The Serengeti-Tsavo Cheetah Landscape straddles the borderlands of the Tanzania-Kenya boundary and reaches from one group of Africa’s most iconic protected areas to another. Thus, the landscape reaches from the conjoined Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Maasai Mara National Reserve in the west, to the national parks of Tsavo East and West, plus Mkomazi in the east, but also encompasses very considerable reaches of land that are formally unprotected in the central area around Lakes Natron and Magadi. Almost the entire landscape is comprised of cheetah resident range and makes up a significant part of the second-largest remaining cheetah population in Africa. CCI works to understand this variation and its impact on cheetah status and threats, and develops and implements interventions to reduce fragmentation of cheetah habitat and to support wildlife recovery in areas of heavy pressure.
Rural poverty and a lack of resilience to climate changes, including a rising frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events such as drought and floods, require a holistic approach to cheetah conservation that works hand in hand with communities. Thus, CCI works with its partners in this landscape to improve rangeland management, diversify rural livelihoods and mitigate human-carnivore conflict.
The CCI supports four projects in the landscape:
- The ‘Tushumu’ BIOPAMA Project
- Addressing rangeland management, diversification of women’s livelihoods, and human-carnivore coexistence.
- The Serengeti Cheetah Project
- Maintaining scientific input from the world’s longest running wild cheetah ecological study.
- The Rombo Group Ranch Carnivore
- Monitoring project aiming to understand the presence of carnivores in community lands between protected areas and the conflict that accompanies them.
- Ngorongoro Human-Carnivore Coexistence Project
- Facilitating communities to identify best practice in conflict mitigation within their own means and resources.
FULL PROJECT NAMES:
1) The Lake Natron-Nguruman Area: Protecting Key Biodiversity Areas for Sustainable Trans-Boundary Management of Rangelands and Water-Catchment in Tanzania and Kenya.
2) Serengeti Cheetah Project.
3) Rombo Group Ranch – Carnivore monitoring and human-carnivore conflict.
4) Ngorongoro human-carnivore conflict mitigation project.