Fresh threats to the survival of the Serengeti

SERENGETI MUST NOT DIE – RELOADED VERSION 2.0

With the contentious and potentially lethal Serengeti Highway not yet fully out of the picture, and the route of a proposed railway line to from Tanga to Musoma on Lake Victoria kept a tightly guarded secret, rousing more suspicion about another battle between conservationists and politicians looming in the distance, it is now news about an equally contentious project to build an international airport near the Serengeti at Mugumu which is raising the temperatures once again.

The current management plan for the greater Serengeti ecosystem, drawn up in 2005, specifically mentions human settlements and encroachment as one of the Serengeti’s greatest future threats, urging the authorities to refrain from encouraging ever more people moving into the border areas of this UNESCO World Heritage Site, something a major aviation facility will inevitably prompt, being located so close by and requiring a large number of staff, and a constant flow of supplies to keep it going.

We have been opposing this airport development for reasons which are self evident. Poaching in and around the Serengeti have been on the rise. Mwanza is an existing international airport which should be enlarged and modernized and from there small planes can reach all the airstrips in the Grumeti Sector and the main Serengeti very fast. If you put up a new international airport at Mugumu it requires a complete back up with a logistics train involving fuel, catering supplies and a constant movement of a large number of staff. Take offs and landing will mean aircraft are flying low and that noise will have an impact on the wildlife in the area and much greater than a few hot air balloons flying over the savannah. A new airport means new roads, new settlements, new warehouses, pollution and all and that means a lot more people coming to live in a critically near area outside the park boundaries. It seems our politicians have not learned one thing from the global opposition and decampaigning our country has seen over the highway plans. If this were to be an airstrip like at Seronera or some of the camp airstrips, even if tarmacked, it would be different but a complete airport? We have to say no to that and even though TCAA has given the thumbs up they are after all just mouthpieces of the politicians. We hope the upciming EIA will state what we all know, that it is unsustainable to put an airport up there where a fragile environment would just be destroyed. And we hope it is not doctored as we have seen it before. It is the same almost like these insane plans to put a soda ash plant in the middle of the flamingo breeding grounds or put a harbour into the Coelacanth marine park. There is no amount of mitigation to undo the damage and this is why TATA pulled away because they realized they would be the punching bag if they started a soda ash factory. This airport madness is exactly the same. And have no doubt here, this matter will go to court if the government goes ahead with it. And those who back it will be named and shamed too. If Tudor [Paul Tudor Jones, an American billionaire
businessman with vested interests in several top of the range safari lodges in
the area, i.e. Singita Tanzania] is going to raise the finance, be sure that his safari business is going to be named as responsible for this act of destruction and once under the spotlight who will want to go there and be branded an enemy of the environment, an enemy of the Serengeti? We are encouraged by the East African Court of Justice in Arusha to take up such issues with them, should our own judiciary fail us. Once the government tries to create facts on the ground we shall seek a permanent injunction while we prosecute our cases in court’ said a regular senior conservation source in Arusha when discussing the issue yesterday.

Recalling the massive opposition the Serengeti highway plans caused around the world, which united the global conservation fraternity like few other issues and had and continues to have Tanzania’s track record on conservation, already under the spotlight over a number of other equally controversial plans, called into question, a new front could have a serious impact on the country’s tourism performance. Suggestions by government sources of the positive impact an airport in Mugumu would have on tourism incomes generated from Serengeti visits therefore seems like a castle in the air, as it seems to neglect the negative impact of a campaign directed against the project.

As new battle fronts are being staked out over yet another project which could irreversibly alter the fabric of the Serengeti, be sure to watch this space for news how this latest conservation saga in Tanzania is unfolding.

4 Responses

  1. Thanks Wolfgang … the same economic interests that have in the last thirty years led to the destruction of more than 50% of the Earth’s remaining natural habitats are now beginning to take hold in Tanzania.
    The post-collapse Serengeti would most probably consist of small, fenced-in private parks built on the same pattern as those already operating in southern Africa, which are designed primarily to part well-heeled tourists from their money. The remaining 20,000 square kilometres could then be used to create monoculture plantations for producing biodiesel, finally ruining the rest of the Serengeti.
    Here the opportunity http://www.serengeti-wildlife.com/serengeti-road-only-crisis-or-opportunity/