Tanzania to kick Maasai herds off pasture land

Tanzania’s government is preparing to throw Maasai tribesmen off cattle-grazing land near the country’s most famous wildlife park and will instead allow a hunting company from the United Arab Emirates to control it.

The reclassification of the land will create a “wildlife corridor” that will prevent the Maasai from accessing lands they have long used, thus destroying their traditional nomadic cattle-herding lifestyle, said Sarah Gilbertz of Survival International, a London-based group that works for the rights of tribal people.

Tanzania’s ministry of natural resources and tourism announced last week that it would not allow Maasai on a 600-square-mile section of the Loliondo game controlled area “in order to resolve existing conflicts” and “save the ecology” of the Serengeti, Ngorongoro and Loliondo game reserves.

However, the groups say that is an excuse to benefit a hunting company.

“Although the government claims that the land is needed as a corridor for wildlife, the area is leased to the Ortello Business Corporation of the United Arab Emirates to use for trophy hunting,” Ms Gilbertz said.

The Serengeti is considered to be one of the world’s natural treasures.

The reserve is a vast plain dotted with acacia trees and watering holes, where wildebeest and zebra gather in huge herds for annual migrations. More than two million animals migrate north from Serengeti into Kenya’s adjacent Maasai Mara reserve every year.

Ian Bassin, campaign director for the activist group Avaaz, said up to 68,000 Maasai could be driven off the land. The last time the government tried to clear land for Ortello, security forces burned villages and killed tens of thousands of head of livestock, Mr Bassin said.

“This time the villagers say they will vehemently resist the eviction,” he said.