Posted on November 24, 2016 by Jennifer Veilleux
A recent article in the news tells about the Itare Dam, a foreign direct investment dam planned in the Mau Forest that will impact the headwaters of the Mara River. The article claims that the government did not conduct a prior consultation with the residents of the area and that water is in danger of diversion from 12 rivers that originate in the …
Posted on October 28, 2016 by Jennifer Veilleux
In any shared basin there are upstream and downstream impacts that can affect users of the shared water resources. These impacts, sometimes called "drivers", range from policy and economic activity, to pollution and diversion actions. The Mau Forest Complex, the largest montane forest stand in East Africa, is part of the headwaters of the Mara Rive…
Posted on October 3, 2016 by Jennifer Veilleux
The SELVA team found on our fieldtrip in March 2016, that subsistence communities are the majority of stakeholders in the lower Mara River Basin in Tanzania. Subsistence is an economic term that refers to when a person or people work to maintain themselves or support the community at the minimum level for survival. As mentioned in previous posts, t…
Posted on September 27, 2016 by Jennifer Veilleux
The largest ethnic group living in the lower Mara River Basin, Tanzania, are the Kurya People; a Bantu speaking people with possible Nilotic origins. The Kurya are an ethnic minority of about approximately 700,000-1,000,000 people living in a collection of subtribal groups or clans across the border area of Kenya and Tanzania in the basin region. T…
Posted on September 15, 2016 by Ana Lemos
Written by: Ana Lemos Thursday, September 15 is World Mara Day — a day that celebrates the Mara River and the world famous Mara landscape. As a nod to the transboundary nature of the Mara River, the 10th Sectoral Council of the East African Community recognizes this important ecosystem. The Mara River is home to many types of wildlife. These anim…
Posted on September 13, 2016 by Jennifer Veilleux
The Mara River Basin stretches across territory in Kenya and Tanzania making it a transboundary basin. There are more than 300 transboundary basins throughout the world. Many of these are shared by just two countries like the Mara. However, even between just two countries management of transboundary resources can be complicated. Transboundary basi…
Posted on September 8, 2016 by Jennifer Veilleux
The Mara River is found in the tropics fairly near to the Equator. The tropics are a climate zone flanked between the Northern Tropic of Cancer to the Southern Tropic of Capricorn. These latitudinal lines, approximately 23 degrees north and south of the Equator, mark the place in both the northern and southern hemisphere where the sun appears direc…
Posted on September 1, 2016 by Jennifer Veilleux
The Lower Mara River Basin in Tanzania is home to the Kuria people, a group of people known for pastoralism, similar to the Masai people known throughout Kenya and Tanzania for their cattle culture. There are roughly 800,000 Kuria people living in the Mara Region of Tanzania and across the border into Kenya. Pastoralism is considered a type of agri…
Posted on August 25, 2016 by Jennifer Veilleux
Deforestation is a global problem that causes myriad problems for wildlife, water, people, and climate. In the Mara River Basin, deforestation has caused erosion — a process by which topsoil and other materials are washed into tributaries and the river during rains. This sedimentation of rivers causes problems for aquatic species, for people who de…
Posted on August 10, 2016 by Jennifer Veilleux
Every year over 2,000,000 animals travel almost 3,000 kilometers between the Masai Mara Natural Reserve in Kenya and the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. This is known as the great migration and is one of the biggest in number of animals. The Mara River is directly in the path of the migration and is one of the most dramatic crossings. The wil…