Money speaks louder than cows

In the middle of the night at Mandara Hut, 2715 metres up Mount Kilimanjaro, my mate and fellow mountain climber, Jason, woke to answer a call of nature, so left the hut and went and stood where the grass met the tree line to answer the call.

On a cold, foggy night, he was scanning the trees to make sure there were no lurking predators, but it was a rustling behind him that made his stream wiggle. He turned around to see a wide girthed, 4 legged furry animal with a long tail, and he started thanking God for the priveleged life he'd lived, As he closed his eyes and waited to feel a lions teeth pierce his skin, the furry animal didn't roar, it mooed - he had come face to face with a cow. 

Now the Tanzanian government are planning to deprive tourists of similar encounters with Africa's majestic animals with it's announcement to set aside 1500km² of land adjacent to the Serengeti National Park as a "wildlife corridor". Once the land has been taken from the Massai who currently live there, this corridor will be granted to a Dubai-based UAE luxury hunting and safari company for wildlife hunting. Creating this corridor will block the Maasai from accessing pastures within the designated corridor, jeopardizing the cattle-herding that serves as their livelihood.

According to a public letter from the Maasai elders, the government last week announced its plans to

"...kick thousands of our families off our lands so that wealthy tourists can use them to shoot lions and leopards"

This isn't the first time the Tanzanian government have tried to clear the Maasai from their land to open it up for foreign hunters. but those plans were halted through international protests in the latter half of last year. An online petition conducted by Avaaz currently has nearly 2 million signatures, and if this petition puts a halt to the governments land grab, people like Jason will be able to enjoy getting up close and personal to the fearsome animals of Africa.