By Editor
15th April 2014
Editorial Cartoon
You can’t eat your cake and
have it, so goes an old adage. This could be said about the situation unfolding
in our country right now, especially in the Northern Tourist Circuit.
This comprises Tanga, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Mara and Mwanza. It is a fact that much of the revenue from Tanzania’s tourism sector has for a long time come from this circuit.
Such tourist destinations as Mt Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Manyara and Ngorongoro Crater, to name but a few, have attracted close to a million tourists to Tanzania each year.
But now a problem has arisen in Ngorongoro Crater. It is to do with the number of motor vehicles going down to the crater. It has been realized that the 400 motor vehicles descending the crater’s 610-metre deep steep walls are just too many.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) is therefore looking into ways of reducing motor vehicles entering the crater, which is the world's sixth largest unbroken caldera.
According to Dr Freddy Manongi, the NCAA chief conservator, tourists have complained that there are too many motor vehicles descending the crater.
It is now attracting more than 500,000 tourists annually and generating an average 55bn/- in revenue, the target being over 60bn/- this year. They say the vehicles distract them from enjoying the natural scenery and wildlife.
Granted, this has resulted from the NCAA’s continued climb in the popularity charts of the global travel industry, but something needs to be done to stop this denudation of the area. And, as the customer is always right, something should be done to heed to the tourists’ complaints.
Going by the NCAA’s own vision, the issue of preservation of the crater is paramount: “An overall tourism strategy for the property is a long term requirement, to both guide the public use of the property and ways of presenting the property, and to prioritize the quality of the tourism experience, rather than the quantity of visitors and tourism facilities.
Vehicle access to the crater and other popular areas of the property requires clear limits to protect the quality of experience of the property.”
Ngorongoro has paleontological and archaeological sites over a wide range of dates. The four major sites are Olduvai Gorge, Laetoli site, Lake Ndutu site and the Nasera Rock Shelter. The variety and richness of the fossil remains, including those of early hominids, has made it one of the major areas in the world for research on the human evolution.
The NCAA has to now translate its tourism strategy, balancing between the quest for more revenue from tourism and preservation of the crater’s ecology, so crucial to understanding the evolution of human beings. How to balance the equation is a headache for every stakeholder in the tourism industry.
Be that as it may, however, a solution has to be found to this challenge facing the crater. We go by the suggestion of Manongi that it is high time the NCAA looked into the promotion of other attractions within Ngorongoro.
These include other caldera, the beautiful Empakai Crater, the historic Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli sites where the first human being lived.
This comprises Tanga, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Mara and Mwanza. It is a fact that much of the revenue from Tanzania’s tourism sector has for a long time come from this circuit.
Such tourist destinations as Mt Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Manyara and Ngorongoro Crater, to name but a few, have attracted close to a million tourists to Tanzania each year.
But now a problem has arisen in Ngorongoro Crater. It is to do with the number of motor vehicles going down to the crater. It has been realized that the 400 motor vehicles descending the crater’s 610-metre deep steep walls are just too many.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) is therefore looking into ways of reducing motor vehicles entering the crater, which is the world's sixth largest unbroken caldera.
According to Dr Freddy Manongi, the NCAA chief conservator, tourists have complained that there are too many motor vehicles descending the crater.
It is now attracting more than 500,000 tourists annually and generating an average 55bn/- in revenue, the target being over 60bn/- this year. They say the vehicles distract them from enjoying the natural scenery and wildlife.
Granted, this has resulted from the NCAA’s continued climb in the popularity charts of the global travel industry, but something needs to be done to stop this denudation of the area. And, as the customer is always right, something should be done to heed to the tourists’ complaints.
Going by the NCAA’s own vision, the issue of preservation of the crater is paramount: “An overall tourism strategy for the property is a long term requirement, to both guide the public use of the property and ways of presenting the property, and to prioritize the quality of the tourism experience, rather than the quantity of visitors and tourism facilities.
Vehicle access to the crater and other popular areas of the property requires clear limits to protect the quality of experience of the property.”
Ngorongoro has paleontological and archaeological sites over a wide range of dates. The four major sites are Olduvai Gorge, Laetoli site, Lake Ndutu site and the Nasera Rock Shelter. The variety and richness of the fossil remains, including those of early hominids, has made it one of the major areas in the world for research on the human evolution.
The NCAA has to now translate its tourism strategy, balancing between the quest for more revenue from tourism and preservation of the crater’s ecology, so crucial to understanding the evolution of human beings. How to balance the equation is a headache for every stakeholder in the tourism industry.
Be that as it may, however, a solution has to be found to this challenge facing the crater. We go by the suggestion of Manongi that it is high time the NCAA looked into the promotion of other attractions within Ngorongoro.
These include other caldera, the beautiful Empakai Crater, the historic Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli sites where the first human being lived.
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