Tanzania Wildlife Management Areas Evaluation

The increasing importance of the Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) in Tanzania, where 17 WMAs are now functioning and 22 others are in various stages of development, begs the question of what successes have been achieved and what challenges remain to be addressed if this Community-Based Conservation model is to be sustained and even scaled up. There has not been a country-wide evaluation of WMAs since the pilot-phase evaluation in 2007 at a time when most WMAs were too new to yield firm projections for the long term. The evaluation conducted at this time is not truly a final evaluation, because there is every donor intention of carrying this model forward and perhaps scaling it up. What is needed is a report on the experience to date, in which the successes and weaknesses of various WMAs can be frankly discussed and a potential way forward can be charted.