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…
Blog Archives
Upstream Impacts on Lower Mara River
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…
Subsistence Economies on the Mara River
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…
The Kurya People
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…
Happy World Mara Day!
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…
Tropical Rivers: how are they different?
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…
The Great Land Migration and the Mara River
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 every year. This is known as the great migration and is one of the biggest in number of…
Erosion in the Mara River Basin
Erosion is a major challenge to the Mara River Basin, as identified by the Lake Victoria Basin Water Offices (LVBWO) in Mwanza. The SELVA team, working with the Tanzanian Ministry of Water in Dar es Salaam and the LVBWO, looked…
Agriculture in the Lower Mara Basin
The SELVA team observed and discussed agricultural practices with locals throughout the Lower Mara River Basin in Tanzania. We were visiting at the tale end of the dry season (March) and talked with farmers harvesting fruit and vegetables to consume…
Mara River Plants and Animals
Aside from people, many different types of lifeforms rely on the Mara River water resources and the type of ecosystems vary with the landscape throughout the basin. From the dry plains of the Serengeti National Park through the saturated Mara Wetlands…
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