Volume 9 October 2004
ISSN 1438-7890 |
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African
Journal of Environmental Assessment and Management
Revue africaine de gestion et d’évaluation environnementales |
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Human Population Increase and Wildlife
Conservation in Tanzania: Are the Wildlife Managers Addressing the
Problem or Treating Symptoms?
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Alexander N. Songorwa
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| The survival of Tanzania’s wildlife is in a race against development.
With the passage of each decade, the task of protecting wildlife and
its habitats gets more and more difficult as a result of human
population increase, which causes or contributes to encroachment
(through expansion of settlements, extensive agriculture, livestock
grazing, bush/forest fires, felling of trees, increased poaching and
even illegal settlements inside legally established protected areas.
However, both the protectionist and Community Conservation
approaches to wildlife conservation have distanced themselves from
demographic factors. Using case studies, this paper discusses the
extent to which human population factors in Tanzania have affected
and continue to affect wildlife conservation. It concludes that, if
the human population growth continues unchecked a crisis is looming
in wildlife conservation, which will eventually evolve into a
catastrophe. Furthermore, wildlife conservation issues cannot be
addressed without considering demographic factors. Finally, the
paper recommends that wildlife managers, conservationists and
wildlife and environmental conservation/protection policies in
Tanzania must stop denying the reality by ‘aiming at and
“shooting” the wrong target(s)’. Instead they must urgently
address the rapid human population increase around existing
protected areas and in all other wildlife areas.
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