"We would not want to see any livestock from either within or
outside the country encroach and tamper with our national park
ecosystems," Suluhu said.
Tanzania orders drought-hit herders to leave national parks(Trust)
Drought-afflicted herders have been ordered to remove their cattle from Tanzania's national parks, where they had moved in a bid to find new food sources, the Tanzanian government said late on Monday.
Thousands of heads of cattle, goats and sheep have crossed into Tanzania from neighbouring Kenya and Uganda in recent months searching for water and fresh pasture, according to government officials.
This has placed increasing strains on the east African nation's wildlife and has affected the tourism industry, they said.
All
herders - both foreign and Tanzanian - have until June 15 to remove
their animals from the protected areas, Tanzanian vice president, Samia
Hassan Suluhu, said on Monday.
Failure to vacate the national parks will result in forceful eviction, she said.
"We
would not want to see any livestock from either within or outside the
country encroach and tamper with our national park ecosystems," Suluhu said.
Worsening
drought in many parts of east Africa had forced herders to move cattle
into areas protected for wildlife in a desperate bid to find new food
sources, she said.
Government officials said the
situation has also sparked deadly conflict in some parts of the country
as local farmers and pastoralists clash over dwindling pasture and water
supplies.
Suluhu said it was estimated that as
many as five million livestock from Uganda and Kenya were grazing and
destroying the environment in the northern Kagera, Arusha and Geita
regions.
"Livestock owners from outside
Tanzania don't want to destroy their (own) environment. So they bring
their animals to feed in Tanzania," she said.
This is not the first time Tanzania has sought to remove cattle from protected wildlife areas.
Last
year, government authorities were widely criticised for attempting to
evict unauthorised squatters and their animals from the game reserves,
said the Dar es Salaam-based Legal and Human Rights Centre.
In
a telephone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Daudi
Kivanda, a herder in Tanzania's northern Geita region said that while he
will heed the government's call, moving will not offer a lasting
solution for farmers.
"The government promised
to apportion special grazing areas (but) it hasn't fulfilled that
promise. Where can we take our cattle to graze?" he said.
Tanzania
has approximately 21 million head of cattle, the largest number in
Africa after Ethiopia and Sudan, according to Ministry of Agriculture
Livestock Development and Fisheries data. It estimates that livestock
contributes to at least 30 percent of agricultural GDP.
However,
wildlife conservationists are increasingly concerned about the impact
of farming and livestock on national parks and game controlled areas.
Stephano
Qulli, chief park warden at the northern Tarangire National Park said
the destruction of wildlife corridors due to overgrazing has threatened
the population of wild animals, including wildebeest, which have
suffered a population drop from more than two million to 1.5 million
over the last decade.
"When human beings trespass in national parks, they destroy animal corridors which help wild animals in calving," he said.
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