(Posted 13th December 2023)
Dear Serengeti Supporter
We founded Serengeti Watch in 2010 to stop a disastrous commercial highway across the northern Serengeti. We rallied world opposition and funded a legal challenge in the East African Court of Justice. After an initial ruling against the highway, the Tanzanian government seemingly dropped the plan. Learn more here.
But we’ve remained vigilant, and justifiably so.
There are plans to build a gravel road along the same route. (see below) This would allow commercial traffic, which would only increase, likely resulting in a paved highway. Serengeti’s foremost expert, Professor Anthony Sinclair, warns,
“The important point is that once the process of building a road is engaged, there is no turning back…It is thus not hard to predict that a major human-wildlife conflict would develop where none now exists if a tarmac road were to proceed. The fundamental conservation concern is that the ecosystem would collapse.”
This is the ongoing fear, and a threat we need to address.
Please donate here.
Thank you!
The northern route through Serengeti National Park has been improved to the quality shown in this photo. Originally a seasonal dirt track, it’s now an all weather road. Reports say it will be further upgraded to gravel.
As Dr. Sinclair says, “The problem that remains with the northern road, although currently planned as a gravel road, is that there would be a great temptation to make it part of a major trunk route across Africa, used by heavy multi-wheelers because it would be so convenient.”
It is the same route as the proposed Serengeti highway we fought so hard to stop. Dr. Sinclair says, “there is a limit to the amount of traffic that a gravel road can sustain. The estimates of traffic use are already beyond this limit, and traffic flow will only increase into the future. So if the northern route does develop into a truck road across the park, it will have to be tarmac, suitable for heavy traffic.”
Projections we’ve done indicate that this commercial route would involve thousands of vehicles, encourage development and towns, and be an existential threat to the entire Serengeti ecosystem. We can’t let that happen.
