Featured image: Eleusine jaegeri, a large tussock grass, dominates the highland grasslands of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It is unpalatable except when young. Consequently, grazing pressure is confined to an underlying mat of palatable grasses (Andropogon, Cynodon, Digitaria, Sporobolus) which is kept low by constant usage.
Several months ago I made digital copies of the Range Management Handbook of Kenya available online. The response was so positive that I’ve decided to continue with other difficult-to-obtain publications on eastern Africa’s rangelands. Today I’m happy to announce the online availability of several digitized publications on the rangelands of Tanzania!
During the mid 1960’s and 70’s I was involved in, among other things, surveys of vegetation in Tanzania. Whenever possible, I also obtained copies of other surveys and studies, six of which I have digitized. Published between 1967 and 1978, they are now out of print and hard to obtain. Nonetheless, they may still have some value, be that for planning, instructional, research, or historical purposes.
Also, if you have paper copies of additional publications on the rangelands of Tanzania and would like me to digitize them and make them available, please send me an email.
September 1964. One of the things I remember from my first day as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ngorongoro Crater were the reactions of Henry Fosbrooke, conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and John Goddard, a Canadian wildlife biologist, to tourist vehicles tightly clustered around animals of interest, such as lions.
“Why don’t they stay on the main tracks?” Henry complained. “There’s quite enough off-track driving going on. It’s wearing down the grass and disfiguring the crater floor. I must talk with our guides about this.” John wasn’t pleased either. “Crowding the animals makes them edgy.”
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.
That year, 12,137 tourists visited Ngorongoro. In 2018, over half a century later, the amount was closer to three quarters of a million. If Henry and John were worried about the impact of tourists on the crater’s environment and wildlife then, I wonder how they would feel now.
Not that I blame people for wanting to visit the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, for there is much to see. Here are some examples:
Lions. Tourist vehicles were most apt to crowd around the big cats, of which lions are both the largest, and usually easiest to find. And who wouldn’t want to see one, for the lion is the epitome of ferocity, the King of the Beasts lording it atop the food chain. Even from a distance, the large carnivore’s booming, moaning roars have a way of concentrating one’s attention, especially when sleeping in the fragile protection of a tent.
Meal time in Ngorongoro Crater. Photo by David Bygott.
Ngorongoro Crater has long been considered one of the best places on earth to see lions. In 1975, at 125 animals, it contained one of the densest populations in Africa. As of 2014, however, only 55 lions, comprising four prides, ruled the crater. Unfortunately, the lions of Ngorongoro Crater have a problem. Back in the early 1960’s most of them died, weakened by a plague of Stomoxys biting flies. Although the population subsequently grew, so few new lions entered the crater to replenish the gene pool over the next three decades that the crater’s lions became inbred. Immigration of new lions into the crater apparently has always been rare. However, a growing belt of Maasai communities may have exacerbated the situation by detering movement of lions between plains and crater (Maasai warriors kill lions to protect their livestock; they also once did it to prove their manhood.) This is one of the reasons why the Ngorongoro Conservaton Area Authority (NCAA) worries about the impact of an increasing human population on wildlife conservation (See MAASAI PASTORALISTS OF NGORONGORO: AS THEY ARE NOW). That said, however, KopeLion https://www.KopeLion.org and The Lion Recovery Fund, https://www.lionrecoveryfund have recently had some success in improving the relationship between lions and the Maasai.
Wildebeests. High-shouldered, broad-muzzled, and with cow-like horns and spindly legs, the wildebeest, or gnu, will ever win a beauty contest. (That said, I must admit to the cuteness of gnu calves.)
Wildebeest calves in Ngorongoro Crater.
In compensation, the wildebeest has a comical personality best displayed when, for instance, one of the funny looking animals cavorts about, kicking it’s heels in the air, or again, when sparring males drop to their front knees and butt heads with their hind ends in the air. Then, there’s those bleating grunts–ngggh. . . ngggh. . . ngggh–which sound like the large antelopes have sinus problems. (The name, gnu, might come from an approximation of that sound. However, the Swahili word for wildebeest is Nyumbu.)
The most spectacular wildebeest population in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) comprises the over a million animals of the migratory Serengeti herds which visit the eastern Serengeti Plains in the rainy season to graze nutritious forage and give birth.
Wildebeests on the Serengeti Plains. The animals calve on the eastern plains, which lie within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Photo taken in 1972 by Dirk Kreulen.
The wildebeest population in Ngorongoro Crater contains both resident and migratory animals. Thus, about 7,000 wildebeests are present throughout the year, blending in with a similar number of other ungulates, larger mammals, such as rhinos, and predators. (The present wildebeest population is about half what it was in the 1960’s. This is because removal of Maasai cattle from the crater, combined with a ban on setting grass fires, reduced wildebeest numbers by encouraging taller grass, a habitat more conducive to buffaloes.)
Wildebeests and zebras in Ngorongoro Crater
The year-round presence of wildebeests in Ngorongoro Crater strongly contrasts with that on the Serengeti Plains where the migratory herds provide an overwhelming visual impact in the wet season but are completely absent during the five-month dry season. In fact, few ungulates of any kind use the plains in the dry season.
Dry season on the Serengeti Plains. Photo by David Bygott.
In the 1960’s, I occasionally encountered oryx on the drier parts of the Serengeti Plains. Adapted to dry environments, they also make dry season use of areas which other herbivores only use in the wet season.
Black rhinos. While only half the size of an 1,750,000-year-old ancestor discovered by archeologists at Oldupai Gorge, the black rhino is still a heavy animal, weighing in at about a ton. However, as it is able to gallop at 30 mph (50 kph), and turn in its own length, it is a surprisingly nimble large animal.
Black rhino in Ngorongoro Crater.
The rhino’s inability to distinguish a motionless object beyond 15 yards (14 meters) may explain why, rather than charge a perceived threat, it’s more apt to snort loudly and, tail looped over its rump, trot away. Even its “charges” tend to be more impulsive and confused than aggressive. I once experienced this when, while rapidly retreating from what I thought was a charging rhino, I tripped and fell flat on my face only to find my presumed pursuer trot past fifty or so feet away.
Rhinos also can become habituated to the presence of humans. I remember one, named Horace, who was fast asleep when Henry, John, and I visited him that first day in the crater, and stayed that way as we ate lunch a few feet away.
The only signs of activity from Horace, other than heavy breathing, came from several yellow-beaked tick birds (ox peckers) that hopped and fluttered about as they poked into nooks and crannies of his body in search of ticks.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.
Non-habituated rhinos, however, can be dangerous. For instance, when Horace first appeared in the crater, he vigorously charged everything in sight. John and I barely escaped the wrath of an angry female, who only managed to bump our Land Rover as we sped away. A colleague encountering a grumpy rhino in the Serengeti National Park, did not escape so easily, the big animal hooking it’s horns under his Land Rover’s fender and banging the vehicle up and down several times before disengaging, leaving the fender looking like it had been holed by artillery shells.
A rhino charging a vehicle that came too close.
Sadly, the black rhino, as it is elsewhere in Africa, is the most threatened large mammal in the NCA. Intensive poaching wiped out the entire Oldupai Gorge population of 70 animals by the 1980’s and reduced their numbers in Ngorongoro Crater from over 100 in the late 1960’s to a mere 12 in 1996. Subsequently, however, a program of intensive monitoring and protection carried out by the NCAA and Frankfurt Zoological Society, increased the population to 30 by 2017. Yet another problem is that, as with the crater’s lions, its rhinos also may be genetically isolated and inbred. This has been partially addressed by the translocation into the crater of two female rhinos.
Mobile ranger post used for monitoring and protecting rhinos in Ngorongoro Crater. Photo taken in 2004.
Nonetheless, the black rhinos of Ngorongoro Crater continue to be a major tourist attraction.
Tourists viewing a distant rhino in Ngorongoro Crater. My old colleagues, Henry Fosbrooke and John Goddard, would be startled by the numbers of vehicles, but highly gratified that none have left the road. Photo taken in 2008 by David Bygott.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
Ashley Maberley, C.T. 1962. Animals of East Africa. Howard Timmons, Cape Town.
Estes, R.D. 1991. The Behavior Guide to African Animals. The University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Fosbrooke, H. 1972. Ngorongoro: the Eighth Wonder. Andre Deutsch, London.
Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. 1966. General Management Plan. Tanzania Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism.
Oates, L. & P.A. Rees. 2013. The Historical Ecology of the Large Mammal Populations of Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, East Africa. Mammal Review 43 (2013) 124-141.
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.)
Ngorongoro Crater is the largest in the Crater Highlands. Empakaai Crater contains a small, but lovely lake.Graphic by David Bygott and Jeanette Hanby.
Ngorongoro Crater, 97 sq. miles (252 sq. km) of productive rangeland. (View from my house on the crater rim in 1964.)
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.
Wildebeest calves on the eastern Serengeti Plains, which lie entirely within the NCA. From 1961 to 1977, the Serengeti wildebeest population grew from 250,000 to its present level of approximately 1,277,000. This caused the area used for calving to significantly expand. Photo by Dirk Kreulen.
Afterbirth of a wildebeest calf. If cattle graze grass that has been touched by it they are apt to contract (and die from) malignant catarrh fever (MCF). Photo by Dirk Kreulen.
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.
Grass fire on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. A decrease in fires following removal of Maasai and their livestock from the crater in the 1970’s resulted in taller grasses and lower grassland species diversity. (Also, as I can personally attest from having to pick them off my pants in 2004, more ticks.)
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.”
Ticks, carriers of East Coast fever (ECF). They become abundant on rangelands which are seldom burned and/or are used for extended periods by livestock. Photo by Dr. Alexey Yakovlev. CC Attribution-SA 2.0 G.L.
Veterinary staff with bones of Maasai cattle killed by East Coast fever in Loliondo, Photo by Andrew Clark.
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.
A mixed herd of goats and sheep. Goats also reproduce more quickly, produce milk throughout the year, utilize a variety of habitats (Cattle are restricted to grasslands), are drought-resistant, and easy to sell and slaughter. Thus, they are the fallback livestock for impoverished pastoralists.
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.
This 2004 scene of Maasai bomas shows two examples of change since the 1960s: (a) cultivation , and (b) huts unprotected by fences (Predators may no longer be a problem, or the Maasai now know how unhealthy it is to live at close quarters with livestock inside the stockades).
Maasai security guards in Zanzibar. Photo by Jack Meyers.
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?
To best secure their future, the Maasai of Ngorongoro must become better educated. Photo by Christopher Michel. CC Attribution 2.0 GL.
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.
(This, the first of two posts on the Ngorongoro Maasai, describes them as they were in the 1960’s. The second, coming in a few months, will describe their present situation, over half a century later.)
Kapenjiru, 1965. That night we ate goat meat roasted over a campfire while Solomon ole Saibull regaled us with stories, including how the agro-pastoral Arusha, who had originated from elements of the Kisongo, the principle sub-tribe, or section, of the Maasai, had, a few hundred years ago, pushed the agricultural Meru people from some of their land on Mt. Meru. Even more interesting, however, because we were near the place concerned, was his story about how the Kisongo defeated another sub-tribe of the Maasai, the Lumbwa, for possession of the Crater Highlands. The decisive battle took place on the rim of Empakaai Crater.
“What happened to the defeated warriors?”
Solomon shrugged, “What do you think? They were thrown over a cliff.”
Maasai murrani or warrior. Photo by Herman Dirschl.
Given the propensity in the nineteenth century for the various elements of the Maasai to slaughter one another, the Kisongo and Lumbwa might just as easily have fought over possession of barren rock. The Ngorongoro Crater Highlands, however, were a prize worth fighting for because they contained prime dry season grazing. Furthermore, in times of drought, they were a refuge for herders living in he surrounding, drier rangelands (or at least those on good terms with the Crater Highland’s occupants).
Grasslands (yellow) of the Serengeti Plains comprise the largest area of rangelands in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. However, the grasslands of the Crater Highlands can support 2-5 times as many livestock and people. Map courtesy of David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.
Thus, it isn’t surprising that the rangelands of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area have been inhabited by livestock-keeping peoples for a very long time. The Iraqw or Mbulu people first introduced livestock, and possibly also agriculture, to the area some 2,000-2,500 years ago. Around 1,000-1,500 BC, they were replaced by the Datog (or Barabaig, Tatua) who were in turn driven out by the Maasai sometime around 1850.
A deeply worn livestock trail on Makarut Mtn, indicative of thousands of years of use by herds of livestock. Pictured: Herman Dirschl, Canadian Wildlife Service.
A century and a half later, Maasai pastoralists still occupy the Crater Highlands and adjacent eastern Serengeti Plains. Most are Kisongo Maasai. The smaller Serenget and Salei sections occupy the eastern Serengeti Plains and Oldoinyo Gol Mtns. Many of these Maasai pastoralists were moved there from the western Serengeti Plains in what is now the Serengeti National Park.
When I was at Ngorongoro in the mid-1960’s, the Maasai still largely subsisted on milk, meat, and skins from their livestock. However, whenever milk was scarce, as in the late dry season and during droughts, they also ate grains obtained from dukas (shops) or neighboring agro-pastoralists, such as the Arusha Maasai, who also farmed. They raised goats, sheep, and donkeys (the latter for hauling things), but strongly emphasized cattle, which were the principal producers of milk. In the wet season when milk was most abundant, the Maasai lived only on it. Cattle, primarily bulls, were slaughtered for meat only on special occasions, such as ox-feasts helped by the warriors. Instead, the Maasai ate goats or sheep when they wanted meat.
Donkeys being used as pack animals in the Crater Highlands. The 6-7,000 ft (2,000-2,135 m) high grasslands pictured here were used for dry season grazing. In the background is 11,811 ft (3,600 m) Lolmalasin Mtn.
Having large herds was important. The more animals, the greater chance some would survive to rebuild the herd after a drought, outbreak of disease, or major stock theft. Also, the more milk a pastoralist’s herd produced, the more people he could support. (Human carrying capacity is maximized by emphasizing milk, rather than meat in diets: Milk has a higher caloric value.) Having many cattle also conferred prestige–he with many animals was an important man.
As were their predecessors, the Datog, and probably also the Iraqw/Mbulu before them, the Maasai were transhumant pastoralists, who moved between dry season and wet season pastures (the latter in the eastern Serengeti Plains and floor of the Rift Valley). Thus, when water sources dried up and forage was depleted by grazing on the lower, drier rangelands, livestock were returned to dry season pastures in the highlands where water and forage, the latter often still green and nutritious, were still abundant.
Cattle on wet season pasture in the Olbalbal, a large, shallow depression watered by outflow from Oldupai Gorge.
A Maasai’s home, or boma, consisted of huts encircled by a stockade of cut thorn bushes or upright logs (depending on the local vegetation), which also served as a corral for livestock. Constructed of frames of poles plastered with fresh cow dung mixed with mud and cow urine, the huts were dark and smoky inside. Nonetheless, they were remarkably free of flies and mosquitoes, and fluctuated little in temperature day and night.
A view of the Olbalbal Depression and Crater Highlands from a Maasai (Serenget or Salei) boma in the eastern Serengeti Plains.
Bomas were abandoned when cow dung and parasites reached unacceptable levels. Long after fences and huts disappeared, old boma siteswere marked by dense stands of dark green nettles and other plants growing on their nutrient-rich deposits of dung.
Building and maintaining a boma’s huts were the responsibility of the women, who also did the milking, gathered water and wood, cooked, cared for the children, attended calving, and dealt with night-time disturbances within the herd of corralled livestock.
Maasai ladies on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. Note the brand new (and therefore almost pristine white) Amerikani cloth, a cheap, bleached calico named for American traders who exported it to East Africa in the mid 19th century.
Young boys and girls did the herding, assisted by warriors and elders whenever herding and watering became difficult. After circumcision, the boys became warriors or murran, who carried out difficult, long-distance herd movements, defended their locality, recaptured stolen cattle, and (at least in the past) raided other tribes, including the neighboring Mbulu and Sukuma, for livestock. Exempt from regular herding, murran hunted lions, feasted on ox-meat, consorted with young, unmarried girls, and formed strong, lasting bonds with their age-mates. Boys looked forward to becoming murran, and elders fondly remembered their time as warriors. However, like it or not, by their mid-40’s, all murran became married elders responsible for managing their herds, and taking part in political and religious affairs.
Maasai murran watching an airplane being refueled on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater.
Despite what a European visitor to a Maasai boma, swatting away flies that bred in the accumulated dung on the stockade floor, might think, the Maasai felt they were living the ‘Good Life.’ Proud of their reputation for being fierce warriors and possessing an abundance of that which, in their eyes, any sane person would want, i.e., cattle, they had everything they desired.
Thus, the Maasai have tended to be conservative and resistant to change, such as in educating children and selling cattle at livestock markets. This attitude has frustrated government officials, both pre-and post-independence, and given the Maasai a reputation for being backward.
Even so, despite contributing little to the regional economy, subsistence pastoralism, prior to the advent of tourism, was the major land use throughout most of what is now the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
PRINCIPAL REFERENCE.
Homewood & Rodgers. 1991. Maasailand Ecology: Pastoralist Development and Wildlife Conservation in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. Cambridge University Press.)
Suddenly, ahead, a soft clunk sounded. Cowbell! The chief forest guard, an older man whose stiff curly hair was sprinkled with white, whispered that we should be especially quiet now. He and I were leading a group of forest guards and game scouts on a patrol for livestock trespassing in the forest reserve. Easing our way slowly around stumps, we carefully pushed branches aside to look ahead, studying each clearing before entering it, tense with anticipation.
“Wewe! Simama!” You! Stop!
“Kamata yeye!” Catch him!
Guards and scouts alike charged into the bushes . . .
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.
Now that I’ve grabbed your attention, and you’re wondering what happens next, I’m taking the opportunity to introduce some important background information before resuming the story. In my previous post, I promoted the scenery and wildlife of Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) to the extent that some readers probably wondered why, if it was so great, it wasn’t a national park. The answer is that it once was. From 1951-1959 it comprised the western part of the Serengeti National Park.
However, difficulties encountered from having people, in this case Maasai pastoralists and non-Maasai cultivators, living in an area strictly devoted to the conservation of wildlife forced the then territorial government to remove the eastern Serengeti Plains and Crater Highlands from the park and place them within a separate entity, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This allowed the Maasai to continue their pastoral existence while the government controlled the use of certain key areas, including Ngorongoro and Empakaai craters, the eastern Serengeti Plains, and the archeological site at Oldupai Gorge. Thus, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area became a multiple-use management area, the only one in Tanzania to protect wildlife while allowing human habitation.
A relief map of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). Yellow (grassland), gray (bushland and woodland), green (forest), and brown (agriculture). Courtesy of David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.
The NCA’s montane forests provide an example of multiple use. Ranging in elevation from 5,000-10,000 ft (1,600-3,000 m), most forest cover occurs within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve, a 50 mile (80 km) band of green on the southern and eastern slopes of the Crater Highlands. Here, monsoonal air masses off the Indian Ocean 200 miles (320 km) away are forced to rise, cool, and condense into mist, clouds, and rainfall. This, together with cool high-elevation temperatures, is conducive to a moist environment. Thus, unlike elsewhere in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, where green foliage is a seasonal phenomenon, montane forest remains green throughout the year.
Lichens and other epiphytes trailing from branches are associated with abundant mist.
The first thing that struck me upon entering an undisturbed (by cutting, fire, etc.) stand of montane forest was the dim light filtering through the dense canopy 50 to 60 feet overhead. Only here and there did a beam of sunlight slant down to brighten a patch of he forest floor. The next was how a dense understory of shrubs and small trees often hampered my movements, while at other times it was so scattered (or absent) that I could walk freely across the forest floor, the latter made soft and springy by several inches of decomposing organic matter. This made it easier to appreciate the trees, which I differentiated by their many types of bark, which ranged from silver to black, and from smooth to rough, including fissured, corrugated, scaly, flaking, and peeling.
Montane forest within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve.
Ngorongoro’s forests comprised many tree and shrub species. Some were worthy of note, if only for their descriptive names, including pillar wood (Cassipourea malosana), cheese wood (Pittosporum viridiflorum), brittle wood (Nuxia congesta), and black ironwood (Olea capensis). The latter, also called Elgon olive (for Mt. Elgon on the Kenya-Uganda border), stands out because it is so dense and heavy that it will not float. (Check out the world’s ten heaviest woods at https://www.wood-database.com/top-ten-heaviest-woods/).
Cape chestnut.
Cape chestnut (Calodendron capense) has beautiful flowers. East African pencil cedar (Juniperus procera) is the largest species of Juniper in the world. Mountain bamboo (Arundinaria alpina) is a very large woody grass. The fresh leaves and shoots of Khat or Miraa (Catha edulis) were chewed as a stimulant throughout much of eastern Africa, especially the Horn of Africa. Podo (Podocarpus milanjianus), African mahogany (Entandrophragma angolense), and East African pencil cedar woods were highly prized for construction and other uses. However, these species were not abundant enough in Ngorongoro’s forests to attract commercial operations.
East African pencil cedar forms pure stands in high-elevation ravines within the NCA. The wood of this species was once extensively used to make pencils. Photo by Sema Tu. Creative Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Dense stands of mountain bamboo on Oldeani Mountain (Oldeani is the Maasai word for bamboo). Mountain bamboo has the strange habit of gregariously dying out over large areas every 15 to 40 years or so.
In the case of the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve, a lack of commercially exploitable tree species didn’t matter because its principal purpose, ever since its establishment in 1927, was the protection of forest catchments for water production. Thus, although the forest fulfilled local domestic wood product needs, such as building poles, and firewood, it was far more important for the water (twenty-four small streams and seven springs) it provided beyond its boundaries to coffee and wheat estates, tourist facilities, Mbulu farmers, and Maasai pastoralists. Water infiltrating into the forest’s soils also sustained important groundwater forest habitat over ten miles (sixteen km) away in Lake Manyara National Park (see earlier post, On the Road to Ngorongoro: Part III)
Farms abutting the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. Most are new since 1965. Photo by David Bygott.
However, the main reason for including the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve in the Serengeti National Park (1n 1951) and then the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (1959), was its value as wildlife habitat, especially for buffaloes, elephants, and rhinos. At the time it was thought that the large animals living in the forest seldom left it, although tourists would often see them along the road. However, subsequent studies revealed that rhinos often traveled back and forth between the forest and the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. Furthermore, before their access routes were blocked by new farms, elephants once moved between the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve and the Rift Valley floor near Lake Manyara .
Picture encountering this while pushing your way through dense undergrowth. Photo by David Bygott.
Finally, the montane forests of Ngorongoro supported yet another use, a great deal of it illegal. Much of the forest within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve was discontinuous, separated by secondary scrub and grassy glades. Possible causes included cultivation carried out many years ago, fire, and grazing/browsing by livestock. Maasai herders were sometimes allowed, under permit, to pasture their livestock in forest glades during droughts. Fires, set in the glades to remove dry grass often escaped into the forest, damaging trees. Browsing by livestock destroyed tree seedlings. Trampling hooves compacted soils, reducing their ability to absorb rainfall. These impacts had the potential to seriously reduce the forest’s water catchment value.
It was for this reason that Henry Fosbrooke, the conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, wanted me, the NCA’s assistant conservator (forests), to stop forest trespass by Maasai livestock. “The forest guards aren’t doing their job properly. You must shape them up.” This explains why, in the first paragraph of this post, I and a group of forest guards and game scouts are portrayed sneaking through the trees trying apprehend trespassing herders and their animals. We now return to that story.
Cattle illegally grazing a glade within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. The tall grass, manyatta grass (Eleusine jaegeri), is unpalatable to livestock. The other grasses have been grazed and trampled so heavily that in places only bare soil remains, Fires set in the glade have, in the past, burned away parts of the adjacent forest, giving it an irregular, often open appearance.
The person caught by the scouts and guards was a Maasai herd boy. Soon afterward, they caught another herder, and then another. We nabbed six herders and roughly a thousand cattle that day. Together with those apprehended a few days earlier in another part of the forest, this made ten people and two-thousand cattle. No wonder the forest reserve was degraded. Three days later, the herders and I appeared in a magistrate’s court in the town of Karatu where the African magistrate levied such a small fine that a relative of the herders paid it on the spot.
“They treat these fines as grazing fees” whispered a senior staff member of the NCA, Solomon ole Saibull, into my ear. “They would willingly pay even greater amounts.” Keeping his voice low, he told me that in his experience, African magistrates seldom imposed heavy fines for forest trespass because they didn’t think it was a very important offense. Most Africans, educated or not, considered forest reserves to be relicts of colonialism, set aside by the ‘wazungu’ for their own purposes, not the African’s. “He [the magistrate] probably thinks the reserve should be converted to farms,”Solomon hissed.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.
Here was another factor contributing to degradation within the forest reserve. Now I understood why the forest guards weren’t interested in braving elephants and buffaloes to catch trespassing livestock. Why bother if it did no good? Consequently, despite our efforts, I and the forest guards were to have little impact on the numbers of trespassing livestock during my time at Ngorongoro.
Maasai herders caught trespassing with their livestock in the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. They were so engrossed in chewing honeycombs that they didn’t hear us approach.
We now jump ahead thirty years. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) general management plan, published in 1996, emphasized, among other things, the continuing need to better control both fire and forest grazing. Apparently, the NCA foresters who came after me also had trouble controlling forest trespass.
Furthermore, the management plan also stated that Ngorongoro’s forests were under considerable pressure from illegal harvesting of trees for local domestic use. This to the extent that Mafu (Fagaropsis angolensis) and Khat or Miraa (Catha edulis) were listed as ‘threatened’ tree species in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area due to extensive logging of the former for building materials, and heavy harvesting of the latter for its drug properties.
This undoubtedly reflects rapid population growth, both within and outside the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (Tanzania’s population approximately tripled from 1960 to 1996), which has created a higher demand for forest products. (For information on population growth in Tanzania, go to https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/tanzania-population.)
I wonder what the situation is now, twenty-six years later.
Man, it was cold! Dense fog had formed during the night to wrap my little house on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater in a silent, gauzy blindfold. Peering through the window, I shivered, something I hadn’t expected to do so close to the equator. But then I also hadn’t expected to be living at 7,000 ft elevation ( 2,134 m). On the other hand, a fire in the fireplace was beginning to making its presence felt. Pulling up a chair to huddle near its warmth, I reviewed what I had learned from my first staff meeting as the Ngorongoro Conservation Area’s new assistant conservator (forests).
Ngorongoro’s forests and crater rim are often cold and foggy during the wet and early dry seasons. Photo by David Bygott.
Wearing a sweater to ward off the cool morning air, Henry Fosbrooke, conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, addressed the assembled officers from behind his sturdy African olive-wood desk. He confirmed that I was to oversee a large forest reserve, ten forest guards, a tree nursery, and a small fuelwood plantation of eucalyptus trees. He emphasized the need to stop livestock trespassing in the forest reserve, but he also wanted me to locate game-viewing tracks for tourists in and around Ngorongoro Crater. Then, he said something I hadn’t expected. Pausing to wipe his glasses, Henry admitted that neither activity would be possible until he obtained more vehicle fuel and a bulldozer. In the meantime I was to take over the conservation area’s rain gauge system and set up a meteorological station near the office. Also, I was informed, Richard Leakey had ordered a lorry load of bamboo for the archeological site at Oldupai Gorge; buffaloes had broken the fence around the tree plantation again; and I needed to familiarize myself with the files in my office. After the meeting, John Goddard, a Canadian wildlife biologist, and my neighbor, invited me to accompany him into the crater while he studied rhinos. Checking the fog again through the window, I decided I was in little danger of being bored. I also decided to borrow a heavy sweater from John.
In fact, I was never to be bored for long at Ngorongoro, especially when my official duties expanded to take me throughout the entire Ngorongoro Conservation Area. And, what a place it was, too!
A relief map of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Yellow (grassland), gray (bushland and woodland), green (forest), and brown (agriculture). Courtesy of David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby (more about them later).
Bracketed by three rift valley lakes, Manyara, Eyasi, and Natron, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, at 3,200 sq. miles (8,300 sq. k), is nearly as large as Yellowstone National Park, which it rivals in scenic appeal and biological diversity (both are UNESCO World Heritage Sites). And how could it not what with the high peaks, plateau, and volcanic calderas of the Crater Highlands in the east, the vast sweep of the world-famous Serengeti Plains in the west, and, in the southwest, Lake Eyasi and the rugged Eyasi Escarpment (not to mention extensive areas of thorn tree bushland and woodland).
Empakaai Crater dramatically backdropped by Oldoinyo Lengai, an active volcano rising from the rift valley floor. At 10,700 ft (3,200 m) elevation and 980 ft (300 m) deep, Empakaai is highly scenic. Views from the crater rim often include Mt. Kilimanjaro 90 miles (145 km) to the east.
The Melinda grasslands, a high plateau (including the Embulbul Depression) in the rain shadow of >11,000 ft (3353 m) Loolmalison and Olosirwa mtns. The trails reflect many millennia of use by wildlife and, for at the least the last 2,000 years, livestock of a succession of pastoral peoples. The area is now grazed by Maasai livestock. The distant peak is Oldeani Mountain.
Composed of numerous species, including bamboo on Oldeani Mtn., montane evergreen forest is sustained by high rainfall, primarily on the southern and eastern flanks of the Crater Highlands. It is a major habitat for rhino, buffalo, and elephant. The pictured tree is a species of Dracaena.
Thorn tree woodland on the drier, west slope of the Crater Highlands. The dominant tree here is a species of Commiphora. This is giraffe and impala country. The eastern Serengeti Plains are visible in the distance.
Migratory wildebeest on the eastern Serengeti Plains. During my time at Ngorongoro (1964-67), approximately 400,000 wildebeest moved onto the eastern plains every wet season to graze and calve, only returning to the Serengeti National Park when the grass and water dried up. (In 1980 they numbered around 1,400,000.)
The Eyasi Escarpment rising 1300 ft (400 m) above Lake Eyasi (barely visible at far left). Shallow Lake Eyasi fluctuates widely in area both seasonally and annually. Flamingoes and waterbirds visit the lake. Agriculturalists, Hadza hunter-gatherers, and Datoga pastoralists use the adjacent semi-arid thorn bush flats.
Pretty cool, eh?
(The authors/artists Jeannette Hanby and David Bygott lived for nineteen years in Mangola Village near Lake Eyasi’s eastern shore just a few miles east of the area pictured above. Their books, Spirited Oasis: Tales from a Tanzanian Village, and Beyond the Oasis: Safaris of Song and Stone, relate their experiences during this time. Check them out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU1L-sZJs8Q; David and Jeannette tell a good story.)
(For more information on the present-day Ngorongoro Conservation Area see https://www.ncaa.go.tz/
September, 1964: Leaving the LakeManyara Hotel, Henry Fosbrooke and I continued west on the murram (a type of gravel) road to Ngorongoro. We were now on the Mbulu Plateau, 1,500 ft (455m) above the Maasai Steppe.
The plateau is named for the Mbulu (Iraqw) people, who, in contrast to the pastoral Maasai, are mixed farmers with large numbers of cattle, and a variety of crops, including wheat. They are noted for their system of intensive cultivation (possibly including at Ngaruka, a 500-year-old [at least] abandoned settlement at the base of the escarpment north of Lake Manyara, where there are remnants of a sophisticated irrigation system and terraced stone houses). They speak a Cushitic language so ancient it no longer exists in its ancestral home, southern Ethiopia (their nearest Cushitic-speaking neighbors are 400 miles [approx. 645 km] away). Their ancestors introduced livestock (and, perhaps also agriculture) into East Africa at least 2,000 years ago. They’ve assimilated so many foreign groups that only three of an estimated 150-200 Mbulu clans are thought to be of Mbulu descent. In 1959, five years before my arrival, they comprised about 100,000 people.
Figure 1. The Mbulu Plateau extends from the Crater Highlands (upper left) seventy miles south to the Mbulu Highlands (purple area at lower left).
My impression of the plateau was of a wooded savanna rumpled here and there by small hills and shallow valleys. The trees were a mix of thorny acacias and broadleaved species (they had been small and thorny on the Maasai Steppe). The grass was dry and tawny. Scattered fields of golden wheat punctuated the savanna, as did occasional buildings roofed with thatch or shiny corrugated metal (mbati). There was one exception: Low, dark, and rectangular, plastered with a mix of mud and cow dung, and with a flat roof supported by wooden posts, it crouched defensively against a low ridge. “That’s a tembe,” Henry informed me. “It’s the traditional Mbulu dwelling. There aren’t many around anymore.”
Figure 2. A traditional Mbulu dwelling (tembe). In this case, it also served as a small store (duka).
Henry went on to say that this part of the plateau had once been held by the Maasai who called it Ngotiek. The German colonial government removed them in the late 1890’s, possibly to allow the development of German-owned farms near Karatu and Oldeani.
Figure 3. This farm near Karatu, originally developed during the German colonial period, now focuses on tourism. (Photo by David Bygott, co-author with Jeannette Hanby, of Spirited Oasis.)
The Maasai, decimated by losses of livestock to the cattle disease, rinderpest, and to the effects of a serious drought, were too weak to resist. They did, however, return to the Ngotiek in the early days of the British administration following the First World War, only to be forced out again. This time it was by another cattle disease, probably nagana, a trypanosomiasis carried by tsetse flies which meanwhile had invaded the area. The 15-20 year absence of Maasai from the Ngotiek where they routinely set grass fires to kill ticks and remove dead grass, had likely resulted in fewer fires, allowing trees to become dense, creating habitat for the tsetse flies.
Figure 4. An Mbulu man escorting donkeys carrying sacks of flour. It’s difficult to see here but he has a flat-top hair style that was then common among the Mbulu.
In 1929, the British territorial government allocated the Ngotiek area to the Mbulu people. Noted for their intensive cultivation--vistas of alternating fields, neat strips of green pasture, homesteads, and well-tended plots of woodland–they were at the time concentrated in highlands far to the south where their rapidly expanding population had outgrown the carrying capacity of the land, causing it to degrade.
Figure 5. Bus taking on passengers at Karatu, an Mbulu settlement on the road to Ngorongoro. Bulky items went on the roof, accessed by a ladder at the rear of the bus. They would be well-covered by dust at journey’s end.
Initially assisted by a colonial development project, the Mbulu, over the next thirty-five years, cleared tsetse-infested bush, reduced the numbers of their livestock, instituted soil conservation measures, took up the use of tractors, and, in doing so, spread throughout the rest of the plateau, including the Ngotiek. So successful was the project that jump-started it all that the head of the department of agriculture, sounding pleasantly surprised, reported that, the native authority (i.e., the local native-run administration) will now inherit not an embarrassing burden but a scheme with a momentum of its own.) For his part, Henry was impressed by how the Mbulus had adapted to tractors. “They’re now one of the best examples of mechanical farming by Africans,” he enthused.
Figure 6. Karatu’s bus station: packed earth, eucalyptus trees, blue and white matatu or passenger van, corrugated metal roofs, on-lookers, and, in the distance, wooded savanna.
Nonetheless, despite the presence of wheat fields and buildings (including the settlement of Karatu), the area through which we passed that day was still largely savanna. The occupation of the Mbulu Plateau by its namesake people was still underway.
However, that is no longer the case. Leap ahead now to the present, over fifty years later. The area once named Ngotiek is wall-to-wall cultivation (Figure 7). Karatu, only a village in 1964, is a large town. The Mbulu (Iraqw) population is in the region of a million people. Times have changed.
Figure 7. Mbulu cultivation between the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve and the Great Rift escarpment near Lake Manyara National Park. (Photo by David Bygott.)
Sept. 1964. After completing a few weeks training with a number of other Peace Corps volunteers at Tengeru Agricultural School, I presented myself at the Ngorongoro Conservation Unit’s office in Arusha. My new boss, Henry Fosbrooke, a middle-aged, somewhat portly Englishman with glasses and well-worn sweater vest, greeted me with a business-like smile. “We go to Ngorongoro tomorrow morning,” he said. “Be at the office at seven sharp.” I was there at 6:30 AM. We left at 3:00 in the afternoon. Some unexpected matters had arisen, which Henry needed to attend to before leaving for Ngorongoro a hundred miles to the west.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
The road from Arusha to Ngorongoro as shown on the 1994 CMC Route Map of Kenya. Hard surface roads are colored red. Tarangire and Mt. Kilimanjaro were not national parks in 1964, but a game and forest reserve respectively. Ngorongoro Crater is at the far left of the map.
But leave we eventually did, and here are some sights we saw along the way.
This stop, not far from downtown Arusha, had something to do with the young man in red sweater, an employee of the Ngorongoro Conservation Unit. The elderly gentleman wearing a Muslim kofia or cap was possibly a relative. I like the contrast between the modern bright red tractor (and even brighter sweater) and weathered, dilapidated buildings.
Where buses go to die (several others were gently rusting away behind the building). Outskirts of Arusha at the edge of the dry Maasai Steppe.
Arusha Maasai farms on Kisongo Maasai land ten miles west of Arusha. The woman, a Maasai, is carrying a bundle of maize stalks.
By the 1960’s the numbers of Arusha people on Mt. Meru had grown to where all cultivable land was fully occupied. This forced them to mobilize relations with their pastoral cousins, the Kisongo Maasai, in order to access their land. One way was through marriage because pastoral Maasai did not farm but frequently married women from cultivating tribes who did. However, according to John Galaty, in the book, Being Maasai, this has not always been to the pastoralists’ advantage, especially the Kisongo, who often complain that the Arusha women they marry invite all their brothers to cultivate near them, and then evict the Kisongo husbands when their herds disturb the crops.
Our way smoothed by a two-lane asphalted stretch of colonial Britain’s Great North Road, we passed through open, often rocky grassland with scattered bushes and small thorn trees. We passed herds of livestock tended by small boys, Maasai women following loaded donkeys, and a single rangy warrior, walking with long, loping strides, carrying a spear. Grass fires were turning the air hazy with smoke.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
This was the land of the Kisongo Maasai, one of twenty or so Maa-speaking groups, or sections, of pastoralists who once dominated a region equal in size to Wyoming or, to take an example across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom.
Area occupied by Maa-speaking peoples in the mid-1880’s prior to European colonization (heavily shaded borders)., Arusha (A); Nairobi (N).
The Maa-speaking peoples are the most recent of a succession of Cushitic and Nilotic pastoralists who, over some three to five thousand years, have entered East Africa from Sudan and Ethiopia. For their part, the Kisongo Maasai have been in southern Maasailand only since the early 1800’s when they evicted or absorbed other Maasai sections, as well as Tatog pastoralists who, preceding the Maasai, had lived around Lake Manyara and in the Crater Highlands for at least a millennium.
Distinguished by a specialized form of cattle pastoralism, and by an age-set social organization that motivated cattle raiding and warfare, the Maasai were widely feared. However, they also raided and fought among themselves, their aggressiveness and ferocity climaxing during the mid to late 1880’s when they attacked one another so savagely that entire regions were depopulated. The winners, including the Kisongo, were checked only by the effects of rinderpest and smallpox epidemics in the 1890’s and by the onset of colonial rule. (The depopulation of highland grasslands in Kenya greatly enabled their subsequent occupation by white settlers who found no one there to contest the issue.)
Henry, who had previously been an anthropologist, enjoyed talking about the Maasai.
. . . who moved about the countryside looking for grass and water for their cattle. Unlike farmers, they did not want to settle down and send their children to school. Furthermore, although they owned large numbers of livestock, they were not interested in participating in the nation’s economy by selling them. “Yes, they are an obstinate lot,” Henry sighed. At least those were his words; actually, I think he was secretly pleased that the Maasai were keeping to their old ways.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
A Maasai warrior or murrani (photo by Herman Dirschl)
Leaving the Great North Road at Makutani Junction, we drove for twenty miles on a murram (a type of gravel) road to the village of Mto wa Mbu: Stream of the Mosquitoes. (It’s a name that would make an American real estate agent cringe; as a young boy I remember a petition being circulated to change the name of a nearby stream–from Mosquito to Harmony Creek–in order to increase property values.) Nestled below the Great Rift Escarpment at the entrance to Manyara National Park, the village served a small but densely settled area of farms watered by springs and a small stream that flowed down the escarpment.
The village of Mto wa Mbu (Stream of the Mosquitoes).
A few dukas (small general stores) lined the road, shaded by wide-spreading flamboyant trees (Delonix regia). In season, the trees produced masses of scarlet flowers that competed for the eye with the colorful kitenge cloth worn by the village women. Small groups of Maasai murran or warriors leaned lightly on their long-bladed spears, affecting little interest as a convoy of tourist vehicles slowed to enter the park. (A fence of strong cables blocked large animals in the park from entering the village.) Nearby, a small, open-air market displayed eight-feet lengths of sugar cane, bunches of yellow bananas and, on rough-wooden tables, piles of mangoes and pawpaws or papayas. Gunny sacks of charcoal stood or lay by the road.
Pawpaw (Carica papaya) trees in the yard of the Public Works Dept. (PWD) station at Mto wa Mbu.
I’ve mentioned pawpaw trees in previous posts. I think they look weird, like something one might see in a Dr. Seuss book.
Papaya fruits on a tree in India. (photo by Vackachan. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike International License.)
I had never seen a papaya (or mango for that matter) before coming to Tanganyika in 1964. Therefore, they seemed very exotic. Nowadays, of course, they can be found in most major grocery stores.
—TO BE CONTINUED—
Here’s a suggestion: consider giving my book, Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika, as a Christmas present.
