Tanzania’s Maasai appeal to west to stop eviction for conservation plans

Maasai herdsmen in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. About 82,000 Maasai could be removed from the Unesco world heritage site over the next five years. Photograph: Guiziou Franck/Hemis/Alamy

Thousands of Maasai pastoralists in northern Tanzania have written to the British and US governments and the EU appealing for help to stop plans to evict them from their ancestral land.

More than 150,000 Maasai people face eviction by the Tanzanian government due to moves by the UN cultural agency Unesco and a safari company to use the land for conservation and commercial hunting.