Notice Board

The Department of Anthropology 
presents

Pastoralism and wildlife conservation in Tanzania: Toward territories of life 
by Dr. Justin Raycraft
March 17, 2023
12:00 PM MST
Room C610 and Zoom:  https://uleth.zoom.us/j/91573641780

The Maasai Steppe is a semi-arid savanna ecosystem in northern Tanzania that supports a variety of wildlife species of global significance. It spans approximately 40,000 square kilometres, encompassing two national parks and several community-based conservation areas. This talk is based on a year of ethnographic field research (2019-2020) with Maasai pastoralists living across the steppe and two months (June-July) of follow-up fieldwork in 2022. It unfolds some of the social, political, and economic complexities of Tanzania’s wildlife sector through the prism of pastoralists’ lived experiences of conservation practice. Specifically, it touches on the social consequences of various conservation governance and management arrangements, the persistence of pastoral institutions in the face of competing interests in rangelands, and the role of international ‘safari’ tourism in shaping the distributions of conservation costs and benefits. Taking an anthropological approach to the study of wildlife conservation makes clear that conservation is a deeply political process with the power to produce a range of social and ecological outcomes. Locally led ‘territories of life’ may offer viable alternatives to conventional protected areas by recognizing the value of pastoralists as stewards of savannas. People, livestock, and wildlife have coexisted in East Africa for millennia, disrupted only recently by colonialism, development, and the practice of conservation itself.