Manyara Ranch - Interview with the Manager

            Well today was a bit chaotic, but it ended up being very interesting and informative! We drove to Manyara Ranch and split into our groups for the day (mine was management of the ranch). However, the manager was nowhere to be found. We drove around to where some villages within the ranch said they had seen him, but he wasn’t there either! I was beginning to think this interview was not going to happen, but apparently the manager was in his new office which was at a different location than we were told. Once we met him, he was very welcoming and very thoughtful with his answers to us, which was a relief after chasing him down all morning!

            He had with him a head ranger from the ranch and an elder community member who was one of the leaders of the neighboring community. First he told us about the background information on the ranch. It’s about 45,000 hectares and can support about 4,000 cattle. It mainly sustains cattle, but also has sheep and goats come through as well. There are crossbreeding projects happening in the ranch, as well as a bee keeping project as an experiment to see if the communities surrounding the ranch can use the bees and an economic resource.

            The ranger picked up from there and told us that there are many issues with wildlife coming into the ranch and taking away resources and livestock from the area. Issues of diseases, such as bovine fever and worms, being passed from wildlife to livestock are a big problem – specifically with cattle that tend to be grazing in the same places as wildlife like wildebeests and zebras. Poaching of elephants and zebras used to be a major problem in the ranch, but within the past year the ranger said they have restructured their security of the ranch and added additional staff members to ensure livestock and wildlife safety from hunters.

            The community elder talked about the benefits of having the ranch in the place where it is now. It is a central point for seven surrounding villages, which are given access to the resources such as water and grasses for the livestock during the dry season. In addition to gaining resource benefits, the community members are also gaining awareness of the importance of keeping wildlife around through programs and education that the ranch staff is providing. Schools have been sponsored and constructed in the area so that children of the farmers in these communities can go to school and learn about wildlife practices and sustainable ways to keep livestock. Some families in the area are even given cattle to fatten up and then sell at the marketplace to gain economic support by sponsors of the ranch. Also, many people are employed on the ranch – from jobs like becoming rangers, construction workers, or community representatives.

            After hearing the background on the ranch, we got to ask a few questions of our own. We were mostly interested in what was being done to prevent hunting, disease, and resource depletion on the ranch. The manager and ranger both said that because of the increased security measures and the hiring of informants in the communities, poaching has decreased drastically. They have many people living in the communities that are being paid to report when they hear news about hunting. As for disease, they use pesticides to prevent tick-borne diseases and they try to rotate grazing so that cattle are not grazing in the same areas as wildebeests – which are the source of most cases of bovine fever in cattle. This also helps with the resource management problem. With rotations of livestock grazing and limiting the times when community farmers can bring in their livestock, there is little chance of too much grazing in a particular area and a decrease in food.

            Lastly, we asked about how the community attitudes have changed towards wildlife (if at all) since the ranch has been dealing with more wildlife sightings. The managers said that the state is somewhere in the middle – community members still don’t like wildlife, especially the carnivores that can attack their cattle, but they are learning more about how to appreciate the wildlife being there and what long term benefits it can have (tourism, biodiversity, etc.). Overall, the conversation was very informative and ended up being a very cool way to listen to some authorities talk about the issues we’re trying to investigate. 

An overcast day at Manyara Ranch

Impalas!