World Bank announces support for Serengeti bypass.

The World Bank will help with a southern route avoiding the Serengeti. © NABU International.

Alternative Serengeti highway route gets World Bank support

January 2011. Plans for a busy commercial road through the Serengeti National Park have met with strong international opposition from scientists, conservation groups and the public. It would cut off some two million herbivores from their vital dry season range. Scientists predict this would cause the collapse of the migration and the ecosystem dynamics that depend on it.

The Serengeti ecosystem contains the largest protected grassland and savannah ecosystem in the world and is home to the greatest abundance of large mammals anywhere on earth. The Tanzanian government is planning a 53-kilometre long commercial highway right through the Serengeti. The consequences for the wildebeest migration and the related ecosystem would be catastrophic. 

Southern bypass
The obvious solution lies in a route that bypasses the Serengeti, and It has now been included in the World Bank's Country Assistance Strategy (CAS). With the project in the lending pipeline, the World Bank is willing to work with the government of Tanzania on the alternative southern route, if requested.  

Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) Vice President Thomas Tennhardt welcomed this news and said, "This solution would not only spare the Serengeti, but benefit a far greater number of rural people in a densely populated area adjacent to the Serengeti by connecting them to commercial centres and road networks."

"The regular pulse of the migration is the very heartbeat that keeps the Serengeti alive", says Dr Barbara Maas, NABU International's Head of International Species Conservation. "Without it, it will die.  The World Bank's initiative throws a lifeline to this unique wilderness and the animals and people that depend on it."

Hunter gatherers
The alternative southern route should avoid the Serengeti, as well as the land of the last 400 Hadza, Africa's last true hunter gatherers.

NABU International supports an anti-poaching project in the northern extension of the Serengeti, Kenya's Masai Mara.  The organisation is also an official partner of a new film, "Serengeti", which premieres on Sunday in Berlin and runs in cinemas from the 3rd of February.

NABU is Germany´s oldest and largest conservation organization.

Website : www.NABU-International.de