Perceived Impacts of Wildlife on Agropastoral Food Production in Northern Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Human-wildlife interactions can affect human wellbeing and wildlife population persistence. This paper addresses the perceived impacts of wildlife on agropastoral food production in the Tarangire ecosystem of northern Tanzania. It is based on sixteen months of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with agropastoral Maasai communities (2019–2020; 2022; 2023), 240 semi-structured interviews, and a household survey (n = 1076). People felt that caterpillars, elephants, and zebras had the most significant effects on crop production, while hyenas were responsible for the bulk of livestock depredation by carnivores. These social costs of wildlife merit further attention from conservation policy makers.

KEYWORDS:

• Agriculture
• anthropology
• conservation
• ethnography
• farming
• food security
• human dimensions
• human-wildlife conflict
• livelihood
• Maasai
• pastoralism
• social impacts
• wildlife conservation

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Edwin Maingo Ole for his field assistance during data collection and to the local Maasai community for supporting his research. A preliminary version of this paper was presented via Zoom at the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) annual meeting in March 2021. The author is affiliated with the Institutional Canopy of Conservation (ICAN) project, the Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives (CICADA), and the Applied Research in Environmental Anthropology (AREA) Lab at the University of Lethbridge.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Percentages next to species names indicate proportion of survey respondents who classified the species as a big problem for food production.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by a Research Affiliate Fund Grant (2023) from the Prentice Institute for Global Population and Economy, and a start-up grant from the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Lethbridge (2023). Fieldwork in 2019-2020 was made possible by a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), a Salisbury Award from the Canadian Anthropology Society, and the SSHRC-funded ‘Institutional Canopy of Conservation’ (ICAN) partnership project.