Serengeti General Management Plan

Serengeti National Park General Management Plan
agement targets or in certain cases are not addressed by actions, but simply monitored under
Objective 2.
Target 1.1: Human impacts threatening the Migration minimised
The growing human populations and changing land use practices are having an increasing
impact on wildlife migration routes outside the Park. The greatest impact is in the northwest,
where villages directly border the Park boundary, forming a ‘hard edge’ (see Figure C.3 below).
These villages, which are in Serengeti and Tarime Districts, have had higher than average
population growth as a result of immigrants drawn to the park edge by opportunities for
hunting, the availability of better agricultural land, and access to a range of other natural resources.
Such ‘hard edge’ areas represent a challenging management issue, as it is in these areas
that people have the greatest adverse impact on the wildlife values of the ecosystem –
through hunting and land-use conversion to agriculture, and also where the ecosystem’s
wildlife imposes the greatest costs on people through, for example, wildlife crop damage.
Resident wildlife both within the Park and in the uncultivated areas immediately to the west is
under substantial hunting pressure, and populations appear to be much reduced. In addition,
there is a substantial offtake of wildlife when the migration passes through or close to these
villages.
Figure C.3: Settlement distribution around Serengeti National Park
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