By Lusekelo Philemon
One of the tree climbing lions in the Lake Manyara National Park
It is very rare for a busy businessman to think of getting into the
park and seeing the God’s miracles, but, Mabula allocated his time and
take his children—Joram (13), Maria (10), and Alex (6) into the park.
Mabula and his family never visited the park before. “So, we had to
plan. And this is the day. My family was eager to see ‘tree climbing
lions’ and other wild animals,” says Mabula, as he gets out the car
after visiting what he describes as “very unique” park.
Mabula says: “I can imagine what I saw in the park. I was able to
see all the wild animals, except rhinos. But, we have enjoyed and
refreshed our minds. My family is happy to see elephants, buffaloes,
hippos, baboons and the likes in their natural environment.”
“I encourage Tanzanians to allocate time, and visit one of the
country’s national parks and for this matter, Lake Manyara National
Park. The fees for Tanzanians is only 1,500/- per person,” he suggests.
He says it is easy for Tanzanians to visit the park whose main
entrance gate is very close to the Arusha-Ngorongoro Highway, few metres
from Mto wa Mbu Township. Mabula’s son, Joram says: “This is a very
wonderful experience. I have been seeing wild animals in pictures and
films, but today, I saw them with my naked eyes.”
“I am going to tell my colleague in school on what I saw, so that
they should also think of coming here,” says a Standard Seven Pupil, in
one of the Arusha English Medium School.
Mabula is just one example, there are some Tanzanians who also spare time and visit the country’s national parks.
Daniel Sarumbo, a driver-cum- tour guide describes Mabula’s
endeavour visiting national parks as a recommendable one “as there are
many Tanzanians out there who still think that tourism is only for
foreigners only.”
“There are few Tanzanians who are getting into the park. We always
take foreign tourists into the park and this is because, there are few
Tanzanians who allocate time for tourism,” says Sarumbo, an experienced
tour guide in the northern tourist circuit.
He says, the trend by locals to get into the park is encouraging
“as we have been seeing Tanzanians in the parks, either individually or
groups and there is an increasing number of students getting into
tourism destinations.”
“I am failing to understand as why there are few Tanzanians who
visit the park despite the fact that it is located very close to
people.”
Acting Park Warden, Marco Meoli also commends Tanzanians like
Mabula for their endeavours to get into the parks, noting that LMNP is
for all people. “We are encouraging more Tanzanians to come and visit
the park.”
“As conservators, we are working day and night protecting the
wildlife for the benefit of Tanzanians and tourism industry in general,”
the official says, calling citizens to inculcate a culture of visiting
national tourist destinations.
An ecologist with LMNP, Yustina Kiwago, says despite of the
environmental challenges, the park remained one of the best tourist
destinations in northern tourism circuit of Tanzania.
“…it is one of the renowned freshwater lakes located in the Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem (TME).”
She says the sanctuary is a home of elephants, rhinos, large
buffalo, giraffe, wildbeest and zebra herds, as well as Manyara’s
legendary tree-climbing lions.
Park tourism promotion officer, Neema Mgaya says local and foreign
tourists will miss nothing in the park as it is a home of varieties of
wildlife.
“The park provides the perfect introduction to Tanzania’s birdlife,
whereby over 400 species have been recorded, and even a first-time
visitor to Africa might reasonably expect to observe 100 of those birds
in one day,” she says.
The park also houses thousands of pink-hued flamingos on their
perpetual migration, as well as other large water-birds such as
pelicans, cormorants and storks.
She says in recent years the number of Tanzanians getting into the
park has kept on increasing, for instance in 2001, the park registered
16,807 local tourists, but now “we are registering more than 50,000
local visitors annually.”
“To us this is a big achievement, in terms of encouraging domestic tourism in the 54-year-old park.”
The official says the number of foreign visitors has kept on
increasing, whereby in 2001, the park recorded 53, 192 foreign tourists
but in 2012, the number of tourists was 129,461 foreign tourists. For
the past ten years, more than one million tourists visited the
54-year-old park.
Why number of tourists getting up in LMNP?
According to Mgaya, improved promotions and marketing of tourism
within and outside the country, improved tourism facilities and
services, improved Makuyuni–Ngorongoro Road are some of the factors that
made the park to continue receiving more tourists annually.
“This park is strategically located between Tarangire National Park
and two big tourist destinations of Serengeti National Park (SENAPA)
and Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA).”
Mgaya cites decrease in terrorism incidences and threats in the
world as well as Natural disaster and political unrest in some of the
Asian countries and other major destinations are some of the pulling
factors for tourists to come in and visit the park.
Among the key tourist activities include day and night game drive,
camping, picnicking, canoeing, bush hot meals (bush lunch and dinner),
walking Safaris and wildlife filming.
“We are also planning to have canopy walkway - ground water forest
as well as hiking on the escarpment and Marang’ forest,” she says.
Challenges
Among the key challenges facing park include siltation in the lake,
which is the lifeline for the LMNP, environmental degradation,
deforestation in the highland forest, encroachment by human settlements
in Mto wa Mbu area, Jangwani, high concentration of visitors in the
northern part of the park, off-road driving, limited number of tourism
staff for walking safaris and low use of Park accommodation facilities,
over-speeding in the park, and climate change/ flash floods.
Mgaya says the outbreak of Ebola disease in western African
countries is another challenge that is likely to reduce number of
tourists visiting the park.
“We were expecting large number of tourists this year, but the
current trend is discouraging as some of them are claimed to have
cancelled their trips due to Ebola outbreak in West African countries of
Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.”
She says despite the fact that there is no Ebola case reported in
Tanzania, there some tourists in Europe and America who think Africa is a
one country.
“So, when they hear about Ebola in west Africa, they think that the
entire continent is affected with the disease, something which is not
the case…and this is affecting us as the country,” she says.
“Our expectation this year was to register good number of
tourists, but with the current trend I doubt if we can reach the target.
By this time of the year (high season for tourism in Tanzania), you
could see the park is full of tourist vehicles in the park,” the
official said.
Strategies to boost tourism
“Among the strategies in place include improved promotions and
marketing of tourism within and outside the country as well as
diversification of Tourism products and facilities,” Mgaya says, adding:
“We are planning to introduce standard penalties – littering, off-road,
and feeding wild animals.
Other ways include recruitment and train more rangers for walking
safaris and spearheading conservation education to visitors and
communities living around the park.
The Park is absolutely great to visit as it harbours about all the
animals a visitor expect to see in entire safari, enjoy bird watching
and the shallow alkaline lake often covered by resident flamingo make it
look spectacular.
The tourism official says LMNP has managed to build two board
walkways in the park to easy birds and hippos’ viewers in the northern
wildlife sanctuary.
“This is part of the park’s initiative towards boosting the number of tourists visiting the park.”
Lake Manyara National Park
Established in 1960, Lake Manyara National Park extends over 330 sq
km of the northern Rift Valley floor southwest of Arusha. Its
centrepiece is Lake Manyara, a fluctuating body of alkaline water set
within a shallow sump at the base of the Rift Valley.
To the southeast, a scattering of extinct volcanoes rise in
splendid isolation from the open plains of the Maasai Steppes. To the
west, the lake is hemmed in by the 600m-high golden-brown rift
escarpment alluded to in its name – an emanyara being the spiky
protective hedge grown around a Maasai boma.
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