- The Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), a conservation NGO that receives funding from the German government, funded and equipped Tanzanian authorities who violently evicted Maasai pastoralists from the eastern outskirts of Serengeti National Park in 2017 and 2022.
- The NGO provided equipment, including vehicles and airplanes, to the Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) authority; supported a plan to relocate Maasai residents; and funded TANAPA rangers whom the Maasai accuse of unfairly seizing their cattle.
- Conservation authorities and researchers say the growing human and livestock populations on the fringes of the park are putting dramatic pressure on wildlife in the iconic Serengeti, though conservationists say there are also additional factors impacting wildlife.
- FZS said it has supported TANAPA since 2015 to the tune of 18.6 million euros ($19.7 million), but that it’s “not involved, directly or indirectly, in any resettlement activities.”
A Tanzanian journalist contributed to this report, but has requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the story.
OLOLOSOKWAN, Tanzania — Just days after rangers from Serengeti National Park confiscated Lankenua Sainguran’s cattle and pushed her family into poverty, the German ambassador to Tanzania ceremonially handed over the keys to new facilities for the park’s conservation authorities. While pictures were taken and handshakes exchanged, 70 kilometers (43 miles) away on the outskirts of the park, Serengeti rangers were organizing and funding a massive eviction operation, burning 185 Maasai homes and leaving 6,800 people homeless.
Sainguran, whose name was changed for security reasons, still remembers the day, she said. Columns of smoke rose into the sky and shouts filled the air. For her and many Maasai pastoralists who roamed these lands with their livestock like their ancestors did, the violence in August 2017 in Loliondo upended their lives.
Over the past 15 years, the Tanzanian government has forcibly displaced thousands of Maasai from ancestral lands to curtain off nature and hunting reserves along the eastern border of Serengeti National Park, called the Pololeti and Loliondo game controlled areas. At the same time, it launched a relocation program for the voluntary relocation of Maasai from the iconic Ngorongoro Conservation Area. But these plans included cutting funding for schools and healthcare centers to pressure Maasai residents into “voluntary” relocation to a village 600 km (370 mi) away, reported Human Rights Watch.
This investigation has found that the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), an international conservation NGO that receives funding from the German government, funded and equipped the Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) authority as it carried out both violent and nonviolent evictions from high-conservation-value areas on the edge of Serengeti.
In the past, FZS has expressed concern about the situation while stating it’s not involved in any decision-making in the conflict.
In response to Mongabay’s questions, a spokesperson said FZS “is not involved, directly or indirectly, in any resettlement activities in Loliondo or the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. FZS, as a non-governmental organization, does not have the mandate to determine how the Government of Tanzania organizes its conservation institutions.”
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has disclosed it provided funding of 9.37 million euros ($9.9 million) since 2012 to FZS.
In a statement to Mongabay, the ministry said that implementing organizations of German development cooperation, which include FZS, Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) “must observe and apply national legislation and international environmental and social standards as well as the human rights guidelines” of the ministry when supporting nature conservation measures in Tanzania.
TANAPA didn’t respond to our requests for comment by the time of publication.
The Tanzanian government has said these evictions are necessary to protect fragile ecosystems from growing human and livestock pressures, while game reserves in the iconic landscapes bring in tourism revenue that fund conservation and development.
According to a study in Science, the growing numbers of pastoralists’ livestock at the edges of the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem push wildlife away from the margins, squeezing them into the core of protected areas and dramatically reducing their numbers. But the extent of how much livestock impacts wildlife in the region is debated. A controversial study on a small patch in Kenya’s nearby Maasai Mara finds that cattle herds didn’t cause a significant decline in forage quality or steer wildlife away. But others point to a combination of modern issues that livestock add to — like drought, population growth, climate change, fires and a land squeeze with ranches — that didn’t necessarily exist in the past when pastoralists roamed harmoniously with wildlife.
The evicted Maasai say they’re being violently driven off their land to make space for safari tourism, trophy hunting and exclusionary conservation methods that don’t address their needs.
Equipping rangers involved in evictions
Germany is the largest bilateral donor for biodiversity in Tanzania; its support just for the “Sustainable development of the Serengeti ecosystem” program amounts to more than 30 million euros ($31.7 million). Part of this money is administered by the Frankfurt Zoological Society, a conservation NGO that’s been working in Serengeti for decades.
It was established in 1958 by Bernhard Grzimek, a controversial German conservationist who campaigned for creating areas without people to protect wildlife. “People, including Indigenous people, should not live in it,” he once said about his vision of a national park.
Today, FZS provides TANAPA rangers in Serengeti with vehicles, airplanes and other equipment. According to its annual reports, since 2013 the organization has paid for training programs, diesel, food rations, accommodation, and a command center for the rangers. It also repairs their cars, helping to maintain the operations of a paramilitary organization that, according to internal documents, planned, funded and partly carried out the wave of violence in August 2017. Since 2015, FZS has provided support to TANAPA valued at 18.6 million euros ($19.7 million), according to the reports.
Joseph Oleshangay, a Maasai lawyer and one of the loudest voices against the evictions, said this shows that the Frankfurt Zoological Society’s role in the displacements is “fundamental.”
“If the rangers are using vehicles to hunt the Maasai, who provided the cars? Who provided the fuel? Who pays for them?” Oleshangay said. “It is not only the rangers themselves who are responsible for the violence, but also those who provide them with the means to use violence.”
In June 2022, violence returned to the region. Tanzania’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism (MNRT), led by Pindi Chana, declared the creation of Pololeti Game Controlled Area at the edge of Serengeti, effectively annexing 1,500 square kilometers (580 square miles) of Maasai village land.
The notice went in tandem with a massive eviction operation. Carried out by multiple state agencies, including TANAPA, the operation left thousands or people homeless, dozens of Maasai injured by security forces, and cut the pastoralists off from important grazing grounds for their cattle. During the operation, an unidentified person killed a police officer, while an 84-year-old Maasai man disappeared after being shot by security forces.
Six months later, the German ambassador, Regine Hess, handed over 51 new ranger vehicles to TANAPA. An airplane and a helicopter were also part of the package. The same day, Natural Resources and Tourism Minister Chana announced that a rhino calf had been named after the ambassador.
This close cooperation continues today. While both the World Bank and the European Commission have recently canceled conservation funding in Tanzania because of concerns about human rights abuses, the German government increased its support for the Serengeti ecosystem in early 2024 by 9 million euros ($9.5 million). In August 2024, FZS celebrated another vehicle handover with TANAPA.
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Cattle confiscation plans
Maasai pastoralists also accuse Serengeti park rangers of regularly confiscating their cattle outside the national park’s borders. According to various sources from Ololosokwan, a village at the border of the newly created Pololeti Game Controlled Area, rangers frequently capture cattle outside the park to then collect a penalty fee or auction off the herds. A recent court ruling confirmed the practice of illegal cattle auctions by Serengeti rangers, but noted that these involved cattle illegally introduced inside the park. The question of whether cattle were confiscated within or outside the park is debated.
Lawyer Joseph Oleshangay said the rangers are acting deliberately. Confiscating cattle within the park boundaries serves the government’s argument that the Maasai and their cattle are threatening nature in Serengeti, he said.
“The government is at war with the Maasai,” he said. “If they want to take our land once and for all, all they have to do is end our way of life: pastoralism.”
According to FZS’s annual reports for 2017 and 2019, the group helped create “powerful law enforcement units” in Serengeti National Park to address livestock grazing and population pressure.
“Last year, we were able to raise funds for a second Livestock Law Enforcement Unit,” the 2019 report stated. The unit checks “that no cattle or goats are grazing illegally in the park,” and is supported by “regular surveillance flights.”
In its response, FZS told Mongabay it’s aware of the allegations about illegal cattle seizures. It said the livestock law enforcement units, which include a driver employed by FZS, “do not have the authority to auction livestock or impose fines.”
FZS also said it provides first aid and motorcycle training to support field operations of the units, as well as social safeguards training for pastoralists, which “covers critical topics such as the Grievance Redress Mechanism, arrest and detention procedures, the Use of Force continuum, and conflict de-escalation.”
The conservation of dreams
There are close ties between FZS and Tanzanian conservation agencies within leadership positions.
Both Ezekiel Dembe, the current Tanzania director of FZS, and his predecessor, Gerald Bigurube, previously worked for TANAPA. Bigurube, a Tanzanian national, has written in FZS’s magazine about ambitious plans for wildlife and nature in and around Serengeti. It’s a plan that envisions not just zero poaching and ample space for wildlife to roam freely, but also one where communities around the national park adopt a “new lifestyle.”
“They have settled at known addresses, they live in modern houses. Their cattle no longer roam,” he wrote, while granting that Loliondo still had some space for both livestock and wildlife.
Bigurube said the FZS, park authorities and communities “love this dream.” One Ololosokwan resident we spoke with disagreed. They said many Maasai on the ground strongly oppose this future, because it would mean the end of Maasai traditional lifestyle.
In Arusha, the nearest large city to Serengeti, Mongabay spoke with a former FZS employee who asked to remain anonymous. The source, a Maasai (which the NGO does employ), highlighted further work between FZS and Tanzanian conservation agencies.
In 2019, the Tanzanian government, with the support of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area authority, drafted a land-use plan for the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the source said. The report proposed resettling the Maasai: on page 95, the FZS is listed among stakeholders calling for a reduction of people and domestic animals to an “acceptable minimum.” To achieve the “voluntary” resettlement of local residents, some stakeholders proposed moving schools outside the area and reducing social services — actions consistent with what the government has been doing in recent years.
“The FZS and the German government are funding conservation activities that end in our displacement and eviction,” the former FZS employee said.
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Lankenua Sainguran says she still remembers the day of violent eviction in 2017. Image by Benjamin Hindrichs.
In response to the allegation, FZS told Mongabay that it has “no records to verify that the statement on page 95 accurately reflects the organization’s opinion at that time.” It also noted that the same page includes recommendations to involve local communities in decision-making.
“FZS has never advocated for the violation of human rights or the withholding of social services,” it said.
In 2023, the Ngorongoro district council worked on a land-use plan that legitimized the 2022 evictions in Pololeti. The foreword explicitly thanked FZS for supporting and financing the plan, with funding coming from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development via state-owned development bank KfW.
In this case, the plan was later rejected and the funding subsequently stopped.
However, many Maasai Mongabay spoke with said they see the very act of funding as confirmation of their suspicions that FZS is acting as an accomplice to the government. For them, this makes the German organization almost indistinguishable from the national institutions that order, carry out and justify the evictions.
Sources pointed to the fact that FZS, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, TANAPA and the Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority (TAWA) are partners of the Tanzania Tour Operators Association (TATO). In September 2023, U.S.-based NGO the Oakland Institute released a report about massive human rights violations by TANAPA rangers, including murder and violence, in the Usangu wetland area within Ruaha National Park. In response, the World Bank, which financially supported tourism in the park, suspended its funding.
TATO strongly denounced the report and call the findings baseless: “We cannot stand idly by while our tourism location is attacked by these foreign NGOs with unfounded accusations of human rights violations.”
Responding to questions about its partnership with TATO, FZS told Mongabay that it receives about $100,000 per year from the association’s contributing members to support de-snaring teams in Serengeti. These teams prevent poachers targeting wildlife by removing snares and freeing hundreds of animals.
“Allegations of any violations of human rights are serious and must be addressed,” it said. “However, we are not directly familiar with the situation in Ruaha and cannot comment.”
The future
For Pablo Manzano, a researcher in rangeland sustainability from the Spain-based Basque Centre for Climate Change, the real problem for wildlife in northern Tanzania isn’t the number of people or animals, but poverty. This, coupled with weak governance, can lead to declines in wildlife numbers, he said. Evicting people from their homeland drives them into poverty, which leads to more poaching in the park and more human-wildlife conflict, while further alienating communities from conservation initiatives. That’s why, instead of evicting people, the Tanzanian government should invest massively in education, Manzano said.
However, in Ngorongoro, the reduced funding for schools and hospitals has deprived residents of essential social services. In Msomera, where some Maasai have been relocated, residents complain that the government has failed to deliver the promised housing assistance and financial support. Meanwhile, conservation NGOs like FZS advocate for wildlife management areas (WMAs), a model of community-based conservation, as a solution to the conflict. Both Maasai from the area and some researchers highlight a range of ongoing issues in the design and implementation of WMAs.
Back in Ololosokwan village, 70-year-old Lankenua Sainguran slowly runs her fingers over the furrows in her hand and the bracelets around her wrists. Here, among the green hills, the memories of violence are omnipresent, she said. During the eviction in August 2017, Serengeti rangers confiscated 29 of her 30 cattle, leaving her with no means to support her family.
“The expulsions have changed everything,” she said, shaking her head slowly.
This story was produced with financial support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.
Banner image: A Maasai looking over Ololosokwan. Image by Benjamin Hindrichs.
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Citations:
Crego, R. D., Ogutu, J. O., Wells, H. B. M., Ojwang, G. O., Martins, D. J., Leimgruber, P., & Stabach, J. A. (2020). Spatiotemporal dynamics of wild herbivore species richness and occupancy across a savannah rangeland: Implications for conservation. Biological Conservation, 242, 108436. doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108436
Xu, W., & Butt, B. (2024). Rethinking livestock encroachment at a protected area boundary. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(38). doi:10.1073/pnas.2403655121
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