Performance of Buffer Zones in Tanzania: A Case of Maswa Game Reserve, 1950s-2010s

National parks as core protected areas are universally regarded as the most important wildlife conservancies as they are protecting pristine nature or untouched wilderness. For this reason, global conservationists, with the assistance of colonial governments, introduced buffer zones in a bid to protect important protected areas from poaching and habitat destruction. Despite the promulgation of these buffer zones from the 1950s, scholars have not exhaustively evaluated their effectiveness in the conservation of wildlife resources within core protected areas and wildlife ecosystems at large. Using the case of Maswa Game Reserve in the Serengeti Mara Ecosystem, this article argues that internal challenges, especially poor management of buffer zones, contributed to significant conservation disasters in the core protected areas like Serengeti National Park, especially in the period between the 1950s and 1970s. However, with the improved management of buffer zones from the 1980s to the 2010s, conservation improved in buffer zones themselves, core protected areas and wildlife ecosystems at large.