Image credit: Horizon, original map from Īpart from the papers, the research team also developed tools to gather data and engage policymakers. Human and livestock populations have increased so much that they are spilling over the parks' boundaries. It found that better or new roads could lead to more cropland and cattle, putting greater pressure on the ecosystem, and may then increase illegal grazing in protected areas. Another looked at how road development altered people's livelihoods in the Greater Serengeti ecosystem. For example, one paper investigated how water availability in the region will change under different climate change scenarios and highlighted the need for countries to work together to manage rivers in the future. Other articles published as part of the project looked at other changes within the ecosystem. ‘This paper provides important scientific evidence of the far-ranging consequences of the increased human pressures around the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, information that is now urgently needed by policymakers and politicians,’ said Dr Simon Mduma, director of the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, at the time of publication. By examining 40 years’ worth of evidence, the team found that this had a knock-on effect throughout the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem: it reduced the amount of fuel available for the fires necessary to rejuvenate the ecosystem, damaged its ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and made it more vulnerable to the effects of drought. In a paper published in Science, the international team showed that human activity at the edges of the Kenyan and Tanzanian protected areas had ‘squeezed’ migrating animals, such as wildebeest, into smaller areas, forcing them to graze on less-nutritious grass. The research has not painted a pretty picture. ‘National parks are like islands, and are of no use while people are starving.’ Professor Eivin Røskaft, Norwegian University of Science and Technology ‘We looked at how human population growth and climate change, together, have an impact on the ecosystem, and what this means for the future,’ Prof. It produced more than 30 peer-reviewed papers, filling the previous data vacuum. Understanding this could help find ways to protect ecosystems and meet people’s needs.ĪfricanBioServices, a four-year project that ended in August 2019, aimed to understand what is happening in the Greater Serengeti-Mara ecosystem in eastern Africa. About 15% of land is included in the global protected area network, but in about one-third of that total area, humans and wildlife, or authorities protecting it, come into conflict: poachers kill wildlife, bordering communities let their livestock graze within the protected area, and government officials try to stop them.īut what is often lacking in these situations is data indicating where and what the problems are in order to address this conflict. One way to stave off biodiversity and habitat loss is to create protected areas.

Around the world, ecosystems are under threat and more than 1 million species face extinction, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services, or IPBES, published in 2019. ‘Where there are humans, there is almost no wildlife left.’ ‘Outside the park, it is dramatic,’ said Professor Eivin Røskaft, an evolutionary biologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and coordinator of a project called AfricanBioServices.

World in conflict game ranger