The investigation examines how Tanzania’s conservation system has turned protected areas into spaces where trophy hunting and luxury tourism coexist with the systematic displacement of Maasai pastoral communities.
By analysing government plans, land reclassification policies and corporate concessions linked to Gulf investors and European funding flows, the project exposes a model in which environmental protection and profit-driven exploitation overlap.
The reporting reveals how newly created reserves and tightened restrictions in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area are justified as “nature protection”, yet serve to remove communities from ancestral lands.
It also explores the legal disputes and human-rights implications emerging from these forced relocations. Combining on-the-ground documentation, satellite imagery and access to leaked and official records, the investigation sheds light on the opaque governance of conservation in Tanzania — a system where safeguarding wildlife often comes at the expense of the people who have lived with it for centuries.
The project was carried out as a collaboration between Davide Lemmi, Marco Simoncelli and Khalifa Said, with the support of Placemarks and the FADA Collective.