Serengeti National Park

• Poaching
• Rapidly growing human population
• Poorly designed ad-hoc tourism development projects
• Need to strengthen the coordination with the trans-border Masai Mara Reserve in Kenya 
• Road project

The Centre and IUCN have received several reports concerning the proposed Ewaso Ng’iro Hydroelectric Project (ENP) in Kenya, and its potential impacts on the Serengeti and Mara ecosystems.  The State-owned Kenya Electricity Generating Company is proposing to build three dams along the Ewaso Ng’iro River that would generate 180 MW of electricity and is expected to cost 350 million dollars by the time of completion in 2007.  This scheme, if implemented, would link the Mara River system through a 3.5 km tunnel with the upper drainage of the Ewaso Ng’iro (south) River, thus reversing the Mara’s flow into the Ewaso Ng’iro River, finally draining into Lake Natron in the east instead of Lake Victoria in the west.

There have been a series of Environmental Impact Assessments and discussions on the ENP which have held its implementation up.  Potential impacts, if implemented, include downstream effects on Lake Natron in Tanzania (possible extension to the proposed  Rift Valley Lake Reserves World Heritage site) and potential ecological impact on the Serengeti National Park.  IUCN has received a report by the Frankfurt Zoological Society, which notes potential impacts of the project, if implemented, on the conservation of the Serengeti National Park:

·  The main feature of the Serengeti Ecosystem, which extends across several protected areas, including the World Heritage site, is the wildebeest migration.  Wildlife numbers in this system are controlled by the dry season rainfall (and consequent grass availability) in the Mara River system.  Presently the Serengeti Migration consists of approximately 1.2 million wildebeest and 200,000 zebras.  This was an important feature of the inscription of this site.

·  If the Mara River were to dry up, most of the wildlife migrants would perish and the Serengeti Migration would collapse irreversibly.  There is concern that though the ENP makes allowances for maintaining some water flow in the Mara River, even during severe droughts, these drought times would also produce the worst power shortages in Kenya.  Consequently, there would be unpredictable pressure on the demand for channelling all available Mara water into the Ewaso Ng’iro Hydroelectric project.

·  Even under normal climatic conditions the project might endanger the Serengeti World Heritage Site and impact tourist revenues in Tanzania and Kenya.  In June 2001, Tanzania National Parks, together with the Frankfurt Zoological Society and the Australian Institute for Marine Science developed an ecological model to test the possible impact of the Amala weir water diversion project on the Serengeti Migration (Gereta, E., Wolanski, E., and Borner, M., 2001. Modeling the Impact on the Serengeti Ecosystem of the Proposed Amala Weir Water Diversion Project in Kenya). 

The model used several extraction rates to show the impacts on the wildebeest population.  It showed the effect of the Amala weir water extraction scheme will only be negligible when rainfall is average or above. The effect is predicted to become significant once a drought occurs (i.e. a year where the annual rainfall is 30% below the long-term mean). In such a one-off situation, without considering the possibility of a higher water diversion by the Kenyan authorities, the Amala weir diversion scheme is predicted to result in the deaths of at least 20% of the wildebeest, over and above the normal die-off of 10-20% during such a drought.  For more severe water extraction rates the model predicts a death rate of 50%.  The recovery rate in such a situation will be between 15 and 20 years. Since a drought on the average occurs every ten years, the wildebeest would never recover. In the case of repeated droughts the wildebeest population would drop to below 200,000, from which it cannot recover, as predator control would take over.

It is understood that the East Africa Community has discussed this issue and the proposal has effectively been dropped for the time being.  IUCN considers the Committee should note this proposal and keep the situation under review. IUCN understands that the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem has undergone considerable change in recent years. These include:

·  major settlement and extensive development of intensive, large-scale agriculture along much of the Kenyan side of the Mara River in recent years, with the off-take for irrigation and drinking water growing exponentially

·  the River is now exploited virtually throughout its course except for the small section in the Serengeti

·  within the Masai Mara National Reserve and the adjacent wildlife areas, the growth of tourism facilities has been tremendous, which has impacted on both off-take and the input of waste

·  forest area has declined and so has the water holding capacity of the soil. Thus, the rains are producing progressively higher floods with the effect of eroding the river banks.  Conversely in the dry season there is less water remaining in the soil and so there is progressively lower flow. The results are that the Mara is getting lower and lower over time in the dry season.

IUCN has been notified that WWF East Africa Regional Office is commencing design of a Mara River Catchment Basin Initiative.  This will focus on conserving the Mara River Catchment’s unique biodiversity; ensuring the maintenance of natural functions by balancing the supply and demand of biodiversity products, and developing alternative livelihoods for communities.  As part of the Initiative’s preliminary phase, WWF has recently commissioned a report on the hydrology of the Kenyan side of the Mara River, in order to consider the land use changes and impacts of these on the flow and quality of the River.  IUCN notes that the Serengeti National Park is one of the field sites for the Enhancing our Heritage Project funded by the UNF.

IUCN notes that the East Africa Community has identified the Serengeti/Mara ecosystem as a priority transboundary ecosystem that should be managed jointly.  Further, that the Maasai Mara Reserve was proposed to be included in the Serengeti World Heritage site in 1997, but was rejected by Tanzanian National Parks, the authority in charge of the Serengeti site, because of their concerns over the lack of an effective protection or management regime.

IUCN considers there is merit in the State Parties of Kenya and Tanzania establishing a joint committee through the Commission on East Africa Cooperation arrangement to undertake further in-depth studies on the entire catchments of the Ewaso Ng’iro, Lake Natron, Mara River systems.

IUCN notes that the Serengeti is not only a World Heritage site and Biosphere Reserve, it is also the main tourist attraction in Tanzania, a country where tourism revenue is the largest foreign exchange earner.  It also notes that the very reason that the Serengeti is a World Heritage site  - the wildebeest migration, could be potentially threatened by any future implementation of the ENP.  IUCN recognises that any negative impact on the dry season range of the wildebeest has potentially major ramifications for the very criteria for which the Serengeti listing is based.  IUCN also notes that the Mara River is habitat for riverine forest containing many rare forest birds and other fauna, and upon which large populations of crocodiles and hippopotamus depend.  It is clear that there is a high element of risk in the diversion of water from the Mara.  The Mara diversion cannot be considered in isolation, it must be considered in the context of other ecological problems such as rapidly changing land use and deforestation in the catchments, as well as the impacts of climate change. Most serious ecological/environmental problems arise because of a complex combination of factors.  In such cases, IUCN believes that the precautionary principle must be applied to avoid any actions that increase the risk of the Mara drying up.