Introduction

Developing Sustainable Human-Natural Systems: The Greater Serengeti Ecosystem as a Case Study is an Exploratory Workshop funded by a grant from the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia, awarded to Principal Investigator Anthony Sinclair, Zoology.

The Serengeti National Park is a classic protected area and ecotourism destination, while the adjacent Ngorongoro Conservation Area permits Maasai pastoralism, and game reserves (Maswa, Grumeti and Ikorongo) and game controlled areas (Loliondo) permit controlled off-take of trophy species. Village lands outside of these areas are used intensively by people involved in pastoralism and agriculture. There are linkages between these areas in which both wildlife and economic activity of people migrate across boundaries. These different conservation areas directly interface with different land uses by humans from several ethnic groups.

This unique and timely workshop brings together a multi-disciplinary array of ecologists and social scientists, which include social anthropologists, economists, modelers, applied wildlife biologists and ecosystem ecologists. The objective of the workshop is to develop a future interdisciplinary research agenda of great importance by taking advantage of the half century of data. We specifically focus on the basic research that emerges from our long-term studies. In the workshop we will design the research to measure key empirical relationships between human livelihood strategies and their economic/cultural motivation and between human activity and wildlife population dynamics to provide new insights into sustainable crop, grassland, livestock, and animal production.

We will develop models to compare the effectiveness of flexible decision-making versus “fixed” decision rules for both humans and animals. We will also explore how these interactions play out across a heterogeneous landscape to search for spatial juxtapositions of humans and the natural system that may intensify or weaken resilience of the whole system.