Serengeti Road: Kenyan Engagement

As reported in Kenya's Daily Nation on 16 June, President Kibaki has been asked to engage his Tanzanian counterpart Jakaya Kikwete to stop plans to build a planned road from Dar-es Salaam to Musoma through Serengeti National Park.Tourism stakeholders say the road would affect the annual migration of wildebeests from Serengeti to the Maasai Mara Game Reserve and fuel poaching. The US government is reportedly lobbying for Tanzanian authorities to drop the plan for the sake of tourism.

Legal action has been filed in the East African Court of Justice seeking to permanently restrain the government of Tanzania from the following:

• “constructing, creating, commissioning or maintaining a trunk road or highway across any part of the Serengeti National Park.”
• “degazetting (removing) any part of the Serengeti National Park for the purpose of upgrading, tarmacking, paving, realigning, constructing, creating or commissioning” the highway.
• removing itself from UNESCO obligations with respect to the Serengeti National Park.

See the news article:  Activists file suit against Serengeti Highway move

"Serengeti Watch" is one organization that continues to track developments on this issue.