21ST CENTURY WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

Outside of Tanzania’s national parks, lands set aside as wildlife management areas provide rural communities with ways to benefit from conserving wildlife.

 
Impala in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania.
Quelea birds in Tarangire, National Park. Tanzania. The stability of national parks is largely as result of the income they bring in. Conservation priority land outside of national parks is much harder to protect hence the WMA system.
A lionness in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania.
Ismail Kalifa Ismail, Secretary at the Tunduru WMA which was established in 2009, Tanzania.
VIllage game scouts (VGS) on a training exercise. Burunge WMA. Tanzania.
Village game scouts on patrol in Burunge WMA. Tanzania.
Tourism brings much needed income to the WMA through licenses. Burunge, Tanzania.
Marieta Joao with Matapa, a local dish made form pumpkin leaves and ground nuts. N'robe farmer field school. Nampula Province, Mozambique.
A young girl chases baboons from her farm in Nova Madiera block farming area. Block farming combats habitat fragmentation and human-wildlife conflict. Chipanje Chetu, Mozambique.
Farmers using firecrackers to scare elephants from their farm in Nova Madiera block farming area. Block farming combats habitat fragmentation and human-wildlife conflict. Chipanje Chetu, Mozambique.
A lionness with her cub in Tarangire National Park. Tanzania.
 
 

Slate-colored clouds lowered over our land Cruiser as it rattled along a dirt road through Burunge Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in northeast Tanzania. It was April, the height of the main rainy season, and the land around us was dense with new vegetation.

Our small WWF team was doing a ride-along with Joseph Mpuki and Daniel Evarest, village game scouts on a routine patrol. After reaching the patrol site, we started off on foot, keeping an eye out for lions, elephants and other wildlife – as well as illegal poaching snares. Mpuki and Evarest noted any animals we saw in a daily log.

Tanzania’s WMAs are tracts of communal land set aside exclusively for wildlife management by rural villages. Participating communities receive a variety of benefits related to wildlife, most of all employment. In Tanzania’s 19 WMAs, more than 500 village game scouts are working to monitor species, enforcing anti-poaching laws and responding to human-wildlife conflicts.

The daily logs are part of a new local monitoring system meant to help scouts and WMA managers collect and analyze data—and, in turn, empower communities to make better management decisions. The system is being piloted in a handful of WMAs, including Burunge. Once ready, it will help WMA staff across the country safeguard their wildlife—and maximize the benefits that well-managed wildlife can bring.