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Reaping cash from Lake Manyara`s biosphere
2008-03-24 10:04:32
By Lusekelo Philemon
Located in the depression of the East African Rift Valley, the Lake Manyara Biosphere Reserve is one of the most thrilling tourist attractions of Tanzania within the Northern Circuit and receives visitors of different category.
The lake shelters different natural resources and is an important breeding site for residents and migrant birds that call for effective measures to ensure the sustainability of the ecosystem.
Individual and group tourists from different parts of the planet earth flock in this Tanzania`s heaven. Few Tanzanians including primary and secondary school students also go to the area for either leisure or study tours-to know the Tanzania`s natural beauty and cultural heritage.
For students, this becomes an additional benefit of creating awareness on the importance of environmental conservation for the benefit of the future generations.
Communities living along LMBR are partly within the Lake Manyara National Park. Cultural tourism plays an important role in rising the economy of the surrounding communities and therefore, contributes towards achieving the goals of poverty alleviation through improved incomes.
According to Maasai elders` narratives, previously the indigenous Maasai community that lived close to LMNP used very little firewood for cooking due to their eating habit-mainly unboiled milk.
That is no longer the case today as the town has become cosmopolitan in nature; demands for cooking firewood have increased significantly.
Government initiative on Tse-tse fly eradication in 1980s encouraged clearing of forests in the villages and paved way for erection of human settlements closer to the park, leading to deforestation, destruction of livestock routes and wildlife corridors.
Maasai elders narrate that some years ago, people were allowed to harvest wildlife, though that had negatively practised as people indiscriminately harvested the wildlife hence lead to the disappearance of some wildlife in the migration corridors outside the national park.
The use of Mto wa Mbu wetland into farming irrigation brought about a problem.
Waters that was trapped for irrigation drained to Lake Miwaleni and was one of the wildlife`s drinking points. The lake has at the moment little water while some animals have moved to other areas.
All this made key stakeholders to fear much on the grounds that ecotourism sector was in jeopardy due to the overwhelming recklessly human-induced activities.
Being cosmopolitan in nature, the community is presumed to be more than one hundred tribes.
Available books of history say that the cosmopolitan community has originated as far as Kenya and has been living in harmony after settling in the area and attracted by the tourism industry.
According to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)-Man and Biosphere program`s report, the human population in the biosphere reserve is estimated to over 250,000 people.
With most indigenous people engaging themselves in pastoralism and agriculture, these are the most important socio-economic activities in the area.
Ethnic groups of the Lake Manyara region are the Maasai, Iraq and Barbaig.
Most of immigrants in the region depend on tourism though poaching of wildlife for meat and trophies, illegal fishing, selling of firewood and charcoal cause a menace to biodiversity in the biosphere reserve.
Apart from the predominant activities, people in the area are now engaged in cultural tourism that has enormously uplifted their livelihoods and it some how relieves them from the jungle of poverty.
The biosphere reserve was part of the Unesco-MAB project \'Biosphere Reserves for Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development in Anglophone Africa (Braaf)` which had the objective to ensure the long-term conservation of biodiversity by including local population in its sustainable use.
Several Braaf projects promote income-generating activities such as bee keeping or to control the tick infestation in the livestock of the pastoralist communities.
Lake Manyara is the UNESCO`S World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve.
According to the Tanzania National Environmental Management Council (NEMC) 2007 report, titled: `An Overview of the status of Biosphere Reserves in Tanzania`, there are different cultural groups that are involved in taking around and introducing them to local communities and study their life ways.
Tourists pay for services such as hiring out bicycles, nature trails, food and traditional dances.
There are mutual benefits in the sense that tourists learn from villagers the ways of life, whereas in doing so, they pay for those services thus benefiting villagers and the village government through contributions.
From environmental point of view, cultural tourism conserves wildlife and other natural resources as people concentrate much on other alternative sources of income.
The NEMC Principal Environmental Officer, Dr Fadhila Khatib, says people in the area have now been involved actively on ensuring the sustainability of cultural tourism.
They have prepared a land use plan, which demarcates the land for different purposes such as wildlife corridors, agriculture, grazing and settlements.
They make sure that the type of land use is adhered to and any villagers who break the by-laws are immediately dealt with. The presence of cell phones has simplified communication process in the area, according to NEMC recent report.
Dr Khatib, however, says population growth has brought about hazardous impacts to wildlife-the tourists` magnetizing factor.
Population pressure has caused blockage of wildlife corridors and creates unnecessary quarrels between the existing communities and wildlife, especially the elephants.
Frequent fires as a result of uncontrolled honey harvesting and farming lands preparation have of recent started jeopardizing the biosphere`s reserve.
Despite several measures to curb illegal wildlife harvest, poaching remains one of the critical problems in the area that calls for an immediate intervention to control the situation.
Plans are underway to annex the buffer zones and establish wildlife management areas that will be managed by the National Park and the surrounding communities.
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