The Serengeti natural heritage area is in acute danger.
The potential collapse of the region’s ecosystem could have even worse consequences than the cattle plague epidemic of the 1890s, which was introduced through domesticated animals and killed off more than 90% of the wildlife population. During the course of the following 70 years, human interference in the area was kept to a minimum and the wildlife population slowly returned to its previous strength.
Now, in 2010, the threat is not disease, but instead a road-building project that values economic interests above the lives of more than two million animals.
The planned Serengeti Highway will cut the Mara ecosystem in the northern Serengeti into two. In order to preserve the Serengeti’s status as a natural heritage area, the plan is to build the road in a closed corridor within the Serengeti National Park. This would, however, make the highway an insurmountable barrier for the 1.5 million ungulates that migrate to the Masai Mara every year in their search for food during the dry season.
Scientists predict that the loss of the Masai Mara food reserves would have dramatic effects on the animal population, starving more than 80% of the indigenous ungulates, including the gnus that are so important to the balance of nature in the region.
The ecosystem would simply collapse.
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