TANZANIA (eTN) – Through tourism, Tanzania National Parks supports
community projects in villages neighboring the parks through its Social
Community Responsibility (SCR) program known as Good Neighborliness, an
initiative that has shown a positive trend, bringing reconciliation
between people and wild animals. People in villages appreciate the
importance of wildlife and tourism in their lives.
This is why it is vitally important for Tanzania’s government to take
new strategies to resolve escalating conflicts between local
communities and wildlife conservation authorities. The Tanzania
government is now planning to demarcate anew the wildlife parks borders.
The move to demarcate borders between wildlife parks and local
communities had come into government plans as the only option to solve
conflicts between locals and wildlife conservationists.
Natural Resources and Tourism Minister Mr. Lazaro Nyalandu was quoted
as saying that his ministry which is responsible to oversee wildlife
protection and conservation, is working out a modality to re-demarcate
the borders between wildlife parks and human settlements.
He said the aim to carry such an exercise was a quick solution to
frequent conflicts between communities living near reserved areas, the
parks’ managements, and related wildlife managers.
There has been frequent conflicts and skirmishes reported to erupt
between local communities and wildlife conservation managers. Most of
reported conflicts were based on the fight for pastures and farming
lands.
Wildlife and human conflicts are currently a big debate in Tanzania
and which had attracted local and international conservationists to
intervene. Northern Tanzania’s premier tourist pulling parks of
Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Arusha and the Serengeti have reported
conflicts between humans and wild animals.
Tanzania National Parks, the trustee and leading wildlife
conservation and protection institution, has been affected by some
reported human and wildlife conflicts in three of its leading parks of
Ruaha, Tarangire and Serengeti.
But, through tourist benefit-sharing initiatives designed and
monitored by Tanzanian National Parks, the trustees and the parks
management are looking at social benefits to the local communities
neighboring nature-protected areas through tourist income-sharing
initiatives.
For the past 25 years, proponents of conservation in Tanzania have
pointed to the importance of conservation of wildlife outside national
park boundaries and within human-inhabited landscapes as critical to
maintaining healthy migratory wildlife populations.
Just outside the national parks in Tanzania, there are over 100
villages, of which 42 share a border with the parks. Many of these
villages were integrated into the Tanzanian national parks.
The community conservation program, Good Neighborliness, has been
established with a purpose of educating local communities on the
importance of wildlife conservation and tourism, while sharing incomes
generated from tourist business conducted inside and outside the parks.
The Community Conservation Service (CCS) is an Outreach Program of
Tanzania National Parks that is extended to surrounding communities with
a focus on local people and governments up to the district level.
Benefits obtained through Tanzania national parks’ Support for
Community Initiated Projects (SCIP) fund are recognized as
wildlife-related benefits in receiving villages and have made a
significant contribution to changing the “park-people” relationship, and
this has reduced conflicts between wildlife conservationists and the
local communities neighboring the parks.
The SCIP fund was established as part of the strategic planning
process. The fund program works with communities bordering or close to
national parks and stresses support for community-initiated projects.
Funds, currently amounting to 7.5 percent of each park’s operations,
get allocated to the local communities. Generally the park contributes
up to 70 percent of the local community project cost, and the community
contributes the remaining 30 percent.
Sustainable tourism has been one of the strategies being given
special emphasis by the government of Tanzania as a means towards
poverty alleviation, with the understanding that sustainable tourism
development addresses needs of the present without compromising the
ability of the future generations to meet their needs.
As part of the strategy, tourism sector policies emphasize active
community involvement in sustainable utilization of natural and cultural
resources.
Conservation education programs have been designed to organize park
visits for local communities, training for communities on project
management and accounting, and the use of appropriate technology. Nature
conservation clubs are established in schools, teachers are trained,
and conservation films are shown in the communities.
From a single national park in 1961 when Tanzania became independent
from Britain, today there are 15 national parks, rich with wildlife and a
wide diversity of plants. A new park is planned inside Lake Victoria to
protect rescued and endangered species.
Standing as tourist magnets, wildlife parks are the leading sources
of Tanzania’s foreign currency accrued from photographic tourism, hotel
concession fees, and other levies from safari companies operating in
these protected areas.
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, founder of the Tanzanian nation, deliberately
advocated for the need to establish wildlife parks and develop a
national tourist base, taking into account that tourism under British
colonial powers basically covered amateur hunting. Wildlife conservation
for sustainable tourism development was not a priority for the colonial
administrators during those past days.
National parks have successfully maintained a competitive advantage
over other tourist sites adding value to tourist sites outside the
parks. The parks have become the leading tourist selling point for
Tanzania, and this has made tourism an important sector of the economy
for Tanzania's development.
In recent years, tourism has contributed towards 17 percent of the
country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 25 percent of export earnings
in foreign exchange, said Allan Kijazi, the Director General of
Tanzania National Parks.
Tanzania National Parks, which manages 16 premier tourist attractive
wildlife sanctuaries, stands as the leading magnet which pulls foreign
tourists to Tanzania and the cornerstone of Tanzania’s tourism
development which is wildlife based. Tanzania National Parks occupies
coverage of 57,024 square kilometers of the Tanzanian land.
Mount Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Tarangire, Lake Manyara and Ruaha
national parks are the thrilling, most attractive wildlife parks under
the trusteeship of the Tanzania National Parks and which pulls big
crowds of tourists to Tanzania.
Tanzania's wildlife conservation has set a solid foundation for
re-thinking and repositioning the national parks management and trustees
on a global roadmap of conservation. This repositioning aims at
addressing a number of challenges, which include poaching, disappearance
of wildlife corridors, climate change, technological advances, and
understanding of the ecology of the parks systems.
According to the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) projections,
Africa will witness the tourist sector grow four-fold by 2020. With the
diversity of tourism products in the African region, proper planning,
and political will, this continent stands to benefit greatly from
tourism.
African countries have made tourism a priority and committed resources to create a conducive environment for its growth.
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