Mkomazi National Park is located in north eastern Tanzania on the Kenyan border, in Kilimanjaro Region and Tanga
Region. It was
established as a game reserve in 1951 and upgraded to be a national park in
2006.
The park covers over 3,200 km2 and is dominated by Acacia-Commiphora vegetation; it is contiguous with Kenya’s Tsavo West National Park. The area commonly called ‘Mkomazi’ is
actually the union of two previous game reserves, the Umba Game Reserve in the
east (in Lushoto District, Tanga
Region) and the Mkomazi
Game Reserve in the west (in Same District, Kilimanjaro Region);
in government documents they are sometimes called the Mkomazi/Umba Game
Reserves. Of the two, Mkomazi is larger, and has more diversity of relief and
habitat, and a longer shared border with Tsavo West National Park. In the rest of this entry ‘Mkomazi’
will refer to both the Mkomazi and Umba reserves together.
History of contest
Like many national parks and game
reserves, Mkomazi’s history is one of contest, with the main contenders being
government conservation planners and local rural resources users. It differs
from many other cases in East Africa because limited resource use within the
reserve was initially permitted. When Mkomazi was first established a number of
pastoral families from the Parakuyo ethnic group were allowed to continue to
live there with a few thousand of their cattle, goats and sheep. The (colonial)
government of the time permitted them to reside there because they had been in
the area for many years and were thought not to threaten the ecological
integrity of the reserve. The pastoralists were only allowed in the eastern
half of the reserve. Immigrant Maasai pastoralists
and families from other ethnic groups were evicted when the reserve was
established.
However Mkomazi was soon subject to
immigration by other herders, some of which was resisted by the Parakuyo
residents, and some which was facilitated by them. What with resident stock
breeding and immigrant stock joining the reserve, the first decades of
Mkomazi’s history were dominated by rising cattle populations. Some 20,000
animals were counted in the eastern half of the reserve in the early 1960s. In
the early 1970s pastoralists began living and grazing in the western half of
the reserve and by the mid-1980s around 80,000 cattle were counted inside the
reserve as a whole. There were probably thousands more using it intermittently.
Many of the immigrants were Maasai, who are very closely related to the
Parakuyo, speaking the same language and sharing many customs. But local
herders from other ethnic groups, such as the Sambaa and Pare, also grazed thousands of cattle inside
Mkomazi.
The quantities of cattle within the
reserve caused considerable concern for the environment and there was continual
pressure to have them evicted. In the late 1980s the government resolved to
cease all grazing permission within Mkomazi and evicted all herders. By July
1988 these evictions were complete. Evicted Maasai and
Parakuyo pastoralists contested the legality of the evictions, claiming
customary rights to the reserve in the Tanzanian courts, but lost their case.
After the evictions the British charity, the George Adamson Wildlife
Preservation Trust and its American sister charity the Tony Fitzjohn / George Adamson African
Wildlife Preservation Trust became interested in Mkomazi and have since been
spearheading a campaign to restore the reserve. They have set up fenced
sanctuaries for African wild dog and black rhinoceros, and are restoring the reserve’s infrastructure and
supporting local communities with its outreach program me.
Contested representations
The reserve is still subject
to illegal incursions from pastoralists, particularly in the wet season. But
the main contests about Mkomazi today concern its representation (as comments
on this entry may shortly demonstrate). Generally speaking there are two broad
camps:
For many conservationists, Mkomazi is a
celebrated success story. A reserve which was threatened by people and grazing
has been restored to good health. The compounds for African wild dog,
and the extensive, patrolled sanctuary for the black rhinoceros (which
are breeding) have put the reserve on the map, giving it international
recognition. Roads have been regraded, dams dredged and rangers kitted out with
good uniforms and radios. Anti-poaching patrols restrict incursions by hunters
and pastoralists. The work with schools and support for other local needs
strengthens relationships with local communities. A high-end tourist safari
company has recently announced plans to set up regular holiday safaris to
Mkomazi, which will generate more revenue from it and for it. Advocates of
Mkomazi see it is a wonderful case of winning back lands for conservation which
had been threatened by human interference.
Few of Mkomazi’s critics can
dispute the facts of the previous paragraph, but for them it is simply not the
whole story. They resent pro-conservation literature which failed to mention or
passed over the evictions and denied former residents’ long association with
the land. They know the reserve as a place from which thousands of herders were
evicted, with inadequate compensation for a few and for most none. They feel
that outreach programmes’ benefits do not match the costs of eviction, that
many evictees do not benefit from them, and that the numbers of people around
the reserve (over 50,000) make it hard to provide meaningful benefits for most
locals. They believe the ecological case for eviction is weak - it was often
made without any supporting data. Critics of Mkomazi see another sad case of
conservation separating people from land. This is not the restoration of
wilderness, for none had in fact existed, rather its pristineness has been
created and imposed.
Despite their stark
differences, the two versions of the reserve flourish independently in separate
habitats and rarely collide. The positive aspects of Mkomazi’s conservation is
repeatedly championed in diverse campaigns and fund-raisers, winning international
support, awards and celebrity endorsement. It raises hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year. Critical perspectives thrive in university courses’ teaching
material, anthropological and human rights circles, and among conservationists
who advocate inclusive approaches to conservation. Here Mkomazi is becoming a
benchmark case of how not to evict local people. It is one of the few protected
areas for which the costs of eviction and the impoverishment resulting from
conservation policies has been rigorously documented.
Compromise positions have
been offered. Some observers argued that there is the ecological space to allow
for a compromise which includes grazing inside Mkomazi. This is legally
possible in Tanzania inside game reserves theoretically, but it would only have
been realistic in the east as pastoral immigration was often unpopular in the
western half. However since Mkomazi may soon be upgraded to full national park
status, which precludes all local use, this is no longer an option. Mkomazi
seems destined to be a place about which two very different stories will always
be told.