This research goes beyond the traditionally studied intricacies and contentions within northern Tanzania’s community-based conservation by looking at how the state’s engagement, through wildlife tourism, with local communities in and around protected areas impacts the country’s development and conservation of its wildlife. It draws heavily on Tanzania’s Development Vision 2025 and how the wildlife tourism industry feeds into achieving its objectives. This research looks through the theoretical lens of political ecology, the theory of access, and the powers of exclusion. It applies a qualitative content analysis by coding different types of existing literature in NVivo, and includes semi-structured interviews with key respondents. The research concludes that the government’s recentralization of wildlife management is working opposite to its development ambitions as per Vision 2025, and it is doing very little to address the crisis within its ecosystems and to enhance wildlife conservation. Ultimately, it is through the government’s efforts to protect Tanzania’s ecological uniqueness that both conservation and development have faced increased challenges in its efforts to improve.