THEODORE ROOSEVELT called the Serengeti a 鈥淧liocene landscape鈥� 鈥� in between shooting anything that moved across its grassy plains in the 1920s. For the British biologist Julian Huxley, who toured the plains of the Serengeti in 1960, the 60 000 square kilometres of East African savanna were 鈥渁 unique glimpse of the world of nature before the coming of man鈥�. Today, more big game roam the plains than anywhere else on Earth. The annual migration of 2 million wildebeest and zebra across an area the size of Scotland is one of the greatest wildlife spectacles.
You can pay to see it for the trifling sum of $20 at the gate of one of the Serengeti鈥檚 world-famous national parks and game reserves, such as Masai Mara or the Ngorongoro Crater. This is only a few dollars more than the price of a ticket to see the lions at ersatz English 鈥渟afari parks鈥� such as Whipsnade or Longleat. Cheap at the price. But many believe it is too cheap to last.
Western environmentalists have for 40 years claimed that the game parks of Kenya and Tanzania can pay their way by attracting tourists. The Serengeti plain has been the crucible for the idea. Richard Leakey, until recently the director of the Kenyan Wildlife Service, says that 鈥渂y attracting tourists, the lions and elephants are contributing to the economic development of the country鈥�.
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Certainly, tourism is the leading foreign exchange earner in both Kenya and Tanzania. In Kenya, it accounts for more than 40 per cent, or $400 million a year, of foreign exchange earnings, and keeps more than a million people in work. Tourist earnings in Tanzania are $120 million, about a quarter of foreign earnings. The Indian Ocean beaches may be popular, but for most tourists 鈥済oing on safari鈥� is the unique attraction of East Africa.
But many environmental economists protest that tourism is not paying its way. Despite being part of the lucrative tourist trade, the wildlife itself is treated almost as a free resource. In Kenya, for example, of that $400 million from tourists, only $13 million, or 3 per cent, finds its way to the Kenyan Wildlife Service. From this, it is expected both to run the parks and pay compensation to the Masai people, the traditional custodians of the land, for depriving them of their lands. Dominic Moran of the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment at University College London, says that in effect the 鈥渆xperience of a lifetime鈥� enjoyed by the million visitors to the game parks of Kenya and Tanzania each year is heavily subsidised by the Masai.
Other riches
Right now, says Moran, local people might be better off financially if they rounded up the wildlife and turned the rich soils of the game parks into wheat fields. Many Masai, turfed off their land by the tourist trade, would happily do just that. Sacrilege? Well, if the world thinks so, says Moran, the world must put its money where its mouth is.
The Serengeti plain was once the undisputed home of the Masai, East Africa鈥檚 largest community of cattle herders. For centuries their cattle grazed alongside the herds of antelopes, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, wildebeest and zebras, and the lions, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas and jackals that prey upon them. The Masai themselves do not hunt or eat wild animals, except during famines. 鈥淚t is no mere accident of history that many of the most spectacular wildlife protection areas in East Africa are found in territories previously part of Masai land,鈥� says Moringe Parkipuny, a former member of parliament representing the Ngorongoro district who runs an organisation to promote the integration of pastoralism and conservation.
But British colonialists progressively annexed Masai land in the first half of this century, first for coffee and tea plantations, and later for hunting. One expedition led by Roosevelt killed 5000 animals. Such carnage all but wiped out many species and so in 1929 colonial administrators created the first Serengeti game reserve to protect it from European hunters.
Ironically, as colonial Africa prepared for independence, Europeans feared that the new African nations would wreck the wildlife in the parks and reserves. The fate of the Serengeti was as controversial then as the Brazilian rainforest is today. A film by the German naturalist Bernhard Grzimek, Serengeti Shall Not Die, helped to inspire the creation in 1961 of the World Wildlife Fund, the first international conservation organisation in the world. Huxley was one of the WWF鈥檚 founders, and he and the other founders promoted the idea of using the parks as money-spinners through tourism and game hunting.
The message struck home. The parks and reserves survived independence. But they, and the large areas of open grassland that surround them, have become scenes of increasing conflict between the Masai and conservationists.
When the British created one park in Kenya, for example, they threw out the Masai pastoralists. Masai retribution was swift. They killed most of the black rhino in the park. In Tanzania, according to Jeremy Swift of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, more than 25 000 square kilometres of Masai land has been set aside for conservation. The Ngorongoro Crater, a huge extinct volcanic crater covered by grassland, was once shared by wild animals and, at the end of the dry season, Masai cattle. But today, the Masai and their animals are banished from the crater, which is out of bounds to everyone except tourists.
According to Parkipuny, 鈥渢he rule of conservation鈥� in Tanzania has been characterised by 鈥減rejudices, neglect, harassment and impoverishment鈥�. As a result, the Masai are turning against wild animals because they are 鈥渢he main cause of their suffering鈥�. Swift agrees. 鈥淒isenchantment with conservation has antagonised them and made them less willing defenders of the wildlife they once so well preserved.鈥�
Today, the Serengeti plain is a patchwork of national parks and game reserves, their pastures mostly off limits to Masai cattle. 鈥淒ispersal areas鈥� stretch beyond the parks, where cattle can graze but wild animals are also free to roam. In Kenya, this land is increasingly being organised into ranches, giving groups of Masai formal title to their land. Around the 1400-square kilometre Masai Mara game reserve, for instance, there are now 鈥済roup ranches鈥�, many of them fenced, spreading over an area of 4600 square kilometres. These dispersal areas are becoming a new zone of conflict.
Spurred on by the Kenyan government鈥檚 push for self-sufficiency in wheat, many group ranches are ploughing their land to grow arable crops. Wheat fields have penetrated deep into the Serengeti plain in Kenya. They are crossing the Loita plains to the northeast of the Masai Mara reserve and, in places, almost reach the boundary of the Masai Mara reserve. Northern Loita now produces a fifth of Kenya鈥檚 wheat. 鈥淎gricultural expansion is encroaching on wildlife dispersal areas and corridors crucial for the integrity of park ecosystems,鈥� says Dhyani Berger of Friends of Conservation, a Kenyan environment group. Equally, it is forcing wild animals and Masai herdsmen into increasing conflict over the diminishing unfenced land.
When Huxley toured the region 35 years ago he reflected the scientific consensus of the time by accusing the Masai of allowing their cattle to overgraze the plain, 鈥減ushing it downhill towards desert鈥�. But ecologists are now on the side of the cattle herders. They argue that traditional herding systems are usually extremely sensitive to environmental pressures. Herdsmen move their animals across the plains to take advantage of patchy rainfall. During droughts, the size of their herds contracts as animals are killed for cash or food. And, says Berger, wild game prefer the short grasses where cattle have grazed to the longer, coarser grasses of the cattle-free reserves such as the Masai Mara.
Threats to the plain
These days, the game may be a greater threat to vegetation than cattle. Each summer more wildebeest than ever make their annual dry-season migration north into the Kenyan side of the plain, to the green pastures and water holes of the Masai Mara and the Amboseli Masai National Park. 鈥淭here has been a 400 per cent increase in the wildebeest population of the Greater Serengeti since 1961, to the current population of 1.5 million,鈥� says Parkipuny. Though it adds to the tourist spectacle, this population explosion is destroying vegetation both within and outside the parks.
And the tourists themselves are an increasing ecological threat. The number of visitors to the Masai Mara鈥檚 12 lodges and camp sites increased by 260 per cent between 1977 and 1989, reaching 190 000. The reserve is crisscrossed by tracks crowded with sightseeing minibuses. Dozens often converge on cheetah attempting to stalk their prey, until the animals give up and go hunting farm animals on the ranches.
To ease the pressure, conservationists are pushing to secure the position for wild animals on the dispersal areas. Leakey wants the parks and reserves to be expanded to provide a buffer zone against the advance of fenced farming. He wants another 600 square kilometres around the Masai Mara reserve, and suggests leasing the land 鈥渁t a fair price鈥� from the Masai.
The Masai are understandably suspicious. In the past such deals have usually gone wrong. In 1977, for example, a scheme was launched to compensate them for loss of water and grazing land in Amboseli. It included a water pipe from a park watering hole to grazing areas outside, and allowed them to open lodges for tourists. But the water pipe soon broke, the compensation payments ceased in 1983 and the Masai have returned to the park. And in 1988 the African Wildlife Foundation, a conservation group based in Nairobi, persuaded Masai grazers to remove their cattle from the Tsavo West National Park in return for alternative grazing areas and help with tourist projects. But within two years the scheme had broken down and the Masai resumed grazing their cattle in the park.
It is no longer true to say that the Masai gain little or nothing from the tourist industry. Since 1977, the Kenyan government has tried to reconcile wildlife conservation with the welfare of the human communities on the plain. Masai communities can now claim fees when wild animals graze on their land, or for supplying water to tourist lodges and even gravel for park roads.
Entrepreneurial activity
They are also being encouraged to profit directly from tourists by setting up their own businesses, often in collaboration with Nairobi-based tourist companies. Some Masai have created 鈥済ame ranches鈥� in the dispersal areas and others are experimenting with 鈥渆cotourism鈥�. But, says Berger, only a small Masai elite has profited from tourism. And tourist projects have boosted the population of the park boundaries, accelerating environmental degradation. 鈥淪ettlements near park gates, such as Talek township, have become unplanned trading centres surrounded by zones of increasingly denuded land,鈥� says Berger. They consume large amounts of firewood and water and pollute the park margins. A survey in 1994 found that the 12 tourist camps and lodges round the Masai Mara consume more than 1200 tonnes of wood a year.
Far from saving the protected areas, critics claim, the new round of entrepreneurial activity threatens to destroy them. And there鈥檚 the rub. Tourism neither helps the majority of Masai, nor channels money into conservation. Of the $13 million that the Kenyan Wildlife Service receives each year, most comes from gate fees. For a typical European tourist, the proportion of the total cost of their holiday going to the park can be less than 1 per cent.
Moran argues that this is a very poor return for the designation of some 8 per cent of the country to wildlife protection. According to a recent study by US AID, converting the often very fertile soils of the parks into a wheat prairie could generate $203 million a year. But Moran believes the Serengeti鈥檚 parks and reserves are capable of generating the same income, if not more.
He has used modern environmental economics to show that the parks could earn far more from tourists. His method is the 鈥渃ontingent valuation technique鈥� which involves assessing, through tightly structured questionnaires, how much people would pay for maintaining or re-establishing some piece of the environment. The technique has been used to determine how much Swedish anglers are prepared to pay to reduce acid rain and revive fish stocks in their lakes, how much Alaskans should be compensated for the pollution from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and whether to allow mining in the Kakadu National Park in Australia.
Untapped revenue
He asked 470 tourists on safari in Kenya how much they would be prepared to pay in extra gate fees to ensure that the parks and their wildlife did not deteriorate. Most people assumed that far more of their money found its way to the park authorities than is the case, and his study put the untapped revenue at between $46 million and $450 million a year, depending on various assumptions, including how many days people spent in the parks. These figures translate to between $80 and $750 earned per tourist trip, and between $1600 and $15 700 per square kilometre per year of protected areas.
If all this money went to the park authorities and the local Masai, it would increase their revenues between four and forty-fold, raising the economic potential of the land above that possible from arable farming. High park fees would have the advantage of reducing the pressure of too many tourists in the parks.
There is, Moran admits, 鈥渁 difference between actual payment and stated willingness to pay鈥�. And in practice park managers would not be able to capture all this 鈥渃onsumer surplus鈥�. But his research does suggest that tourists can be persuaded to pay for conservation. He suggests doubling or tripling park gate fees for a trial period.
If the world wants Kenya and Tanzania to maintain their great wildlife areas then one way or another, Moran argues, it should pay for what amounts to a service provided by the two countries for the whole planet. And the same should apply to other sites important for global biological diversity. The trick for biodiversity-rich countries, he says, is to convert the expressed desire of the world to pay for maintaining this diversity 鈥渋nto cash returns鈥�.
It helps if the biodiversity includes charismatic species, such as the elephants, rhinos, lions and leopards. But coral reefs, rainforests and large wetlands 鈥� even scenic pieces of desert 鈥� are increasingly attracting ecotourists.
If park fees can鈥檛 raise the money, says Moran, then other means of turning intangible global environmental concern into hard cash will be needed. This philosophy is captured in the Biodiversity Convention, initiated at the Earth Summit in 1992. Rich nations agreed to pay the costs of developing countries complying with the convention鈥檚 requirements to protect biological diversity. The World Bank, along with UN agencies, has set up the Global Environment Facility, one of whose functions is to channel money to this end.
The one certainty is that in an increasingly crowded world there are few true wildernesses left of the scale and grandeur of the Serengeti plain. But, hemmed in by wheat fields and ambushed by tourist buses, the 鈥淧liocene landscape鈥� of the Serengeti is in danger of being reduced to little more than a larger version of an English safari park. If the rest of the world wants it to remain a place to cherish for its wild splendour, then it must be prepared to pay a proper price for the privilege (see Map).
Hunting for money
JULIAN HUXLEY said in 1960 that 鈥渨ild protein can yield more profit than cattle or cultivation鈥�. But since then conversationists have largely opposed 鈥渢rophy鈥� hunting. In 1977, Kenya became the first country in Africa to issue a general ban on hunting, after poachers had wiped out most of the country鈥檚 rhinos. This shut off a potential source of income, notably in Masai Mara, where several blocks had been set aside for professional hunters. Only limited culling is allowed today 鈥� and only by landowners, not tourists.
Tanzania, by contrast, has a lucrative and fast-growing licensed hunting business. In 1992, more than 10 000 tourist-days were spent hunting in protected areas. More than 7000 animals were killed. Many economists believe that controlled hunting and trade in products such as elephant ivory add to the economic value of wild animals and the land on which they live 鈥� thus increasing the incentive for their conservation. In particular, they could add to the income of the parks.