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Op-Ed| The National Park Service Could Learn A Few Things From Its African Colleagues

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Alternate TextSafaris in national parks in Africa can lead to close encounters with wildlife, such as this cheeta/Sean Smith

Editor's note: Sean Smith is a former Yellowstone National Park ranger, and an award-winning conservationist, TEDx speaker, and author. He recently had the opportunity to visit some national parks in Tanzania, and returned home with thoughts of what the National Park Service might learn from its African colleagues.

I recently returned to the Northwest after a two-week Tanzanian safari. It was an amazing experience. The trip took us through Arusha, one of Tanzania’s larger cities, out to Tarangire and Serengeti national parks, and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The parks and conservation areas were filled with wildlife from the ubiquitous wildebeest to the rare black rhino.

African National Parks share many similarities with their American counterparts.

The parks are big. Serengeti, for example, is more than 3.7 million acres or roughly 1.5 times the size of Yellowstone. Put another way, Serengeti is larger than the state of Connecticut.

The parks are well-visited. Despite having to travel over many poorly maintained dirt roads, parks like the Serengeti and Ngorongoro see roughly 1 million tourists annually.

The parks protect natural and cultural resources. The Tanzanian Park Service, like its U.S. counterpart, protects both natural and cultural resources. Olduvai Gorge in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area protects one of the world’s most important historic sites and some of the oldest fossilized human remains. They like to say at Olduvai, if one traces his/her lineage back far enough, everyone is from Tanzania.

Yet, the Tanzania Park Service diverges from the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) on many issues.  The African approach on several issues is an approach the NPS should copy.

Conservation over Recreation

The Tanzania Park Service places conservation and the protection of natural resources and wildlife over private recreation. Nearly every visitor to Tanzania’s national parks has a guide. These guides receive extensive training on resource and wildlife protection. The guides are taught to get the visitors deep into the parks for close-up but safe interactions with the wildlife. Private recreation such as hiking, mountain biking, and swimming is practically non-existent.

Yet, despite this focus on guided rather than private access, park visitors report high satisfaction with their safari adventures.

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Elephants seemingly are habituated to humans and their vehicles/Sean Smith

Here in the United States, the NPS mistakenly promotes the idea that it has a dual mandate, one that requires the NPS to balance conservation with recreation. This is incorrect and the courts have consistently ruled that when there is a conflict between conservation and recreation, the law requires the Park Service to favor conservation. The Park Service’s continued pushing of the dual-mandate myth creates undue management headaches, as every recreation interest from snowmobiles to off-lease dog walkers demands access to the national parks. As a result, the national parks are compromised by questionable activities that in many instances do not require a national park setting to enjoy.

Africa takes conservation crimes seriously

Tanzanian park rangers and their African counterparts take environmental crimes seriously. During our safari, I asked our guide if the truck broke down, how would we contact the rangers for help? Our guide responded, “We wouldn’t. The rangers' job was to patrol the borders looking for poachers. We would have to get ourselves up and running again.”

This focus on poaching was recently rewarded when Tanzanian police arrested Feisal Muhammad Ali, the world’s most-wanted ivory trafficker. Meanwhile, rangers in South Africa shot and killed suspected rhino poachers. While I’m not advocating for the summary execution of park criminals, the U.S. government could do more to increase the understanding of the severity of environmental crimes. However, its handling of the Cliven Bundy standoff in Nevada and the courts' unwillingness to impose stiff penalties for poaching sends the message that resource crimes are no big deal.

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Hyena in the grass/Sean Smith

Focus on experiences

Another area of focus for the Tanzania park rangers is a on visitor experience rather than amenities. To say the roads of Serengeti and Ngorongoro are rough is an understatement. In some instances, park roads are little more than a mud streak. Meanwhile, the Tanzanian national parks spend little on so-called necessities such as Wi-Fi and cellphone coverage. Interpretive displays are often rudimentary and lack any high-tech whiz bang features found in the United States. However, they provide information in multiple languages, increasing public understanding of why the parks are important. 

Rather than providing distractions, the Tanzanian parks focus on preserving authentic experiences. An authentic experience is one that improves a visitor’s appreciation and understanding of park wildlife and natural features, while allowing low-impact intimate interaction with those resources. Unfortunately, many U.S. park activities significantly diminish authentic experiences.

America’s National Park Service will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2016. During the upcoming year, it’s expected the NPS will seek public comment on how best to ensure the park system and Service reach their bicentennial. The agency should look to Africa for guidance.

Sean Smith is a former Yellowstone Ranger, and an award winning conservationist, TEDx speaker, and author. He writes national park thrillers from his home in the shadow of Mount Rainier National Park. To learn more about his conservation work and novels, check out his blog: www.seandavidsmith.blogspot.com or follow him on twitter: @parkthrillers

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Comments

Great article.


Wouldn't it be wonderful if we would learn from them . . . .


Keep that conservation over private recreation stuff in Africa for the rich elites that can afford to go there.. The United  States National Parks are for the enjoyment of the American people, so let's make the Parks more recreation friendly not less. Who cares about a National Resource that cannot be used and enjoyed by the Common People? The super rich elite want to be the only ones to get to enjoy their conservation project Parks. Who goes to those African Parks? Rich elites snobs. If I can't recreate in the Park then knowing that it is being conserved  means nothing to me. The Park might as well be on the Moon. 


Agreed Whipperin.  We don't need the Serengeti zoo that only rich foreigners with their high priced guides can visit. 


Some of the comparisons are a bit of apples to oranges.  So, the Serengeti does not allow private hiking, mountain biking and I guess horse riding...  

Between the hippos, cheetahs, elephants, lions and other dangerous species, that makes sense!  Plus the fact that the park is actually bigger than the state of Connecticut.  Is the proposal to limit Yellowstone to a few well heeled tourists that will travel through the park on dirt roads in jeeps driven by guides?

I get the writer wants to emphasize conservation over recreation, whatever that really means, but the comparisons used to support that opinion don't really work here.

Or maybe, we can start by kicking out horses since they're non native to this country and they crap everywhere?

 


Horses are one of the most native American animals along with the whitetail deer and pronghorn. Horses were here for millions of years and absent only briefly after the last major glacier. Elk, bison, and wolves are non native invasive species that migrated here from Asia after the last major glacier. So lets kick out species according to native senority and the amount of crap the spread and kick out bison.  http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/education/wild-horses-as-a-returned-na...

 


But if the resources that make the park a park are not conserved, then where are we?


I've been to an African National Park.  I'm not a "rich elite snob."  Complete nonsense.


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