few ecosystems with a high diversity of wildlife, one of the last protected ecosystem whose dynamics are driven by millions of migratory herbivores and at the same time containing one of the largest remaining and functioning migration of terrestrial mammals, and that though it has been subject to a wide range of disturbances, it has remained largely unaltered by human intervention. The conditions and change state of Serengeti Ecosystem have thus provided opportunities to examine naturally functioning ecosystems, to study the dynamics of a variety of major components of terrestrial food web and to explore ecological theories in order to understand the process and functioning of large ecosystems. It also provides longterm date on environmental changes in an unusually well-studied ecosystem.

### **3. The challenges to implementing EBM in the Serengeti Ecosystem**

The complex history, geography, and ecology of Serengeti National Park are what make Serengeti Ecosystem extra complex. Thus, EBM for Serengeti Ecosystem is extra complex as is the ecosystem itself and related socioeconomic dynamics. Therefore, as pointed out in Section 2.2, Serengeti Ecosystem is faced with all the major challenges mentioned in that section and more. The challenges mentioned are the complexity of the ecosystem, human environment, diversity of stakeholders, and climate change. What is more for the Serengeti Ecosystem is the magnitude of each challenge, their impact on ecosystem management, and the consequent difficulty there is in overcoming any one of those challenges.

For such a complex ecosystem, one of the major challenges in planning and managing the ecosystem, and perhaps the number one challenge, is to mobilize, enlist support of, and forge a good working relationship with all stakeholders. Given its expanse, the number of contiguous protected areas, communities, and institutions involved make for a multitude of stakeholders. The stakeholders for Serengeti Ecosystem include protected area managers, CEOs, and Boards of Directors/Trustees of wildlife institutions concerned with the protected areas within the Serengeti Ecosystem (TANAPA, WD, TAWA, NCA, KWS), Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, representatives of local communities, representatives of tourist companies, representatives of hunting companies, respective local governments (regional, district, village/*mtaa*<sup>1</sup> ), Maasai Mara Management, Narok County representative,

<sup>1</sup> Mtaa is the lowermost government administrative unit that can make laws in urban areas.

Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, local and international conservation organizations, conservation NGOs, etc. Thus, any initiative aiming at overcoming challenges to EBM must be able to engage all stakeholders meaningfully and effectively.

Another challenge of concern arising from the complexity of Serengeti Ecosystem is the human-wildlife conflicts. These conflicts not only are they a big challenge to the implementation of EBM but currently they are a number one threat to the integrity and sustainability of Serengeti Ecosystem. It is for this reason that the chapter focuses on human-wildlife conflicts with view pointing to pointing out the causes and, more importantly, identifying solutions, as a way towards overcoming the major challenges to EBM.

For the purpose of this chapter, we will look at the dynamics of human-wildlife conflicts by examining one case example on either side of the Serengeti Ecosystem. Ololosokwan in Loliondo represents conflicts on the eastern side, whereas Ikona WMA neighborhood represents conflicts on the western side of the ecosystem.
