JOZANI-CHWAKA BAY NATIONAL PARK AND COVID-19

by Jonathan Walz

Evidence of beach erosion due to climate change at Paje (photo: J. Walz)

In Zanzibar, 2020 was a unique and impactful year. Covid-19 raised challenges for the state and its communities and environments. Compounded climate change and the national elections in October added stresses. The spring high tide event in mid-October (4.68m tidal change amplified by sea level rise) demonstrated that incremental increases to sea level during the last two decades have real world effects, including breached beach crests, saline wells, and inundated agricultural fields. Dramatically reduced tourism on Unguja and tourist revenue, alongside the aforementioned stresses, influenced biodiversity and the management of protected areas.

National parks around the world face multiple challenges during the global pandemic. For instance, significantly reduced staffing due to a decline in income from tourism influences parks’ capacities and plans to effectively enforce protections, facilitate scientific research, and ensure upkeep. In addition, and as a core threat to global biodiversity, administrators and observers of protected areas cite a parallel uptick in illicit activities that continue to degrade environments, species, and the human-environment interface: land grabs, deforestation for firewood and charcoal-making, animal poaching, an intensification of the illicit trade in wildlife and wildlife products, and the illegal mining of rare minerals and construction materials.

Burned bee honeycomb at Jozani (photo: J. Walz

“Biodiversity” is high species richness and evenness, which is equated with ecosystem health, productivity, stability, and resistance to disturbances, including disease. In general, biodiversity hotspots in Zanzibar – terrestrial and marine – are understudied (scholarly investigations in the archipelago being skewed to social and historical topics). Thus, biodiversity in the archipelago faces threats even before its is thoroughly understood. The sickness, death, and social disruption of the pandemic continue to act on the economically impoverished society and on the uncertainties spurred by climate change. Impacts from climate change are apparent: temperature increase (1.2 degrees Celsius since 1997), reduced rainfall with uncertain distribution, consistent sea level rise (0.28 cm/per year since 2009), and coastline and reef degradation. During the pandemic, pressures on the urban economy and food security in Zanzibar City have increased human and environmental vulnerability and changed behavior.

Up to January 2021, although human mortality and Covid-19 infections seemingly have been lower across eastern Africa than in areas of the Americas, Europe, and South Asia, nevertheless there have been negative outcomes in the region, for instance increased food insecurity and growing strains on health systems and natural resources. However, generalized statements about the pandemic’s impacts to nature conservation in Africa and the Global South more broadly deserve scrutiny and critique. What negative impacts to protected areas are being underemphasized in reports and what conservation positives have arisen during the pandemic?

Red colobus monkeys at Jozani (photo: J. Walz)

The Zanzibar archipelago, a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania, has a single national park which serves as a useful case for analysis: Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park and Biosphere Reserve. Jozani (for short) is an accessible park which in the last two years (2018 and 2019) has received more than 60,000 visitors per year. In April 2020 (during the first global peak in Covid-19), there were 14 total visitors to the park: less than 0.5% the number of visitors in April 2019. Diminished tourism revenue resulted in a temporary 50% reduction in park staff which influenced monitoring and enforcement, park upkeep, and public engagement. Urban job loss and modest food insecurity on Unguja redistributed some residents from nearby Zanzibar City to the countryside near the national park. Schools were closed which left children at home throughout the day to help gather natural resources for these larger households at the park’s edges. In addition, poachers used the ocean – not just land – to access remote areas, a practice previously documented primarily on Unguja’s sister island to the north: Pemba. Ad hoc observations and interviews with rangers documented that illicit activity increased, the evidence of which included tree stumps, cuttings from medicinal plants, shotgun shells, burned bee honeycombs, and traces of sand mining along the bay front.

However, positives for conservation and biodiversity have been lost in caricatures of the impacts of Covid-19. Absent tourists, monkey troops (especially Red colobus monkeys) at the national park reverted to less habituated behaviour. Farmers at the edges of the protected area reported fewer cases of damage to crops from park wildlife. Domesticated and feral animals were more visible, making them easier to humanely capture and relocate outside of park boundaries. In Chwaka Bay, intertidal species like octopus, a popular food served at tourist hotels, rebounded. On June 29, schools reopened; school groups became the primary park visitors and the focus of environmental education programs rather than secondary to the attention of overseas tourists. With few foreign-led NGOs in operation during the pandemic, a few of Zanzibar’s citizens stepped-in as agents of conservation at the park but also in Zanzibar City. They tended to public green spaces, outdoor areas less prone to transmit Covid-19.

Octopus and fisherman at Chwaka Bay (photo: J. Walz)

Biodiversity loss and socio-ecological instability increase vulnerability to on-going and future disasters. To overcome the disabling effects of Covid-19 and the compounding threats of climate change and other influential factors better promotion of evidence-based interdisciplinary study of coupled natural and human systems should be a priority. The multiple invested stakeholders should enforce protections to areas and species through standing or new policies, enhance resources for in-country experts to conduct and communicate research, bolster the health and wealth-being of people and environments through community “green” strategies, and collaborate with mindfulness to improve human livelihoods. The protection and restoration of biodiversity will improve adaptability to threats.

The public should be wary of simple narratives about Covid-19 and its impacts in Zanzibar and elsewhere. Covid-19 has not put threats to biodiversity “on hold”. However, at the same time, Covid-19’s outcomes have not been wholly negative.  As noted, during the pause in tourism, citizens of Zanzibar have initiated and developed conservation practices outside the orbit of ex-patriots, many of whom returned to their home countries due to the pandemic. At national parks in Africa and Indian Ocean island states, Covid-19 produces mixed conservation outcomes. Evidence builds more balanced and meaningful narratives that recognize the vulnerability and adaptability of people, ecosystems, and parks in an era of change.

THE LATEST AND GREATEST LOLIONDO LAND GRAB

by Susanna Nordlund

Survival International article

The Tanzanian Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Khamis Kagasheki, announced on 26 March 2013 that 1,500 km² of land will be taken from the people of Loliondo. The grabbing of this corridor of dry season grazing land bordering Serengeti National Park will destroy the lives and livelihoods of the Maasai pastoralist landowners.

They government claims that this decision has been taken to protect wildlife and water catchments. The minister has warned that “There will be no compromise with regard to any attempt to infringe the newly established boundaries.” At the same time the public is being misled into believing that the state is doing the Maasai of Ngorongoro District and Loliondo and Sale Divisions a favour by giving them the 2,500 km² of Loliondo Game Controlled Area (GCA) that it hasn’t taken.

The reality is that the GCA was previously an area in which only hunting rights had been given away, while other land uses were allowed to continue. It has been managed as customary Maasai land for as long as anyone can remember, and belongs to eight villages under the provisions of the Village Land Act No 5 of 1999. However, the Wildlife Conservation Act of 2009 restricted livestock keeping and other agricultural activities on GCAs, and deemed that they could not overlap with village land. This protected area “upgrading” was concealed by retaining the old designation, but its very real consequences can be seen in what is now happening in Loliondo.

The location of Loliondo (source: Tanzania Natural Resource Forum)

In typical fashion the government is blaming resistance to this blatant land grab on mythical “NGOs” and “Kenyans” that are stirring up conflict.

Pastoral production is not incompatible with the conservation of wildlife; ironically it was the richness of wildlife on traditional rangelands that led to their loss to the Maasai when Serengeti National Park was created in 1959. Pastoralists in the neighbouring Ngorongoro Conservation Area are living under strict restrictions and have, against promises given when being moved from Serengeti, lost further grazing lands. The government, hunting companies, and so-called “non-consumptive” tourism continually seek ways to grab more Maasai land – like the Boston-based Thomson Safaris that is treating 12,617 acres of grazing land as a private nature refuge, calling this “community-based conservation”. The Maasai can just not afford to lose another square inch of land.

It’s probably no accident that the 1,500km² corridor of land that is being taken is also the core hunting area of the Otterlo Business Corporation (OBC) – an outfit that organises hunting safaris for royalty from the United Arab Emirates. In a corruption scandal in 1992 that is still remembered as “Loliondogate”, OBC was given Loliondo GCA as a hunting block. Although this deal didn’t transfer land ownership, OBC have often behaved like lords of the land and have been backed by the government in resulting conflicts with the Maasai.

The Avaaz petition

The worst incident occurred in 2009 during a severe drought when people and livestock were evicted by force from the corridor of land by the Tanzanian authorities assisted by OBC. Houses were burned down and many cattle were lost, while one young girl disappeared in the chaos and has never been found. The evicted Maasai eventually moved back and many leaders “reconciled” with OBC, creating a generational rift when young people questioned their reasons for doing so.

On 25 March this year, when it was evident that the land grab was about to be announced, thousands of people attended a public meeting in Oloipiri at which it was declared that the local MP and other political leaders would resign in protest, that all contracts with OBC would be terminated, and legal proceedings initiated with an injunction against the grab and an attempt to reclaim the lost lands of the Serengeti. On Tuesday 2 April another big meeting is planned in Wasso, at which people will respond to the announcement that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism has since made.

Anyone who in any way can help the people of Loliondo in this struggle is kindly asked to do so as soon as possible.

Links

Survival International are standing up for the Maasai – http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/9091

Avaaz are helping in their own way –

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_the_maasai_loc/

Jason Patinkin of the Guardian has written the following report – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/30/maasai-game-hunting-tanzania

Article in The Guardian (London)

For further reading and viewing:

Author’s blog post from 23 March with subsequent updates:

http://termitemoundview.blogspot.se/2013/03/the-tanzanian-government-insists-on.html

Press release from Onesmo Olengurumwa of JUWASAWINGO http://www.freemedia.co.tz/daima/habari.php?id=47051

A blog post from 2011 with the history of the corridor and OBC: http://www.termitemoundview.blogspot.se/2011/07/corridor.html

Also from 2011, voices from Loliondo about land use in the "wildlife corridor":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7knZOEVxO0k

News item on ITV Tanzania about protests against the beacons of TANAPA on village land: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a66HfC1qeBE

Blog post about the beacons at Klein’s Gate: http://www.termitemoundview.blogspot.se/2012/12/the-beacons-from-hell.html

And a call for help on the official blog of Ololosokwan: http://ololosokwan.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/streets-of-ololosokwan-are-burning/

IMAGINARY ANIMALS OF ZANZIBAR

On 14 June 2007, the Hon. Ame Pandu Ame, MP for Nungwi constituency in Zanzibar, asked the following question in the Tanzanian parliament:

Given that Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, and that some animals have now disappeared from the islands, such as Ader's Duiker (Paa-Nunga), Impala (Swala), Zebra (Pundamilia), and Ostrich (Mbuni):-

Does the government not see that there is a need to take these animals (which aren't dangerous to man) over to the islands so that people can see them there?*

The Hon. Member's knowledge of his own islands' fauna was evidently on par with that of the brains behind the "Rare Animals of Zanzibar" series of stamps that was issued in the mid-1980s. Two of the mammals depicted, a rhinoceros and a pangolin, have never occurred in the wild in Zanzibar, at least not since Unguja became an island at the end of the last Ice Age. The same applies to impala, zebra, and ostrich. And although Ader's duiker (Cephalophus adersi) is classed as critically endangered, a small population still survives on Unguja island.

The Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Professor Jumanne Abdallah Maghembe, was quick to set the record straight. He began his reply as follows:

Honourable Speaker, please allow me to inform your respected Parliament that impala, zebra, and ostrich are not native to Zanzibar, but were taken there in 1980 for a show. Once the show was over, they were put into a zoo in the forest at Dole Masingini.

Honourable Speaker, because of poor management and lack of expertise, the animals broke out of their enclosures time and time again and escaped into people's farms, where they damaged crops before being killed.*

Prof. Maghembe went on to explain that there were currently no plans to import and release such animals into the wild in Zanzibar, and gave the obvious ecological and other reasons for not doing so. He also gave an update on the status of the near-endemic Ader's duiker. "The only animal thought to have disappeared from the forests of Zanzibar", he added, "is the Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi ["adders" in the original])."

I don't know what motivated the CCM MP's question: by and large Zanzibar manages its own natural resources without reference to the mainland, and Zanzibar's wildlife isn't a normal topic of debate in the national parliament. But I do know that the liberalisation of the economy and growth of (eco)tourism in Zanzibar has made people aware of the money-making potential of zoos and animal enclosures in a way that the state-controlled experiment at Masingini could never have done. Mohammed Ayoub Haji's Zala Park, a small zoo that is best known for its reptiles, was opened in Muungoni village, close to Jozani Forest, in the mid-1990s. For a long time this was the only facility of its kind, but more recently Zanzibar's political and economic elite have begun to muscle in on the action. There's now at least one private zoo on Unguja owned by a prominent businessman. Latest on the scene is Zanzibar Park, located on a 20-acre site by the Mwera road, 3 km east of Zanzibar town. This zoo's flashy website suggests that it's a step up from Zala Park in ambition and scale -- perhaps not surprising, given that it's said to be owned by Zanzibar's First Lady, Shadya Amani Karume. It opened to the public in October 2009, and houses at least some of the species mentioned by Hon. Ame in his parliamentary question.

One animal that's unlikely to appear in Zanzibar Park anytime soon is the Zanzibar leopard. As Prof. Maghembe suggested, some zoologists think that it's extinct, though this is by no means certain (Goldman and Walsh 2002). But lack of scientific corroboration hasn't stopped the rural inhabitants of Unguja from seeing this island endemic, or believing that leopards are still being kept and used by witches (wachawi) to frighten their fellow villagers and attack their livestock (Goldman and Walsh 1997; Walsh and Goldman 2007). Leopard-keeping narratives are so pervasive and persuasive that some foreign researchers have fallen for them and gone in search of domesticated leopards. Needless to say, these kept leopard chases have always proved futile. Likewise proposals emanating from the Government of Zanzibar and local conservationists that call for leopard-keepers to display or sell their leopards for display to tourists and other fee-paying members of the public (Ame 2003). Helle Goldman and I have written about this at greater length in a recent workshop paper (Walsh and Goldman 2010), and both the abstract and now part of the text can be seen on our Zanzibar leopard blog.

Afterword (image), 13 February 2011

from the Humphrey Winterton Collection

An undated postcard from the studio of J. B. Coutinho in Zanzibar (not a wild rhino, alas!)...

(Citation: Rhinoceros, Zanzibar. Winterton Collection of East African Photographs, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston. Object 43-1-43-1. http://hdl.handle.net/2166.DL/inu-wint-43-1-43-1.)

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* My translation from the Swahili.

References

Ame, Mwantanga 2003. Serikali iko tayari kununua chui. Zanzibar Leo, Sunday 13 April 2003, 6.

Goldman, Helle and Martin Walsh 1997. A Leopard in Jeopardy: An Anthropological Survey of Practices and Beliefs which Threaten the Survival of the Zanzibar Leopard (Panthera pardus adersi). Zanzibar Forestry Technical Paper No. 63, Jozani Chwaka Bay Conservation Project, Commission for Natural Resources, Zanzibar.

Goldman, Helle and Martin Walsh 2002. Is the Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi) extinct? Journal of East African Natural History 91 (1/2): 15-25.

Walsh, Martin and Helle Goldman 2007. Killing the king: the demonization and extermination of the Zanzibar leopard / Tuer le roi: la diabolisation et l’extermination du leopard de Zanzibar. In Edmond Dounias, Elisabeth Motte-Florac and Margaret Dunham (eds.) Le symbolisme des animaux: L'animal, clef de voûte de la relation entre l'homme et la nature? / Animal symbolism: Animals, keystone of the relationship between man and nature? Paris: Éditions de l’IRD. 1133-1182.

Walsh, Martin and Helle Goldman 2010. Chasing imaginary leopards: science, witchcraft and the politics of conservation in Zanzibar. Paper prepared for the VIII European Swahili Workshop, Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography, University of Oxford, 19-21 September 2010.