Ngorongoro Crater

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) is a protected area and World Heritage Site located 180 km (110 mi) west of Arusha in the Crater Highlands area of Tanzania. The area is named after Ngorongoro Crater, a large volcanic caldera within the area. The conservation area is administered by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority, an arm of the Tanzanian government, and its boundaries follow the boundary of the Ngorongoro Division of the Arusha Region.

The 2009 Ngorogoro Wildlife Conservation Act placed new restrictions on human settlement and subsistence farming in the Crater, displacing Masaipastoralists, most of whom had been relocated to Ngorongoro from their ancestral lands to the north when the British colonial government established Serengeti National Park in 1959.

The construction of luxury tourist hotels in the Conservation Area allows people to access “the unparalleled beauty of one of the world’s most unchanged wildlife sanctuaries”, according to a government brochure, even as thousands of Maasai have suffered forcible eviction and have been denied access to water sources for their livestock