To travel through Tanzania’s Burunge Wildlife Management Area, visitors must cross a highway that slices between Lake Manyara and Tarangire National Park. It’s a busy artery that runs through the continent, indirectly connecting Cape Town with Cairo.
Along the roadside, cows and goats roam, people peddle baskets, and motorbikes whiz by. With so much human activity, it’s hard to imagine that this narrow strip of land was once heavily trafficked by elephants and wildebeests rather than by trucks and cars. But traverse the highway, and the wildlife begins to appear: a lion dangling from a tree, a giraffe tearing leaves from a bush, and a herd of elephants silently passing by.
Ten years ago, coming across wild animals here would have been unthinkable. Fabia Bausch, a Swiss-born banker, conservationist, and co-founder of Chem Chem, who arrived here in 2007, remembers an area dominated by domestic animals—60,000 cows—and people.
“It was completely devastated,” says Bausch, sitting in the back seat of a Land Cruiser as thunder cracked above us. “There was nothing, not one wild animal.”
When Bausch and her business partner, Nicolas Negre, a French-born hunting guide, moved to Tanzania, a friend told them about an intriguing land model that had been formally implemented in 2005: villages on the edge of wilderness areas were allowed to manage wildlife on their land, and they were also able to lease it.
The idea for a lodge attached to a conservation area was born. Bausch and Negre inquired about a piece of land that, unbeknownst to them, was once part of the great Kwakuchinja corridor, which served as a channel for animals to migrate between Lake Manyara National Park and Lake Tarangire. Sometimes, they would move all the way up to the Serengeti through the Ngorongoro Crater.
With so much human activity, it’s hard to imagine that this narrow strip of land was once heavily trafficked by elephants and wildebeests rather than by trucks and cars.
“Nicolas spoke to one of the villagers, who told him that there were elephants here a long time ago,” says Bausch. The corridor’s name, Kwakuchinja, means “the place of slaughter” in Swahili. It’s an unsubtle reminder of how so many animals that moved through the area were slaughtered. As Tanzania’s human population swelled, the corridor condensed from 3,100 square miles to 90 square miles, squeezing out all the animals with it. In 2009, the Kwacuchinja corridor was declared extinct.
Neither Bausch nor Negre had any experience working in hotels, but opening one on the land was the only business model that made sense. “I was in banking—I just knew how to be an annoying client,” says Bausch. Their first project was building Chem Chem Lodge, a collection of eight stone-and-thatch bungalows with splashes of hot pink anchored by an airy communal living room with soaring ceilings and comfortable sofas that look onto a plain.
Despite the challenges of navigating local and national politics and of running a lodge in a remote part of the world, they soldiered on, initially sleeping in a tent without running water. Bausch’s no-nonsense Swiss attitude worked well with Negre’s laissez-faire “No means yes” approach, which is often needed for negotiations here.
The result is a high-end safari experience with three camps, where guests sleep in tented suites that tumble onto the wilderness. After opening Chem Chem Lodge, Bausch and Negre acquired another piece of land, bringing the concession up to 50,000 acres. They opened Little Chem Chem, a collection of six tented suites that look over a grassy plain punctuated with antelope on the edge of Lake Burunge. Later, they unveiled Forest Chem Chem, an intimate camp of four tented suites, set in a patch of trees, that can be rented by one party at a time.
Rather than scheduling crack-of-dawn excursions, all the properties offer a slower safari experience; guests can eat when they please and have access to their own vehicles, so they can embark on a game drive at any time.
In 2020, Bausch and Negre expanded their footprint by establishing a marketing relationship with Legendary Expeditions, a safari group that has five properties scattered around Tanzania. Together, they form a safari circuit that allows guests to experience different pockets of the country, from Serengeti National Park, at Legendary’s Mila Camp, to another exclusive-use concession (at Legendary’s Mwiba Lodge), which is one and a half times the size of the Maasai Mara, one of Africa’s best-known savannahs.
More than a decade later, Bausch and Negre’s efforts are paying off. Finally, animals are once again migrating through this ancient highway. “First came warthogs and giraffes,” says Bausch. Then, for the first time in 40 years, the elephants arrived; their migratory routes are etched in their DNA, and they historically bring other animals with them. In 2018, they crossed the road; in 2022, they were spotted on the shore of Lake Manyara; and in 2023, 30 of them finally crossed over to the national park.
In December 2023, the Tanzanian government recognized the Kwacuchinja corridor as one of the most important in the country, mobilizing the government to prioritize another 65 wildlife corridors using Chem Chem’s work as an example. “We’ve become equity partners,” says Clever Zulu, executive manager of the Chem Chem Association, a registered nonprofit organization that oversees the community-led conservation initiatives within the Tarangire and Manyara eco-systems. “Our communities directly enjoy the benefits of tourism within the land.”
Running conservation efforts alongside hospitality businesses remains a complicated proposition. Bausch and Negre are constantly contending with logistics, especially as they develop local education projects promoting economic empowerment in partnership with Hand in Hand International.
After two years of negotiations, Bausch and Negre have secured another 10-year lease to maintain the concession. On their list of many upcoming challenges is ensuring fewer animals become roadkill when crossing the Kwacuchinja corridor, which, as Negre recently discovered from a three-year study, is around two per day. But for now, this experiment seems to be working, and it’s setting a hopeful tone for a new era of safari tourism.
Rates at Chem Chem Lodge begin at $1,180 per night, excluding a mandatory conservation fee of $195 per adult and $170 per child per night
Mary Holland is a New York–based writer who contributes to the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Monocle