Wildlife conservation foundation lauds Dar’s anti-poaching drive

Arusha. The Wildlife Conservation Foundation of Tanzania (WCFT) has put into practice what is known as Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s Arusha manifesto on wildlife conservation.

In 1961 as Prime Minister of the then Tanganyika, Nyerere addressed a symposium on conservation of nature and natural resources in modern African states organised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Arusha.

Nyerere said: “The survival of our wildlife is a matter of grave concern to us all in Africa. These wild creatures amid the wild places they inhabit are not only important as a source of wonder and inspiration but are an integral part of our natural resources and of our future livelihoods and well being.”

He added: “In accepting the trusteeship of our wildlife we solemnly declare that we will do everything in our power to make sure our children’s grandchildren will be able to enjoy this rich and precious inheritance”.

In Arusha again, 53 years later, to be exact on December 17, 2014, the WCFT put this manifesto into practice when it donated five brand new fully equipped Toyota Landcruisers valued at Sh599,538,830 to the Wildlife Division in the ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism for anti-poaching activities.

But this was not the first of such donations made by the WCFT. Founded in 2001 by Mr Gerard Pasanisi, a leading wildlife conservationist, under the patronage of former US President George H. W. Bush, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and its treasurer Archduke Lorenz of Austria-Este, the WCFT’s major goal is to raise funds to support the government of Tanzania in its fight against poaching.

During its 13 years of existence, the WCFT has already organised gala dinners in Dar es Salaam in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008; in Paris in 2003, 2005 and 2010, 2011, 2014 and one in Dallas in the United States in 2006 to raise funds towards supporting the anti-poaching drive in Tanzania.

The five state-of-the-art anti-poaching vehicles are fixed with Global Positioning System (GPS), a space-based satellite navigation system that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight.

The WCFT Trustee, Mr Eric Pasanisi, presented the vehicles on behalf of WCFT President Valerie Giscard D’Estaing, former French President, to the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Mr Lazaro Nyalandu.

In June, this year, the WCFT donated three Landcruisers to the Wildlife Division.

Mr Pasanisi paid fulsome tribute to the Grant Hunter Legacy Endowment partnership with the US-based Safari Club International Foundation that donated two of the vehicles to WCFT “to preserve Tanzania’s wildlife and we hope to be able to do this regularly in the future”.

Mr Pasanisi also thanked Mr Nyalandu for efforts that he has done to protect wildlife in the country since he was appointed to the docket.

“I am very sure that our elephants and wildlife are more secure today, and I assure you we already see the difference in the bush,” said Mr Pasanisi.

He added that the donation to the anti-poaching unit in the Wildlife Division of these new five vehicles was a step towards a better protection against rampant poaching.

However, Mr Pasanisi said more support and involvement was needed in order to be able to cover the whole country, adding: “For our pride, our heart, our duty towards the coming generations.”

Mr Pasanisi, who is also chairman of Tanganyika Wildlife Safari (Tawisa), told The Citizen on Saturday that Tawisa announced a Sh600 million sponsorship to 100 game scouts in the Selous game Reserve in May, this year.

Tanzania, with an area covering 945,000 square kilometres, has devoted 30 per cent of its land to wildlife conservation with more than 15 national parks, 31 game reserves and 38 game controlled areas.

And President Jakaya Kikwete declared his full support to the anti-poaching cause by the WCFT during a gala dinner hosted by the foundation in Dar es Salaam in December 2006.

President Kikwete said: “I’m one of your own. I love nature. Because I believe all of us are made of nature and we are sustained by it. In this regard conservation of nature, including flora and fauna is for our own good.”

Speaking shortly after he had received the vehicles, Mr Nyalandu said two of the vehicles will be deployed to the Selous Game Reserve, Africa’s largest game reserve where poaching of elephants has been reduced in the recent past, and two of the vehicles will be allocated to the Mwanza-based anti-poaching unit and one to the Arusha anti-poaching unit.

Mr Nyalandu announced a catalogue of plans to enhance the anti-poaching drive, including the acquisition of a special air squadron of five helicopters to take to the skies in the New Year as the country continued its fight against poachers.

Despite the loss in November 2014 of a helicopter which crashed killing four pilots while on a training stint, Mr Nyalandu said the new squadron will be ready to take on the poachers within weeks.

He told stakeholders in the photographic and hunting tourism industry who witnessed the colourful event that poaching will be eliminated if all the stakeholders worked closely with the government.

Mr Nyalandu said among plans which were afoot included the formation of a special anti-poaching unit to be announced in January next year and handsome remunerations for game scouts.

He said the anti-poaching unit will draw members from his ministry and other security and defence organs.

“Poachers are not sleeping and we are also not sleeping too,” said the minister, assuring investors in the photographic and hunting tourism industry that the government will never close their businesses.

“If we close these businesses today there is no way we can fight poaching because photographic and hunting tourism play a major role in wildlife conservation,” said Mr Nyalandu.

Mr Benson Kibonde, the Selous Game Reserve project manager for 16 years, said the two vehicles allocated to the reserve will assist in transporting rangers into the reserve for regular and operational anti-poaching.

“On the other hand, they will be used to send supplies for the patrol teams as well as ferry poachers to the court. In fact there are a lot of activities in which the vehicles will assist. We are hoping to increase more vehicles through donor assistance and from our own sources,” he told The Citizen On Sunday.

Mr Kibonde, an experienced wildlife officer, said WCFT has been supporting the Wildlife Division for the past 10 years with an average of five vehicles per year of which between two and three are donated to the Selous Game Reserve. In total WCFT has donated 25 vehicles for anti-poaching, he added.

Poaching has subsided in the Selous Game Reserve during the past 10 months, he said, adding that the situation was improving at a fast rate due to an increased number of rangers, rehabilitated roads and increased number of vehicles.

On the other hand, said the project manager, the approach to anti-poaching has been reviewed and modernized.

However, Mr Kibonde said wildlife conservation in general was facing a consternating challenge.

“The ministry, the wildlife sector and the Selous Game Reserve management are doing all they can to stop the carnage of elephants,” he said.

He added that efforts were paying dividends in some areas and a national anti-poaching strategy has been unveiled and its implementation is underway.

In October, this year, Mr Nyalandu said for the first time in years, the Selous Game Reserve recorded zero elephant killing in the past three months from September backwards.

Mr Nyalandu, who spoke at the climax of the Swahili Tourism Expo in Dar es Salaam, commended game rangers and other stakeholders who have given their lives to protect the wild animals in the area.

In June, the World Heritage Committee meeting held in Doha, Qatar, inscribed the Selous Game Reserve on the List of World Heritages in Danger because widespread poaching was decimating wildlife populations in the reserve.

Tanzania’s Elephant Protection Society said that about 30 elephants were killed daily, and at this rate the population will be exterminated by 2020.

At the Selous Game Reserve, rampant poaching has caused a dramatic decline in wildlife populations, especially elephants and rhino, whose numbers have dropped by almost 90 per cent since 1982, when the game reserve was inscribed on the World Heritage List.

During a gala dinner organised in Paris, France, by the WCFT in December 2010, Prof Pierre Pfeffer, a renowned wildlife conservationist who has spent most of his life in Africa, including Tanzania, studying the African jumbos, warned: “If elephants in Tanzania are not protected from greedy poachers, the animals will be declared extinct within 10 years.”

The 87-year-old professor of Natural History Museum in Paris who spent over 50 years studying elephants in Africa, recalled: “During my spell in Africa from 1950 through 2000 scenes of dead elephants were everyday experience.”

“That situation has not changed today and it is becoming worse as reports of poaching in countries like Tanzania attract straddling global headlines,” said the former French delegate to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), an international treaty that governs the trade, import and export of endangered plants and animals, including elephants.

Prof Pfeffer, who is also former president of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in France, recalled 1989 when member states of CITES agreed at their meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, to place the African elephant on CITES’ Appendix One, banning all trade in elephant ivory and products around the world.

John J. Jackson, III, chairman of the US-based Conservation Force, a force for wildlife conservation, noted that the poaching had become serious enough requiring immediate action to be taken to get it under control.

Mr Jackson, III said Tanzania had the second largest elephant population in the world (second to Botswana) but its elephants have not been downlisted as those in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe - all with combined elephant population less than Tanzania-- adding that the poaching in Tanzania was largely a result of the failure to downlist the animals properly.

He said there was no question that the fund-raising efforts of the WCFT were important, adding that the safari hunting industry and operators in Tanzania have had always had a vital role in protecting habitat and controlling poaching.

During the wave of elephant poaching which hit much of Africa in the 1980s the Selous was estimated to have lost 70,000 elephants.

In 1988 Tanzania launched a major anti-poaching initiative called Operation Uhai. It combined efforts by wildlife rangers, police officers and the military, and managed to bring to a halt a wave of poaching in most parts of the country.

Tanzania also teamed with six other countries in successfully petitioning for the listing of the African elephant as an Appendix 1 species (those threatened by extinction) at CITES.

The listing effectively banned all international trade in elephants and their products.

The CITES campaign, marked by a successful international conservation awareness drive nearly eliminated demand for ivory worldwide, and most poaching subsequently stopped in response.

Western nations helped to maintain the campaign by pouring large sums of aid into anti-poaching efforts throughout Africa.

Collectively, it was probably the most effective act of international wildlife legislation in history, and public pressure was instrumental in its success.