Tanzania revisits Loliondo hunting reserve plan
Tourists at the Serengeti National Park in northern Tanzania. PHOTO | FILE
By BDAfrica.com REPORTER and AGENCIES
- A Dubai-based luxury safari company wants control over a 370,000 acre “wildlife corridor” near the Serengeti.
- The commercial hunting firm lets Arab royals and rich businessmen to kill wild animals in the game control area.
Thousands of Maasai will be evicted from a vast
parcel of land in Tanzania’s Loliondo district to pave way for a private
game park, area activists say.
This follows the reversal of a decision
last year not to allow a Dubai-based commercial hunting and luxury
safari company control over a 1,500 square km (about 370,000 acres)
“wildlife corridor” near the Serengeti national park.
Tanzania’s government, however, says the reports are merely “a bad rumour”.
More than 40,000 people have been
asked to leave the grazing land by the end of the year as the State
pushes on with plans to sell.
The proposed hunting reserve will
be run by the Otterlo Business Corporation, a company with links to the
Dubai royal family that leases land in the area.
According to reports in the
Guardian newspaper, the government is offering £369,350 (TShs1 billion
or about KShs52 million) in compensation “to be channelled into
socio-economic development projects”.
The park is expected to have an
impact on Kenya’s Masai Mara ecosystem, which neighbours the Serengeti
and shares in its exceptional wildlife population.
Loliondo is on the main migratory
route for wildlife north of Ngorongoro Crater, east of the Serengeti
and south of the Mara National Reserve.
Each year hundreds of Arab royals
and rich businessmen spend weeks hunting wild animals in its game
control area, the Associated Press reports.
The hunting season coincides with
the migration of wildebeest and zebra, which cross into the Serengeti
and the Masai Mara, followed by predators.
“The area is leased under the
Otterlo name by a member of an Emirates royal family who is a senior
officer in the UAE defense ministry,” AP says.
Tanzania's National Resources and
Tourism minister Lazarus Nyalandu says any talk of a change of heart
regarding the wildlife corridor is mistaken.
“Government of Tanzania has no plans to evict the
Masai people out of their ancestral land in Loliondo as wrongly reported
by media,” Nyalandu posted on his official Twitter account. He,
however, made no reference to Otterlo, Dubai royals or plans for the
hunting reserve.
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