In all my travels — through coastal mangroves, tropical forests and savannas — northern Tanzania, home of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, stood out as a place of immense natural beauty and cultural significance. While the landscape is certainly magnificent, I found the people even more so. My colleagues and I interviewed Maasai people whom Tanzanian authorities had forcibly evicted from their homes in a protected area in Loliondo, and Maasai people the authorities were forcing out of their ancestral home in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The Maasai, especially the women, endured these adversities with great fortitude. The Maasai are seminomadic pastoralists with a long history of occupying areas of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. British colonial authorities carved out protected areas in the early 1920s. The creation of Serengeti National Park in 1929 (and its expansion in 1940) and other protected areas displaced Maasai people. Recently, Tanzanian authorities have tightened restrictions on the Maasai’s access and use of the area, contending it’s necessary to preserve biodiversity. Since at least 2009, the government has forcibly evicted and relocated thousands of Maasai people for conservation, tourism and trophy hunting, leading to the loss of the Maasai’s livelihoods, erosion of their culture, and erasure of their heritage. In 2022, Tanzanian authorities forcibly evicted Maasai from Loliondo, with satellite imagery analysis of the area concluding that about 90 homesteads and animal enclosures were burned. Maasai women in particular faced atrocities during this eviction, including rape and other sexual violence by security forces. In the Ngorongoro…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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