In the mid-1960’s, the pastoral Maasai of Ngorongoro, proud of their reputation for being fierce warriors, and possessing an abundance of cattle, were content with their way of life. Thus, they were conservative and resistant to change, an attitude that frustrated government officials, both pre-and post-independence, and gave the Maasai a reputation for being backward. (Adapted from the previous blogpost, The Maasai of Ngorongoro: 1960’s.)

Over half a century later their situation has changed–drastically.

For instance, due to better health care, and the immigration into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) of other pastoralists (especially during droughts), the human population is now twelve-fold greater.

In contrast, several factors have constrained growth of the livestock population: (a) Valuable grazing lands have been lost to other uses, primarily wildlife conservation and tourism, (b) Livestock carrying capacity has declined due to overgrazing, a ban on setting grass fires, and recurring droughts, (c) Livestock deaths have increased due to diseases and droughts.

DETAILS

Valuable grazing land was lost when the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), concerned that the Maasai and their livestock were hindering wildlife conservation, removed them from Ngorongoro, Olmoti, and Empakaai craters in the 1970’s. (Ngorongoro Crater was an especially hard loss.)

Also, expanding numbers of wildebeests calving in the wet season on the eastern Serengeti Plains, and the associated risk of cattle catching malignant catarrh fever (MCF), forced herders to keep their livestock in the highlands for extended periods. The reduced ability of the Maasai to use this wet season grazing area caused an estimated 35% reduction in cattle numbers.

Forage quality and production dropped (at least for cattle) in parts of the Serengeti Plains because of declining grass and increasing shrub cover associated with a ban on setting grass fires imposed by the NCAA. (Pastoralists typically burn grasslands to kill ticks, remove dry grass, suppress woody plants, and induce greening of the vegetation.) Increasing abundance of unpalatable grass species in the highlands probably reflects overgrazing.

Livestock deaths, especially of cattle, increased when herders, unable to use wet season pastures on the eastern Serengeti Plains, were forced to keep their animals for extended periods on traditional dry season pastures in the highlands. This increased the exposure of cattle to ticks, vectors for East Coast fever (ECF). Major die-offs occurred. A good example is provided by Andrew Clark, who in 1967, described the results of a virulent outbreak of ECF in Loliondo, north of the NCA: “Hundreds of cattle died in a few weeks. The whole area stunk of rotting carcasses. Hyenas, bellies pendulous from gorging, could barely walk. Vultures were so stuffed they could hardly get off the ground.”

As a result, Maasai pastoralists were forced to reduce the proportion of cattle in their herds and increase that of goats. This is because goats are less susceptible to disease than cattle.

Finally, droughts are becoming more frequent, and lengthy. Consequently, the grasses that provide forage for cattle are less able to recover their vigor between droughts, making them less productive. Thus, they support fewer animals, which tend to be weaker, in poorer condition, and more apt to die during the next drought. The drought ending in 2009, one of the most serious in recent memory, killed 35-40% of all cattle in Ngorongoro District, which includes the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) and, to the north, Loliondo.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CHANGE

The result of all this is that, even though animal numbers have increased, the livestock population, especially of cattle, has not grown in accordance with the human population. Livestock biomass per pastoralist, well above subsistence level in 1966, is now below subsistence level.

This has caused the Ngorongoro Maasai, with too few livestock to support themselves, to become so impoverished that they must find other ways to supplement their livestock-based subsistence economy. Presently, they cultivate. Unfortunately, most are still too poorly educated to be employed in the region’s burgeoning wildlife-viewing tourist industry (six tourist lodges in the NCA alone). Those migrating to cities generally only find work as low-paid security guards.

Nonetheless, despite there being too few livestock to adequately support resident pastoralists, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) is still concerned that there are too many for the land to support. It is especially worried about the ecological impact of overgrazing (as well as that of settlements and cultivation) on wildlife-based tourism, a major source of foreign currency (in 2017, 650,000 tourists visited the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, generating about 65 million $ U.S.) https://africasacountry.com/2022/04/people-live-here).

And the government is worried, too: The National assembly recently debated whether the Maasai even have a right, guaranteed in laws as far back as 1959, to live in the NCA. Also, recent reports in the media (denied by the government), state that it is considering relocating 80,000 Ngorongoro Maasai–much, if not most of the total population–outside the NCA. Whether or not this eventually happens, the NCAA/Tanzania government are “encouraging” impoverished herders to go elsewhere. Furthermore, a few hundred Maasai recently have, moving 210 miles (340 km) to Handeni in eastern Tanzania https://www.kbc.co.ke/hundreds-of-masai-ready-to-leave-conservation-area/.

Is this the future of Ngorongoro’s Maasai?

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Amiyo, T.A. 2006. Ngorongoro Crater rangelands: condition, management, and monitoring. MS thesis, School of Biological and Conservation Sciences, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.

Borges, J. et al. 2022. Landsat time series reveal forest loss and woody encroachment in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. Open Access https://doi.org/10.1002/rse2.277.

Galvin.. et al. 2015. Transitions in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area: The story of land use, human well-being, and conservation. Pages 483-512 in Serengeti IV: Sustaining biodiversity in a coupled human-natural ecosystem. The University of Chicago Press.

Homewood, K.M. & W.A. Rodgers. 1991. Maasailand ecology: Pastoralist development and wildlife conservation in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. Cambridge University Press.

Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. 1966. General Management Plan. Tanzania Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism.