Serengeti and Masai Mara to form a unique Ecosystem for East African animals. The areas in Tanzania and adjacent Kenya are strictly protected. But the pressure of human settlements is a threat to the Ecosystem, according to a study of fundamentals. The on the edge of protected areas, population has grown between 1999 and 2012 in an annual average of 2.4 per cent, report researchers in the journal “Science”. There is more arable land, the number of livestock had rocketed.
population quadrupling
The scientists Michiel Veldhuis, University of Groningen (the Netherlands) had analyzed data from the past four decades. In some regions, the boundaries of the protected areas, the population grew accordingly, in the last decade alone four times. At the same time, the populations of large wild animals in the conservation of nature is particularly relevant to the areas of the Masai Mara are wounds, more than 75 percent.
livestock herders in were in search of scarce a decreasing quality of grazing land for their sheep, goats and cattle deeper and deeper into protected areas, more and more people built in the buffer zones around the core areas of houses, explain the researchers. The wild animals would be displaced in the core areas, you always have less room for the Browsing. In addition, the migration routes of wildebeest, Zebras and gazelles would be interrupted.
Decline
“We have aerial and satellite images are evaluated and recognized, that by now the Vegetation is on the extreme seven kilometers of the protection zones to be less green than they used to,” explains co-author Joseph Ogutu of the University of Hohenheim. “Besides, it now recognizes a network of paths of grazing animals, which results in the protection zones.” The stocks of the 15 most common types of wildlife in the Masai Mara are gone, therefore, in the 40 years since 1977 to 40 to 93 per cent – within and outside the nature reserve alike.
The Serengeti in Northern Tanzania and the Masai Mara in southern Kenya, one of the largest protected form of Africa areas. In the approximately 40,000-square-kilometre Region of about a Million wildebeest, half a Million Gazelle and 200 000 Zebra, the rain from the Serengeti to the Masai Mara and back again will follow a year – a spectacle that attracts tourists from all over the world. Also Buffalo, elephants, ostriches, giraffes, warthogs and many other species in the Region.
defective Migration
The consequences of the increasing settlement pressure for the entire Ecosystem are immense, and soon impossible to reverse, warn the researchers. The migrations of the animals were disturbed, the rhythm of the fires in the area change, the fertility of the soil is disappearing, says Ogutu. “If the Grass is grazed severely, it is withdrawn from a fire, less the food. Fire is one of the defining elements of this Ecosystem.”
livestock in the Region, a status symbol, so Ogutu. The people earned quite money with the tourism, invested in this but often in more livestock, which competed with the wild animals for space, water and food. Desirable are, therefore, a state regulation of Livestock and control of animal stocks. “We need urgent solutions, otherwise the degradation of the landscape progresses.” A further increase in population numbers, it is becoming more and more difficult to break a lance for the conservation of nature. “And that would be, ultimately, for the people, a loss.”
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If the problems in such a famous and large protected area such as the Serengeti and Masai Mara are already clearly so, was the Situation in smaller areas, probably much worse, write Veldhuis and his colleagues. A third of all protected areas in the world, therefore, stands under immense pressure. (dpa)
