Richard Black BBC News 24 Jun 11;
Controversial plans to build a tarmac road across the Serengeti National Park have been scrapped after warnings that it could devastate wildlife.
The Tanzanian government planned a two-lane highway across the park to connect Lake Victoria with coastal ports.
But studies showed it could seriously affect animals such as wildebeest and zebra, whose migration is regarded as among the wonders of the natural world.
The government confirmed the road across the park will remain gravel.
In a letter sent to the World Heritage Centre in Paris, the Department of Natural Resources and Tourism says the 50km (30-mile) section of road across the park will "continue to be managed mainly for tourism and administrative purposes, as it is now".
The government is considering an alternative route for a major trade highway that would run to the south of the park.
This would avoid areas of high conservation value, and - although a longer route - would bring the opportunities afforded by a modern transport link to more people.
Last year, a group of scientists warned that the proposed road across the park could bring the number of wildebeest in the park, estimated at about 1.3 million, down to 300,000.
Collisions between animals and traffic would be unavoidable, they said.
And with a corridor on either side of the road taken out of the hands of the park authorities and given to the highways agency, fencing would almost certainly result, blocking movement of the herds.
If wildlife were damaged, they warned, that could also affect the local economy, in which tourism plays a major role.
'Wonder of nature'
The researchers described the Serengeti as "a rare and iconic example of an ecosystem driven by a large mammal migration".
That annual north-to-south trek involves about 1.5 million animals, including wildebeest and zebra.
As the animals travel, they dump vast quantities of urine and dung across the land, fertilising plant growth, while the trampling of hooves also prevents bush from over-growing the grassland.
An impact assessment compiled for the government confirmed the expected impact on migration, adding that the decline of wildebeest and zebra would have a knock-on effect on predators such as lions and cheetahs.
These are among the animals that tourists come to see.
Scientists also warned that the road could bring invasive plant species or unfamiliar diseases into the park, a World Heritage Site.
Last year, the World Heritage Committee expressed its "utmost concern" about the "potentially irreversible damage" that the highway could bring.
Environmental campaigners have welcomed the government's decision, with the organisation Serengeti Watch saying: "A battle has been won".
However, they warned that the region faces a number of other threats, including roads around the park and poaching.
Highway threat to Tanzania Wildebeest migration scrapped
Yahoo News 25 Jun 11;
PARIS (AFP) – A plan to build a highway through Tanzania's Serengeti which environmentalists warned would spell disaster for the national park's famed wildebeest migration has been dropped, UNESCO said on Saturday.
The spectacle, which is a major tourist draw, is one of the planet's greatest natural spectacles.
The proposed highway would have linked remote under-developed communities to larger hubs, cutting a swathe through the park into which giant herds of wildebeest crowd every summer to seek Kenya's pastures.
Following criticism of the project, the Tanzanian government informed he United Nations' cultural organisation UNESCO that it had been dropped.
Campaigners however cautioned that the battle to kill off the project had not yet been conclusively won and warned that the government was looking at an alternative route.
"The World Heritage Committee has received assurance on the part of the Tanzanian government that the highway project is abandoned," an official at the UN's education, science and culture organisation told AFP.
"The committee has therefore decided not to list the site on its list of endangered World Heritage Sites because the threat has disappeared," the official added.
Tanzania's government had backed the road plan by saying that the country should start caring for its people as much as it did for its wildlife.
But critics said it would destroy what scientists consider to be the "largest remaining migratory system on Earth" and lobbied hard against the project.
Serengeti Watch, an organisation committed to preserving the Serengeti's ecosystem, said it feared the highway plan could re-emerge at a later date.
"We do not consider this the final word in the Serengeti Highway saga by any means," the group said on its website.
The Serengeti Highway was intended to link Musoma, on the banks of Lake Victoria, to Arusha.
The project's critics argued the road would achieve the opposite of what it set out to do by destroying a key tourist attraction and thus stripping local communities of their jobs.
Serengeti Watch said the government was considering a highway that would wrap around the southern tip of the protected areas. It quoted a letter it said had been written by Tanzania's Natural Resources and Tourism Minister Ezekiel Maige.
Instead of cutting through the park towards Arusha, this new road would run "south of Ngorongoro Conservation area and Serengeti National Park," according the letter.
AFP was nor able Saturday to check the authenticity of this letter with the Tanzanian government.
Last year, 27 biodiversity experts co-signed a statement published in Nature magazine arguing that building a road through the park would cause an environmental disaster.
An environment group had previously argued that the road was illegal under the terms of East African Community Treaty, signed by Burundia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
The Africa Network for Animal Welfare said the road could lead to an increase poaching and more collisions between migrating animals and speeding vehicles, making the project untenable.
