“This is our territory, territory means life; our identity and we can’t survive
without. The fortress conservation model pushes our people out
of their land. We need local and global synergies to stop land grabbing
and eviction of the Indigenous pastoralists of Ngorongoro.”
– Maasai Leader (name withheld for security reasons)
The Indigenous Maasai of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in northern Tanzania keep resisting the government’s efforts to displace them from their ancestral lands. Until now, the Maasai herders who practice traditional livestock grazing, have been coexisting with the wildlife of the conservation area, which also is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Government of Tanzania claims that the rising Maasai population and their livestock are threatening wildlife protection. At the same time, Ngorongoro has become one of the most intensively visited conservation areas in Africa where tourism rates have exploded from 20,000 yearly visits to 650,000 visits in the past 30 years. It thus seems that the displacement of the Maasai is not about nature conservation but about expanding tourism revenues.
This is nothing new – in 2009, for example, thousands of Maasai families were evicted from Loliondo to allow a United Arab Emirates -based luxury tourism and trophy hunting company OBC to fully operate in the area. In addition, it was in 1959 when Maasai pastoralists were forcibly resettled from the Serengeti plains to Ngorongoro due to the establishment of the national park. It is now some of the very same Maasai who are facing threats to be evicted from home for the second time.
“Evicting the Maasai of Ngorongoro means violating their native rights of territory ownership. The women and children are the most suffering. Both the people of this community and their livestock are in great danger of losing their livelihoods.”
– Maasai woman (name withheld for security reasons)
Land is Life stands with the Maasai pastoralists of Ngorongoro and joins their demands on the Government of Tanzania to halt the eviction plans immediately. We also request the UNESCO – that claims to integrate the protection of cultural and natural heritage and to preserve the balance between nature and people – to intervene. We would like to ask them, what is the role of a World Heritage Site without its living cultural heritage? Land is Life joins the calls for the establishment of a Maasai-led steering committee to find the right balance between the pastoralists’ livelihoods, tourism, and biodiversity in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.