For the last decade, the Honeyguide Foundation has played a lead role in developing successful models of community-based conservation in Tanzania. Today, Honeyguide operates a wide range of initiatives across 6 project sites covering nearly two million acres of key wildlife habitat in northern Tanzania, with 57,000 people impacted in its project areas, contributing to the protection of more than 5000 elephants across the Tarangire and Amboseli Ecosystems.
Honeyguide is now working to secure protection for elephants, their habitat and migratory routes though sustainable community conservation in Makame Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in the Tarangire ecosystem. In addition to being a prime grazing area for both livestock and wildlife, Makame is a key habitat for elephants, the endangered wild dog, and has a high abundance of mammals. However, with minimal anti-poaching presence and mechanisms currently in place, the elephant population of Makame is threatened by poaching and by loss of habitat and migratory routes.
Makame has secured a potential new revenue stream in the form of selling VCS- & CCBA-certified carbon offsets through Carbon Tanzania, effective from 2020. With Tusk’s support, Honeyguide will help Makame conform to the contractual requirements of the Carbon Tanzania agreement. This in the long run is expected to help Makame realise its potential of becoming one of Tanzania’s few financially viable community conservation areas and a key landscape for co-existence between pastoralists and wildlife.