Wendawazimu!

The Ngorongoro Crater madness!

I have been thinking, and that brings great fear into my mind. Right now I hear the world-famous heritage, the Ngorongoro Crater National Park, is about to be scrapped from the world natural heritages list.

Reason? Some government nincompoops have okayed the rapid increase of human activities around the area under the control of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. This is simply madness!

For heaven’s sake, the Ngorongoro Crater is one of the wonders of the world. It is a place of breathtaking beauty by any account. The wildlife concentration is second to none in the world.

And then you hear that some nuts in government have allowed farming activities in the Ngorongoro. Why, for God’s sake? Wildlife should strictly be treated as that – wild!

I am sure neither the majestic lions nor any other wild creature at the Crater invited a species known as homo sapiens to go and farm in the conservation area. I am sure the comical hyenas of the Crater did not ask human beings to go and build kiosks, bars and guesthouses there. The animals in the Crater are strictly teetotalers, anyway. It’s all just human greed!

The animals are great to watch – at a distance. I am sure they don’t want to have homo sapiens as neighbours. Government rulers like to brag that we have 40 million hectares to spare. There are even very uncomfortable noises of offering land to foreigners. Surely the local agriculturists can be offered some land for agriculture, instead of having people squeezing animals at the national parks. It’s just criminal to turn Ngorongoro into a zoo.

Some 300 cars are allowed to go into the Ngorongoro Crater daily. More madness! If we have any government (I doubt it, sometimes) the number of vehicles going into the park should be halved, yesterday! This is a God-given present and we are duty bound to cherish and protect it. We shouldn’t reduce it to a gigantic car park.

Likewise there is madness, not unlike Ngorongoro in the Serengeti National Park. They have just completed building a 77-room Kempinski hotel called the Bilila Lodge.
The Ngorongoro madness

The ‘investors’ are said to have carried out the construction at a site rich in wildlife in such a way that “one moves around the large site on elevated walkways with the animals underneath. Which is a load of crap. They want to turn it into a Serengeti zoo.

I insist that only demented people in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism would okay such a venture. Wild animals should be left to be just that – wild. You don’t go about building a concrete jungle pat on the middle of a national park! It is simply ugly. Why should human beings (thugs in suits) plan to make zoos of our national parks?

Kenya tried the same nonsense inside national parks. These contributed to an incredible reduction of wildlife in national parks in the last three decades. That will also happen here if this trend by mad people is left unchecked. There must an end to human greed somewhere. Leave our national parks alone!