Communities Providing Sustainable Solutions to Wildlife
The patterns of wildlife movement and community cooperation within the Tarangire ecosystem.
Wildlife in Tanzania need large landscapes in order to survive. The National Parks are not fenced and do not protect these entire ecosystems. Wildlife extends beyond the boundaries of these parks in search of food and water.
They move onto village land that is owned by local communities who are living adjacent to these parks, sometimes spending up to 60% of the time outside these parks.
The future of wildlife in Tanzania depends on local communities. The Tanzanian government recognized the importance of the local communities' role in conservation and established Wildlife Management Areas (WMA) in 2012.
“These wild creatures amid the wild places they inhabit are not only important as a source of wonder and inspiration, but are an integral part of our natural resources and our future livelihood and wellbeing.” The Arusha Manifesto 1961
The Tarangire Ecosystem
The Tarangire Ecosystem (seen as light green on the map) in Northern Tanzania is approximately 3,500,000 hectares. The Tarangire National Park (seen as brown on the map) protects 260,000 hectares while community-based protected areas provide an additional 600,000 hectares of land for wildlife surrounding the national park.
Wildlife Movements in the Tarangire Ecosystem
The Park is dominated by the Tarangire River which is a seasonal stream. The river provides critical water sources for the greater Tarangire Ecosystem during the dry season. During the rainy season when water is plentiful, wildlife from Tarangire National Park will disperse across community lands in search of food and breeding grounds (seen as green arrows on the map).
The rangelands surrounding Tarangire national park form a single ecosystem which contains the second-largest population of migratory wild ungulates in East Africa (after the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem), where wildebeest and zebra move from the park through wildlife corridors and disperse into the northern grass plains to Natron and east to Simanjrio and the Maasai steppe.
Tarangire is also home to the largest population of elephants in northern Tanzania. These elephants disperse into the surrounding community lands.
The Costs of Wildlife
As wildlife moves into community land, these local communities have to bear the cost of supporting wildlife. The wildlife competes for grass and water and predators kill livestock. Every year people are killed trying to protect their crops by raiding elephants.
Community Driven Solutions
In Northern Tanzania, communities are providing a solution to wildlife conflict. These communities have established a wildlife management area called Randilen (seen as maroon on the map). Randilen contributes a critical 31, 200 hectares of wildlife corridor and dispersal areas for the Tarangire Ecosystem.
Randilen belongs to 8 villages. These villages are Naitolia, Mswakini Juu, Mswakini , Nafco, Lemooti, Lengoolwa, Oldonyo and Lokisalie.
The wildlife will also move from Randilen into village lands beyond the border of the Wildlife Management Area (seen as green arrows on the map).
A Social Business
Randilen is to some extent a social business, where revenues generated from 4 tourism lodges located in the Wildlife Management Area support the operational costs for management, protection, governance, local development projects, and services to the community.
Tourism revenue collection exceeded $310,000 in 2019. These revenues are shared with the community, local government, and the treasury. The community received just short of $100,000, where the funds are shared equitably between the 8 villages, each receiving $12,000. These villages can spend some of these funds on community crop protection initiatives and for local development projects.
A Wildlife Management Area, like Randilen, typically needs about $160,000 to operate. That is to pay for rangers, management and governance.
Protection is approximately 60% of the operating budget, a ranger-post for example can cost up to $50,000 a year to operate. It is usually manned with 10 rangers and a vehicle. A gate costs on average $30,000 a year to operate with only 3 rangers.
Ecoscience
A luxury tourist lodge situated in the "Small Serengeti Plain" of the Tarangire/Randilen boundary, Ecoscience is also a science center where research and conferences take place.
Treetops Lodge
Treetop's rooms are built amongst the trees of Randilen's baobab/acacia forest. The truly unique location of the rooms provides beautiful views and an unforgettable experience.
Nimali
Nimali, close to the Southern Randilen riverbed has incorporated it's natural surroundings into it's architecture making for a very intimate, personal, and private luxury safari stay.
Kirurumu Tented Lodge
Located on the boarder of Tarangire and Randilen, Kirurumu is in an ideal location for access to the national park. The lodge's nestled location amongst the acacia forest makes for exceptional close up encounters with wildlife such as elephants.
Providing Community Services
These services include supporting the community crop protection initiatives and providing grasslands for the community livestock and in return, communities protect the natural resources including wildlife. Randilen has eliminated poaching and retaliatory killing within the Wildlife Management Area.
Protecting Community Crops
The communities are predominantly agropastoralists (farming areas seen as orange on the map). Some were born in here like Loserian who grows maize, and others are recent migrants who have settled in the village of Mswakini Juu (location marked by the point on the map). Most of these farmers like Loserian used to lose about 70% of their crops annually to elephants. For his family to survive and many others, he needs to harvest at least 30 sacks of maize each year. He will keep half of that to feed his family and sell the rest to pay for expenses to educate his children and keep his family healthy. Randilen Wildlife Management Area and the local community have established a crop protection initiative, and by using a specially designed crop protection toolkit and with support from the rangers in Randilen, they have reduced crop damage by elephants by a 90%. This initiative is providing their community with an improved food security and the farmers have not reverted to methods used in the past that often resulted in killing the elephants. No elephants have been killed in retaliation for over 5 years.
Providing a Grass Bank
Many of these local communities are Maasai like Zakayo, who are pastoralists. Their livelihoods depend on the ability to move across communal grazing lands with their livestock in search of grass and water (dry season grazing areas seen as yellow and wet season grazing areas seen as green on the map). They live in homesteads that are called bomas, they are protected by a thorn fence where their livestock live in the center of a reinforced central enclosure to protect them from wildlife attacks.
Every day, Zakayo like many Maasai will take their livestock out to pasture and water, sometimes traveling up to 15 kilometers a day. They must be vigilant at all times as they can lose their livestock to predators such as lions and leopards, however, the biggest challenge is finding grass for their livestock. Randilen and the community have provided a solutions for people like Zakayo, they have established a dry season ‘grazing’ bank. This is the grass inside the Wildlife Management Area which becomes available during the dry season and is critical for the community’s response to climate change and more frequent droughts.
During the rainy season, when the new grass grows, the livestock can remain nearer to the boma and on the communal lands managed by the village. Randilen Wildlife Management Area protects the grass bank for leaner times and rangers are on patrol daily to ensure no illegal grazing takes place. As the season moves toward drier times, Randilen will open the grazing bank for people like Zakayo to bring his livestock into the grazing bank daily. This management approach provides equitable and sustainable use of this rangeland for their community.
Randilen Rangers
Both Loserian and Zakayo depend on Juliana. Juliana is a ranger from Randilen and she comes from Natolia village. She and other rangers usually spend shifts of 2 weeks on duty at a time away from their families and home children, to protect their community. Rangers like Juliana are from the local community, they dedicate their lives to protecting the wildlife, joining anti-poaching patrols, rescuing animals as well as other tasks like manning entrance gates, collecting tourism fees, and guiding visitors around Randilen. Some of Juliana's most important work is with her community, to respond to any incident where somebody is hurt by wildlife, all rangers and trained first aiders. They also protect the grazing bank by making sure everybody follows the grazing bank rules, and they support the farmers to protect their crops, training them to use the toolkits and providing a vehicle backup for problem animal control. Randilen WMA employs 27 rangers from the local area, therefore providing a very important form of employment for the local community.
Randilen's Long Term Goals
Randilen’s long-term goals are to become financially independent and for the communities to see the positive impact Randilen provides on their livelihoods. Conservation Organisations see Randilen Wildlife Management Area as a showcase example of Community-Based Natural Resource Management and where there is an interdependence between wildlife and man.
Sustainable Approach
The community continues to protect wildlife as this attracts tourism revenue that enables them to fund these critical services such as their crop protection and the grazing bank programs provided by their Wildlife Management Area. Randilen is providing a sustainable solution for the Tarangire Ecosystem.
Supporting Organizations
Randilen's progress towards their goals are being supported by organizations such as Honeyguide , the EU through the BioPAMA program, The Nature Conservancy , Maliasili Initiatives , Tusk Trust and the IUCN SOS program.