Serengeti General Management Plan

Serengeti National Park General Management Plan
Context
This General Management Plan (GMP) is the third management plan to be written for the
Serengeti National Park (SENAPA), and covers the 10-year period from 2006 to 2016.
The earliest SENAPA management plan (1991-1995), provided for the first time in a single
document, details of the policies guiding SENAPA’s management and management objectives
for the Park as a whole as well as for individual SENAPA departments. Task priorities
and schedules were laid out for establishing a comprehensive park-wide zoning scheme as
well as for addressing the management issues facing each department. The main weaknesses
encountered in the implementation of the plan were firstly, that the departmental objectives
and activities were not clearly formulated, structured, nor linked to the overall Park
objectives and secondly, that practical considerations, such as financial constraints, were not
accounted for.
The second SENAPA management plan was the Management Zone Plan (1996-2000),
which provided a comprehensive coverage of the management issues, with management
objectives grouped by theme, and management actions and prescriptions established for
each zone. However, there was a lack of higher-level objectives to provide an overall framework,
with the result that some of the stated management objectives were unachievable or
beyond the scope of SENAPA management, whilst others were present at inappropriate levels
or missing completely.
The lessons learnt from implementing these previous plans have provided a few key lessons
for developing this current plan. The principal lesson being the importance of using a Logical
Framework Approach for developing an effective and actionable plan; with clearly defined
and distinct objectives at various levels, and with explicit linkages between them. Another
key lesson is that zoning should be a management tool, not a planning tool per se, and that
therefore this GMP should not be primarily organised according to zones.
Function and structure
This GMP is intended to guide and facilitate the management of park resources, the uses
permitted within the area, and the infrastructure development needed to support that management
and use. An important underpinning of the GMP is the establishment of long-term
strategies and management objectives and targets for addressing SENAPA’s management
problems and issues and for achieving a desired future state over the 10-year duration
of the plan. These objectives in turn provide the framework for determining what management
actions need to be implemented, when to take them, and the human and other resource
requirements needed to implement them. These management actions and the specific
activities needed to accomplish them will be re-developed every three years according
to the changing Park management needs.
The SENAPA GMP follows the generic GMP structure established by TANAPA, as described
in the TANAPA Strategic Planning Process Manual (1995a). However, the SENAPA Core
Planning Team has made several adjustments to the planning process and plan structure to
take into account lessons learnt on previous TANAPA park planning exercises, and the special
needs of SENAPA. In particular, emphasis has been placed on making the plan more
relevant to the day-to-day management needs of SENAPA park managers. The plan structure,
as illustrated in Figure A.1 below, defines the main sections of the plan. Below are described
some key aspects of the plan structure adopted for the Serengeti GMP.
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