Project Report · January – June 2026
Project Report · January – June 2026
How 119 hectares of village land were bought back for wildlife — and reconnected Makao WMA to the Maswa Game Reserve.
Cover photograph: African Savanna Elephant (Loxodonta africana, Endangered) on the corridor plot, January 2026.
The Makao Wildlife Management Area sits at a junction of some of the most important protected land in Africa. Serengeti National Park lies to the north, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to the east, and the Maswa Game Reserve to the north-west. Makao is the southern end of the Serengeti–Mara wildebeest migration and the ecosystem's dry-season refuge.
It has also been shrinking. Established in 2007 with an area of 768.9 km², Makao WMA lost ground steadily to settlement, cultivation and grazing until only 598.7 km² remained — a loss of more than a fifth. Among the pieces lost was a strip of land in Mwangudo village that had functioned as the natural corridor between the WMA and Maswa GR.
In January 2026, with a grant from the IUCN National Committee of the Netherlands Land Acquisition Fund, Nature Tanzania set out to buy that strip back, transfer it lawfully to the village, annex it to the WMA and mark it permanently on the ground.
By June 2026 all of that had been done. 119 hectares were purchased from 19 landowning families, the title deed passed to Mwangudo Village Government, a Memorandum of Understanding annexed the plot to Makao WMA, and numbered concrete beacons were carried in on foot and set into the ground.
This is the first time in eighteen years that Makao WMA has grown rather than contracted.
Makao WMA did not lose this land to wrongdoing. The plot lies within Mwangudo village, and the nineteen families farming it held a clear, undisputed title, verified against district records. What had failed was the boundary: it was never physically marked, so over years the line between village land and wildlife area simply blurred. There is no enforcement answer to that — only a fair negotiation, somewhere for those families to go, and beacons in the ground so it cannot recur.
No — and the distinction is central to the whole project. Nature Tanzania did not buy out unlawful occupation. It bought lawfully titled village land from willing sellers at a negotiated price, with the District Land Officer supervising every stage. The families were not encroachers: the boundary was undemarcated, which is a failure of mapping, not of conduct. And the lasting safeguard is not the payment — it is the beacons. The line is now visible, patrolled and enforceable, so the situation this project resolved cannot arise here again.
Makao WMA lies in Meatu District, Simiyu Region, at roughly 34.69°E, 3.56°S. It is semi-arid, with rainfall rising from under 700 mm a year in the south to about 900 mm in the north, and rivers that flow only seasonally. Grasslands dominate the north; the south gives way to Commiphora and Acacia woodland and riverine forest, punctuated by baobabs. Rocky hills and kopjes give shelter; black cotton and sandy-loam soils shape what grows.
The plot bought under this project sits on the north-western edge of the WMA, at the point where it meets the Maswa Game Reserve. That single fact is what made it valuable. A corridor does not work if it is nearly continuous. Either animals can move between two protected areas or they cannot, and a settled strip at the pinch point meant they could not — or could only at the cost of raiding crops and losing calves on the way through.
Between December and May, when grass and water fail elsewhere in the Serengeti ecosystem, migrating wildebeest and other ungulates push south into Makao. The WMA functions as the ecosystem's emergency reserve. Cutting its link to Maswa GR narrows the options available to animals in precisely the season when options matter most.
In 2025 Makao WMA was formally recognised as an Important Bird and Biodiversity Area, the result of survey work by Nature Tanzania with BirdLife International. After more than twenty years in which Tanzania's tally stood at 80, Makao became the country's 81st IBA. Securing the corridor also expands the recognised IBA itself.
Conversion to farmland, uncontrolled grazing and expanding settlement cut the WMA from 768.9 km² to 598.7 km² since 2007. Much of that loss followed an unmarked boundary rather than any deliberate taking — including the corridor plot, which sat under clear village title throughout.
WMA management report roughly 35 poachers caught a year and more than 149 animals killed annually — and only the detected cases. A parallel trade supplies body parts of lions, vultures, secretarybirds, pangolins and cheetahs for traditional medicine.
The District Game Officer logged 212 elephant crop-raiding cases across village farms in 2023. At the corridor plot itself the district recorded 36 raiding incidents and the WMA five poaching cases from 2023 onward.
The corridor was dangerous land to live on and valuable land for wildlife. Buying it did not force a trade-off between people and animals — it resolved one. The nineteen families moved to safer ground with capital and training in hand; the wildlife got its passage back.
The corridor plot was not empty land. It carried roughly 35 homesteads, cattle bomas and cultivated fields — maize, and the mixed subsistence cropping that supports most households in Meatu District. It was, on paper, productive farmland held under a lawful title.
It was also a very bad place to farm. The plot lies at the pinch point between two protected areas, which means the animals moving between them had no route that did not pass through somebody's crop. Elephants raided fields and broke into food stores. Lions and hyenas took livestock out of bomas and grazing grounds. People were injured; houses were damaged.
That is the reality behind the district's figures. 212 elephant crop-raiding cases were logged across village farms in 2023 alone, and 36 incidents at the corridor plot itself. For the families living there, human–wildlife conflict was not an occasional event. It was a standing tax on everything they grew.
Earlier attempts to return the plot to the WMA had failed for one reason: the families were prepared to leave, but had nowhere to go and no capital to buy elsewhere. They were not defending the land. They were trapped on it.
Compensation at a negotiated price gave them the means to relocate to ground outside the wildlife route — with conservation education and entrepreneurship training alongside the payment, and accompaniment through the move itself. The conflict was not managed. It was removed.
An elephant crossing this ground in 2027 will not meet a maize field, a boma or a person defending either. That is what 119 hectares buys.
Connectivity is not an abstraction for the species that use this landscape. Elephants range across tens of kilometres in a season. Vultures forage over hundreds. African wild dogs need territories far larger than any single protected area in the region can supply. For all of them, the practical question is whether they can cross from one block of habitat to the next without running into people.
The corridor restores movement and gene flow between Makao WMA, the Maswa Game Reserve and the wider Mara–Serengeti ecosystem. Isolated populations lose genetic diversity, become vulnerable to local shocks, and eventually wink out. Connected ones do not.
Elephant, lion, leopard, roan antelope, buffalo, greater and lesser kudu, eland, hartebeest, klipspringer, zebra, warthog and wildebeest all occur. African wild dog and black rhino are occasionally sighted. Six globally threatened vulture species are present, alongside the restricted-range Grey-breasted Francolin and Ashy Starling.
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| Common name | Scientific name | Status |
|---|---|---|
| African White-backed Vulture | Gyps africanus | CR |
| Rüppell's Griffon Vulture | Gyps rueppelli | CR |
| White-headed Vulture | Trigonoceps occipitalis | CR |
| Hooded Vulture | Necrosyrtes monachus | CR |
| African Wild Dog | Lycaon pictus | CR |
| Lappet-faced Vulture | Torgos tracheliotos | EN |
| Egyptian Vulture | Neophron percnopterus | EN |
| African Savanna Elephant | Loxodonta africana | EN |
| Secretarybird | Sagittarius serpentarius | EN |
| Bateleur | Terathopius ecaudatus | EN |
| Martial Eagle | Polemaetus bellicosus | EN |
| Lion | Panthera leo | VU |
| Leopard | Panthera pardus | VU |
| Cheetah | Acinonyx jubatus | VU |
| Temminck's Pangolin | Smutsia temminckii | VU |
| Tawny Eagle | Aquila rapax | VU |
Table 1. CR — Critically Endangered · EN — Endangered · VU — Vulnerable. Categories as recorded in the project's baseline assessment. Elephants and vultures most directly informed the case for the corridor: both range widely, and both suffer first when a landscape is cut in two.
Nature Tanzania has worked at Makao since July 2022 on An integrated approach to protecting wildlife from poisoning in the Mara–Serengeti ecosystem, funded by the Darwin Initiative through BirdLife International and delivered with Nature Kenya. Four of the six vulture species here are Critically Endangered. Expanding the protected area they forage over is a direct contribution to that work.
Nature Tanzania bought the plot — and then gave it away. Under Tanzania's Wildlife Policy (2007), a WMA must be assembled from land contributed by its member villages, not owned by an NGO or an individual. The title deed therefore passed to Mwangudo Village Government, which contributes it to Makao WMA. The village gains permanently; we hold nothing.
The project encountered no major challenges — an unusual thing to be able to write. We attribute it to three deliberate choices: every stakeholder was engaged before the proposal was even submitted; the district council supervised the process end to end; and the families were treated as parties to an agreement rather than as an obstacle to be managed.
Before a shilling changed hands, the project had to establish that the land was what everyone believed it to be, that the sellers genuinely wished to sell, and that the place they were moving to was fit to live in.
The technical work meant a land survey and formal valuation, verification of the title deed against district-level maps, and the recording of exact coordinates. The ethical work meant a signed consent form from every landowning family, and a separate survey of the relocation site — checking that it could support livestock and that it sat outside the paths animals use between Makao and Maswa.
Field visits ran through January, February and March 2026, in the wet season. The team walked the boundary, recorded vegetation and evidence of wildlife use, and confirmed the seasonal river crossing the site. Reaching the plot at all meant digging the vehicle out more than once — which is part of why this stretch of boundary went unwatched for so long.
Nature Tanzania, the village government and Makao WMA then accompanied the relocation itself, rather than treating the transfer of a title deed as the end of the matter.
The plot is predominantly natural vegetation — shrubland and acacia, with a seasonal river running through it, alongside cultivated fields and livestock bomas. Damage was limited enough that no replanting is needed: the land will recover its own vegetation cover.
Land survey and formal valuation · verification of the title deed against district-level maps · recorded GPS coordinates and boundary walk · vegetation and wildlife-use assessment · signed consent form from every landowning family · independent survey of the relocation site · environmental and ethical review. Each step was minuted, and the Land Purchase Committee reviewed the findings before any offer was made.
The MoU commits the plot to conservation use as part of Makao WMA and binds the parties to its long-term management. Nature Tanzania handed the title deed to Mwangudo Village Government; the village contributes the land to the WMA; and the WMA takes on its protection under the General Management Plan.
It was signed in the presence of all nine Village Executive Officers of the villages forming Makao WMA — not a formality, but the mechanism by which the other eight villages accept that Mwangudo's contribution has increased, and with it Mwangudo's share of WMA revenue.
That point matters more than it may appear. At Makao, revenue from tourism and other wildlife-based enterprise is shared among member villages in proportion to the land each has contributed. By adding 119 hectares, Mwangudo has permanently increased its own annual return. Conservation and self-interest now point the same way.
Bringing the district's own lawyer and land officer inside the process meant the legal work was done to the standard the district itself would later be asked to uphold. Bringing in the game officer meant the conservation rationale was tested by people who patrol the landscape. Bringing in the families' representative meant the price was negotiated in front of the people it affected.
The corridor was lost, in large part, because nobody could see where it was. Without physical demarcation the line between village land and wildlife area blurred, and families settled and farmed in good faith on ground they held title to. Makao WMA shrank by more than 170 km² over eighteen years without anyone setting out to take it. It shrank because the boundary was invisible — which is why demarcation, not compensation, is the part of this project that lasts.
So the final act of the acquisition was a physical one. Numbered concrete beacons were set into the ground along the new boundary by Makao WMA management, the WMA chairperson and village game scouts. Each marker is stamped Mpaka wa Hifadhi — Makao WMA, "conservation boundary", and carries its own number. The work was done in May 2026, in and around the standing maize of the plot that had just changed hands. Beacons 117 and 119 mark the stretch that reconnects the WMA to the Maswa Game Reserve.
From the day they were set, the line they describe is the outer edge of a protected area — and the limit of what may lawfully be cultivated or settled.
No vehicle could reach the points where the last beacons were needed. They were slung on cut poles and carried the final stretch by hand, across the seasonal river, by the same village game scouts who will now patrol the line they were setting.
Demarcation is the point at which the work becomes routine. The corridor now falls inside the Makao WMA patrol area, so Village Game Scouts pass through it as a matter of course rather than responding to it as an incident.
Scouts are employed by the WMA and drawn from its member villages — so protecting the addition is a local job, done by local people, paid for out of the revenue the addition itself helps generate. To make that possible, a new village game scout has been recruited from Mwangudo.
Nature Tanzania will keep the parcel within the survey scope of its existing vulture conservation programme at Makao, monitoring land-cover change, wildlife use and emerging threats well beyond the close of this grant.
Beacons are cheap, heavy and almost impossible to argue with. Combined with a title deed held by the village, an MoU witnessed by nine Village Executive Officers, and a scout paid to walk the line, they convert a purchase into a boundary that can be defended without a lawyer.
Purchase → title to the village → MoU witnessed by all nine member villages → annexation to the WMA → numbered concrete beacons on the ground → a paid scout walking the line. Remove any one step and the other five weaken. Together they are why we expect this 119 hectares to still be there in twenty years.
“We thank this project for relocating us to a safer area, away from dangerous animals such as lions and hyenas that used to kill our livestock, as well as elephants that raided our crops and broke into food stores. Now, we can continue our livestock-keeping livelihood without fear. The conservation education and entrepreneurship training we received will always guide us in balancing our livelihoods with wildlife conservation.”
Mr Subi · landowner and project beneficiary, Mwangudo village
Fair compensation, negotiated in front of the District Land Officer, and support from Nature Tanzania, the village government and Makao WMA through the relocation itself — until each household was settled. They have moved out of the path of elephants and predators, and received conservation education and entrepreneurship training alongside the payment.
A permanent increase in the land it contributes to Makao WMA, and therefore a permanent increase in its annual share of WMA revenue. One new village game scout post. Improved and extended roads to reach the new area for tourism. Conservation and entrepreneurship training for the wider community.
A larger WMA means more area available for tourism concessions, and therefore a larger revenue pool to divide. WMA revenue funds village-level infrastructure — classrooms, dispensaries, roads and village offices.
No family was required to sell. Every one signed a consent form, and the ethical due diligence exercise existed specifically to test the perception that land might be purchased without the full agreement of its owners.
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| Mechanism | How it works | What the corridor changes |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue sharing | A portion of annual revenue from tourism, hunting and other wildlife enterprise is distributed to member villages under the WMA regulations, allocated by the size of land each has contributed. | Mwangudo's contributed area rises by 119 ha, so its annual share rises permanently. |
| Employment | Village Game Scouts, tour guides and camp staff are recruited from the member villages. | One new VGS post created in Mwangudo to patrol the addition. |
| Infrastructure | WMA revenue is invested in schools, health facilities, water supply, roads and village offices. | Roads improved and extended to reach the new area for tourism. |
| Capacity building | Training in wildlife conservation, resource management, guiding, hospitality and entrepreneurship. | Conservation and enterprise training delivered to Mwangudo, including the relocating families. |
| Conservation incentives | Additional support for villages demonstrating strong conservation practice. | Makao WMA consistently rewards conservation effort originating in a member village. |
Table 2. Benefit-sharing mechanisms operating at Makao WMA, and the effect of the corridor acquisition on each.
The families who gave up the corridor were the ones living most dangerously on it. The village that lost 119 hectares of settlement gained a larger permanent share of conservation revenue, a job and better roads. Nobody was asked to be a loser for wildlife.
Every previous year of Makao WMA's existence has been a year of contraction. This project is the first time the area has grown. That matters symbolically for the nine member villages, who have watched land they contributed slip away — and it matters practically, because it establishes that recovery is possible and shows exactly how.
The plot sits at the pinch point between Makao WMA and the Maswa Game Reserve. Securing it restores movement and gene flow across the wider Mara–Serengeti ecosystem for the species that need the largest ranges — elephants, vultures, wild dogs and the migrating ungulates that come south in the dry season.
Because damage was limited, no reforestation is planned. The land will regain its own vegetation cover — shrubland, acacia and the riverine strip along the seasonal watercourse — at no cost and with a more appropriate species mix than any planting scheme would achieve.
Makao WMA became Tanzania's 81st IBA in 2025. Annexing the corridor expands the area under that recognition, and strengthens the case for the landscape in future national and international site-based conservation planning.
Wildlife Management Areas earn from photographic and other tourism concessions. Concession value follows two things — the area available and the wildlife that can be reliably seen on it. The corridor increases the first and, by restoring movement from Maswa GR, improves the second. Under the WMA revenue-sharing rules, that income is distributed to the nine member villages by contributed land area.
Makao WMA is supported by several organisations whose work this project complements rather than duplicates: the Frankfurt Zoological Society, which established the WMA and still supplies patrol fuel and scout rations; WWF, which has built management headquarters, ranger posts, water tanks and predator-proof bomas; and UNDP, which is financing beacons to demarcate the wider WMA boundary. Coordination with all three ran through the Land Purchase Committee.
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| Instrument | What it provides for | How the project applies it |
|---|---|---|
| Wildlife Policy of Tanzania (2007) | Wildlife Management Areas are constituted from land contributed by member villages, and managed by community institutions. | The title deed was transferred to Mwangudo Village Government, which contributes the land to Makao WMA. Nature Tanzania retains no ownership interest. |
| National Land Policy (1995) | Permits land acquisition by NGOs; requires secure tenure; requires full, fair and prompt compensation; directs that sensitive areas and wildlife habitat be protected rather than treated as wasteland. | A lawful purchase from willing titleholders at a negotiated price, supervised by the District Land Officer, converting settled ground back to protected habitat. |
| WMA Regulations — benefit sharing | Revenue from wildlife-based enterprise is distributed to member villages in proportion to contributed land. | Mwangudo's contributed area increases, so its annual revenue share increases permanently — the mechanism that makes protection self-interested. |
| Makao WMA General Management Plan | Governs zoning, permitted uses and patrol responsibilities across the WMA. | The annexed plot falls under the GMP and the Village Game Scout patrol regime from the date of the MoU. |
| Meatu District Council development planning | District oversight of land transactions, wildlife, forestry and community development. | The district's lawyer, land officer, game officer and community development officer sat on the Land Purchase Committee throughout. |
Table 3. National instruments governing the acquisition, and how each was applied in practice.
Makao WMA was recognised in 2025 as Tanzania's 81st Important Bird and Biodiversity Area, identified through survey work by Nature Tanzania with BirdLife International. Annexing the corridor enlarges the area under IBA recognition and strengthens the site's standing in future planning.
The purchase expands a legally recognised community protected area and restores connectivity between it and a state Game Reserve. This is the kind of intervention that global biodiversity commitments on protected and conserved area coverage, ecological connectivity and the restoration of degraded land are intended to produce, delivered through a community governance model rather than state expansion.
Sixteen IUCN Red-Listed species occur in the landscape, four of them Critically Endangered vultures. The corridor directly supports Nature Tanzania's ongoing Darwin Initiative project on wildlife poisoning in the Mara–Serengeti ecosystem, delivered with BirdLife International and Nature Kenya.
Makao is the southern terminus of the Serengeti–Mara migration and a dry-season refuge for ungulates when resources fail further north. Maintaining its link to Maswa Game Reserve serves the ecological integrity of one of the most significant transboundary ecosystems on the continent.
District-supervised committee → ethical and technical due diligence → negotiated purchase → title to the village → MoU witnessed by all member villages → annexation to the WMA → numbered concrete beacons → a paid scout on the line. None of it is novel, and all of it is repeatable. It applies to lawfully titled land whose boundary was never marked — not to unlawful occupation, which remains a matter for enforcement.
One hundred and nineteen hectares is not a large piece of land. Set against the 170 km² Makao WMA has lost since 2007, it is a beginning rather than a solution. But it is the right beginning. It reconnects a community wildlife area to a state game reserve. It moves nineteen families out of the path of elephants and lions and onto safer ground with capital and training. It increases a village's permanent share of conservation revenue and creates a job protecting the very land that village gave up. And it demonstrates a method that can be used again on the next parcel, and the one after that.
This acquisition was made possible by a grant from the IUCN National Committee of the Netherlands under its Land Acquisition Fund. It was delivered by Nature Tanzania in partnership with the institutions below — and, above all, with the 19 families of Mwangudo village who agreed to move so that a corridor could reopen.
Our thanks also to Mwangudo Village Government and the Village Executive Officers of all nine member villages of Makao WMA, and to the Meatu District land, legal, game and community development officers who served on the Land Purchase Committee.