History and Governance in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Tanzania: 1959-1966

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates the early history of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), Tanzania, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, a period which has been overlooked in almost all the literature on the NCA. The article develops a governance perspective to argue that the NCA was heavily influenced by international thinking about wildlife conservation and Maasai pastoralism, and thus what was intended to be a multiple land use area was instead managed primarily as a national park. Several key episodes in this early history are dealt with in detail – the creation of the NCA; its early management difficulties; the role of Henry Fosbrooke, the NCA’s first Conservator; the impact of the international 1961 Arusha Conference on wildlife conservation; and the Canadian-funded management planning process of the mid-1960s. This leads to an exploration of some of the links between this period and contemporary practices in the NCA, and how practices of governance established over forty years ago still play a significant role in the present day. The case of the NCA illustrates the importance of appreciating the complexity of protected area governance and histories.