Serengeti Road Building Controversy

News first emerged in mid 2010 of a plan by the Tanzanian government to build a road across the Serengeti, the consequence of which would be a large scale disruption to one of the largest land mammal migrations on Earth.

Since the intentions of the Tanzanian government emerged there has been consistent pressure aimed at the African government to shelve plans and it was believed that in late June of 2011 they had bowed to pressure from conservation groups. This was fuelled by a passage in a letter from Ezekiel Maige, the Tanzanian Minister for natural resources to the World Heritage Centre that stated,

“The state party confirms that the proposed road will not dissect the Serengeti National Park and therefore will not affect the migration and conservation values of the property”.

Unfortunately, the groups publicising this apparent victory failed to read the letter in further detail. It would appear that when the letter is read as a whole, the road building will actually continue but there is a government concession that the road will be gravel, not tarmac and that it will be “mainly for tourism and administration”.

There are some fears that the road will precipitate the easier transport of important minerals and oil and lead to a new sea port being built. Although this is simply conjecture at this point, it is important that conservation groups keep a keen eye on developments because it is believed that the building of a fenced highway will cut numbers of wild wildebeests from around 1.3 million to just 200,000 in the area.