Tanzania continues with plans to build public road through Serengeti National Park

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The Tanzanian government is pursuing plans to build a roadway through Serengeti National Park, potentially disrupting migration patterns and allowing poachers easier access to prized animals, National Geographic reports.

Conservationists have voiced concerns that the commercial traffic bound to accompany the public road will pose a major obstacle for the annual wildebeest migration, during which more than 1 million wildebeest traverse the Serengeti en route to the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya.

In total, the roadway would affect approximately 2 million animals and block both northward and southward migration patterns for a large number of animals, including zebras.

Specifically, the project will place excessive stress on the animals, by limiting where they will be able to find grass and access water. Steven Kiruswa, the Maasai Steppe Heartland director at the African Wildlife Foundation, said the effects of the intrusion would likely be "tremendous."

Professor Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University, warned in a recent blog post for National Geographic that the consequences could be dire. "If a planned road cuts it in half, it may be a landscape our children will watch only as history," he writes.

However, Tanzanian officials are not worried. They claim that the road will boost the economy by connecting rural villages and communities with the rest of Tanzania.

"I want to assure [critics] that I am also a staunch supporter of the environment and will be the last person to allow something which is going to destroy the nature," President Jakaya Kikwete told the magazine, defending the road which was a campaign promise in the 2005 elections.

Even without a public roadway, animal populations in the Serengeti have been disturbed by tourists. In late 2007, as many as 10,000 wildebeest – and by some reports 20,000 – drowned during their annual migration, potentially due to tourists blocking the portion of the river the animals were accustomed to crossing.

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