Saadani National Park is Tanzania's 13th National Park. Tourists can view
animals basking along the Indian
Ocean shores. It
has an area of 1062 km2 and was officially gazetted in 2005, from a game
reserve which had existed from 1969. It is the only wildlife sanctuary in
Tanzania bordering the sea.
Saadani's wildlife population is
increasing during recent years after it has been gazetted as a National Park
and was a hunting block beforehand. Wildlife in Saadani includes four of the
Big Five, namely Masai lions, African bush elephants, buffaloes and African leopards. Masai giraffes, Lichtenstein's hartebeest, common waterbucks, blue wildebeests, bohor reedbucks, commonand red
duikers, Dik-Diks, yellow baboons, vervet monkeys, blue
monkeys, black-and white Colobus monkeys, civets, mongooses, genet cats, porcupines, sable antelopes, warthogs, hippopotamus, crocodiles, nile
monitors are also
found in the park.
History
Gazetted in 2005, it encompasses a
preserved ecosystem including the former Saadani game reserve, the former
Mkwaja ranch area, the Wami
River as well as
the Zaraninge Forest. In the late 1960s Saadani Village – the village after which
the park has been named – and particularly its sub-village Uvinje, invited the
Tanzania Wildlife Division (WD) to help them to prevent the indiscriminate
killing of wildlife prevalent in the area. From this partnership Saadani
village and the Wildlife Division established the Saadani Game Reserve (SGR),
with the agreement to respect the land rights of the coastal sub-villages of
Saadani, including Uvinje and Porokanya sub-villages, while also addressing the
needs of wildlife.
As such, conservation interventions in the Saadani
landscape have taken place since the mid-1960s and have been supported by
villagers traditionally inhabiting the Saadani landscape, but it is only
recently that state-managed conservation has become a growing concern among the
villages adjacent to the park.
In the late 1990s, Mr. Domician Njao, from Tanzania
National Parks Authority (TANAPA) came in to "upgrade" the reserve to
a National Park, and create the first and only coastal national park of
Tanzania. In doing so, park authorities redrew the boundaries of the reserve to
include Uvinje’s and Porokanya’s prime coastal lands as if they have always
been a part of the reserve [in so doing changing the agreement with those
villagers]. Compelling research shows how after this TANAPA proceeded to
gazette most of Saadani’s coastal lands as part of the Saadani National Park in
2005, arguing that they have always being a part of the former reserve and
belonged to the Park. Spatial analysis on the area of the former Saadani Game
reserve, illustrates TANAPA's strategy to gazette Saadani's prime coastal lands
as if they have always been a part of the SGR (See various maps of the SGR)
SGR
Maps combined. Either UDar_1996 or current doctoral research SGR maps include
Saadani's prime coastal lands. However,TANAPA's map version of the SGR has 3/4
of Saadani's village coastal lands included as part of the SGR.
The total extent of SGR is said to have been
approximately 209 km², however, the SGR official gazette document states
that it comprised approximately 300 km², while some of TANAPA’s
official documents indicate it was 260 km² . Spatial analysis conducted as
part of the present research suggest that the total game reserve area was of
about 200Km2
The vagueness of the language used in the reserve’s
official gazette, but also TANAPA’s early interventions to develop its own map
of the reserve, and its interests in Saadani’s sub-villages’ prime coastal
lands have come to challenge Saadani’s coastal sub-villages’ rights to lawfully
inhabit their traditional territories, and have led to chronic political and
other battles to demand presently gazetted park lands rescinded, the
reestablishment of land rights to traditional inhabitants, and to demand from
TANAPA to honour commitments made earlier by Wildlife Division.
The Current Status of Saadani National Park
By law, setting aside areas for conservation has to be
consulted on, at least to some extent, with affected villages. However, it was
not until late in 2005 that the village of Saadani and leaders of its Uvinje
sub-village realized that the full extent of Uvinje’s lands were gazetted as
part of the park. This despite numerous communications taking place since the
early 2000s where village leaders continuously reiterate that Uvinje lands have
never been a part of the reserve and that they will not vacate their lands .
Important park establishment documents illustrate that TANAPA’s argument for
gazetting lands from two Saadani coastal sub-villages is that they have always
being part of the former game reserve, an argument that seem to have allowed
them to move forward gazetting the coastal lands without coming to an agreement
with the leaders at that time, who have reiterated that they did not agree to
giving coastal lands to TANAPA.
Saadani
National Park Map and extent of former village lands now gazetted as park
lands.
In summary, the SNP boundaries and lands have been
officially contested by District authorities and no less than 6 villages, while
at least 4 adjacent villages are engaged in higher level advocacy to have park
boundaries reassessed. However, of all the villages, it is Saadani which faces
the greatest challenges on the gazetting of a large part of its coastal
territory which, by all accounts, has been done unilaterally. Saadani is also
the village with the largest strip of coastal land.
At present, and after more than a decade of
institutional struggles, Saadani village has resisted TANAPA’s various
approaches to take possession of the now sub-village’s gazetted territory and
have consistently demanded that their land rights be restored, and continue to
reiterate that they are not going to give their traditional territory for any
amount of compensation money. Such community assertions and actions certainly
challenge traditional conceptions of economic gain as the central motivation in
park community-conflicts, and suggest that deeply rooted spatial-cultural
territorial connections are as essential as and perhaps even more important to
people's collective welfare than material benefits.
To this day, park governance and management approaches
have been unable to gain the support of surrounding villages, which
traditionally have been very conservation minded, for addressing poaching and
for collaboratively sustaining landscape level conservation efforts. All of
which are desperately needed to combat the sevenfold increase in poaching
activity being faced by the park in the last seven years. No less than 10 of
the 17 villages adjacent to the park have their own community-conserved areas,
equivalent to no less than 20% of area identified as park lands. Despite the
level of environmental awareness of these adjacent villages and the importance
of corridors and ecosystem connectivity to successful ecological conservation,
the villages’ conservation efforts have not been linked to park efforts but at
present represent a threat to park authorities. For park authorities, it is
within villages’ conserved areas where more often than not poaching is seen to
be taking place.
