On the edge of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, students study how Tanzania manages its iconic wildlife alongside growing human populations.
A cheetah watches from a termite mound. A kilometer away, Maasai cattle raise a wall of dust. Between them (and between every predator and every herd in northern Tanzania) runs a patchwork of national parks, conservation areas, community rangelands, and farming villages, each drawing the line between wildlife and people in a different place. The SFS Center for Wildlife Management Studies sits in Rhotia, between the Tarangire-Manyara and Ngorongoro-Serengeti ecosystems. Ngorongoro lets Maasai graze cattle alongside wildebeest. The Serengeti allows no one to stay. Tarangire's elephants cross community land every dry season, and whether the corridor survives depends on what the village on the other side decides.
Students build lion home ranges in QGIS from years of Tarangire Lion Research Project records, then visit pastoralist households near the park to learn what happens when those ranges overlap with cattle. At Lake Manyara, they record olive baboon ethograms along the Rift Valley escarpment. Between expeditions, days with Hadzabe hunter-gatherers in the Lake Eyasi basin and Iraqw farming communities reveal how profoundly different cultures share the same land the wildlife depends on.
Records gathered over 745 days along 113 km of road, worked into a map of where wildlife dies. The deaths cluster in hotspots, which is where the study says fences and crossings belong.
Surveyed the invasive plants spreading through the Burunge Wildlife Management Area and found the pattern plainly: wherever invasive cover rose, the diversity of indigenous grasses fell.
A camera trap grid across the Ndutu area recorded when mesopredators, the smaller carnivores, are active, and how their hours shift around the lions and the people sharing the same ground.
Carbon trading arrived in these villages only in 2021 and 2023. Students recorded what Lake Eyasi Basin residents already notice, setting a baseline the schemes can be judged against later.
The center sits on a hillside overlooking the Great Rift Valley escarpment. Students live in shared cabins, study in open-air classrooms, and travel by Land Cruiser to field sites across northern Tanzania, from the Serengeti short-grass plains to the forested slopes of the Ngorongoro Crater rim.
SFS Tanzania is woven into the fabric of Rhotia village and the surrounding Maasai and Iraqw communities. Students attend village meetings, participate in cultural exchanges, and work alongside local conservation officers on wildlife monitoring. At the end of each semester, students present their findings to community leaders and Tanzanian wildlife authorities.
Enrolling now for Spring 2027, Summer 2027, and Fall 2027.
