TANZANIA: Hotels To Undergo Classification & Grading

GOVERNMENT plans to review classifying hotels in the country to ensure that they offer quality services, the National Assembly was informed.

Deputy Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Mr Ramo Makani, admitted that most hotels in the country offer services that are contrary to their classes or grades.

“Most hotels need to improve services and the government plans to educate owners on the importance of offering better services that match with their classes or grades in order to improve tourism,” he said.

He was responding to a supplementary question by Special Seats MP, Ms Risala Kabongo (Chadema) who wanted the government to explain what it was doing to ensure hotels provide better services in accordance with their classes.

The legislator also wanted to know what the government was doing to boost tourism in the country. She blamed the government for failure to improve roads, hotels and airstrips in the main reserves of Ruaha, Kitulo, Udzungwa, Mikumi and Katavi, among others, which are key tourist attraction areas.

“These are key historic tourist attractions in the country but currently few tourists visit them,” she said. Mr Makani explained that through the Tanzania Resilient Natural Resources Management for Growth Project, the government plans to improve infrastructure in the reserve areas.

The six-year project is scheduled to begin in January next year under joint venture between the government and the World Bank. The US$ 100 million project will also help strengthen tourism activities as well as help neighbouring communities benefit from the natural resources.

“Under the project, we plan to establish tourist circuit in the southern part of the country so that tourists can visit more than one reserve area,” said the minister.

TANZANIA: Ruaha Elephants Accounted For

A TOTAL of 7,564 elephants that were presumed lost in the Ruaha-Rungwa Ecosystem during the countrywide wildlife census of last yea r, have been accounted for.

Tabling the new results of the 2015 Wildlife Census at the ongoing 10th Scientific Conference organized by the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI), the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, Dr Adelhem Meru, showed that fresh counts have upped the total number of elephants in Ruaha-Rungwa eco-system to 15,836.

“In the previous (2014) wildlife census, the population of the elephants in the area stood at 8,000, a figure which raised alarm considering that the first count made in 2013, indicated that Ruaha-Rungwa had more than 20,000 elephants,” Dr Meru told the 250 scientists from all over the world attending the TAWIRI Scientific Conference here.

The government, Wildlife Experts and Conservationists were baffled by the sudden disappearance of more than 12,000 elephants from the Southern Tanzania precinct.

With such shocking discovery of the disappearance of elephants at the rate of 1,000 a month, or 34 elephants a day, the government, through the Arusha-based Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) decided to run a fresh census focused in Ruaha-Rungwa to satisfy themselves over the matter.

That was especially because wildlife experts who conducted the early counting did not find carcass es to indicate whether the animals could have succumbed to natural deaths or were killed.

“Were the jumbos killed, stolen or simply wandered out of the area? Usually when such large number of giant mammals go missing, comparable numbers of carcasses are observed but in this case there were none,” wondered research experts.

Dr Meru was of view that the 2015 aerial census provided an estimate of 15,836 which means out of the 12,000 elephants initially reported lost, 7,564 of them are now back, leaving the other 4,500 jumbos still at large.

Still, the same 2014 Census, whose results were tabled in Arusha last June, indicated that there was a total of 43,521 jumbos in Tanzania and the precinct seems to have lost nearly 70,000 mammals in the last five years.

The 2009 estimates documented that Tanzania had around 110,000 jumbos, placing the country in the second position after Botswana, which by then had close to 150,000 elephants.

However, the number of trumpeting Jumbos in Tanzania, according to the census report, has drastically dropped from over 100,000 estimated five years ago, down to the current 45,000 average, indicating a loss of more than 60 per cent in the country’s elephant’s population.

Costing US $ 900,000 to undertake, the previous ‘Great Elephant Census’ covered all of Tanzania’s key elephant eco-systems as part of the initiative funded by Paul G. Allen to assess the current state of elephant populations across the African Continent.

The Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) conducted the exercise in conjunction with the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS). The Malagarasi-Muyovozi eco-system has the highest Jumbo disappearance at 81 per cent, followed by Ruaha-Rungwa at 76 per cent and Selous Mikumi with a 66 per cent loss.

In the 70s the Selous eco-system was home to 100,000 elephants but now the number is down to 15,217 jumbos.

The Serengeti-Mara ecosystem recorded significant increase in Jumbos’ population with 6,087 elephants, Tarangire-Manyara has 4,400 Jumbos, Arusha National Park has 200 elephants, Mount-Kilimanjaro has 100, Ruaha-Rungwa has 8,000, Malagarasi-Muyovosi with 2,950 jumbos, Rubondo Island 102 elephants and Katavi-Rukwa 6,396 jumbos.

TANZANIA: Elephant Slaughter Continues In Tanzania

There are few more dangerous places on earth for elephant than Ruaha in central Tanzania.

Over the past year, poachers have had a devastating impact.

They’ve killed thousands of elephants. It is slaughter at an unprecedented rate.

Our guide, Zacharia, has lived here all his life. He’s seen odd and depressing changes to the elephant population.

There are no longer any animals with really big tusks. They’ve been taken by poachers.

You might call it unnatural selection.

"We’re also seeing more elephants with one tusk," he says.

"I believe it’s a genetic problem, but because the poachers leave them alone, they’re becoming more common."

It’s just over a year since more than 40 nations gathered in London to promise action to end the trade in ivory and other illegal animal products; a trade reckoned to be worth some £12billion - on a par with drug smuggling, arms dealing and people trafficking.

This week, they’re meeting again in Botswana to assess progress.

At best, it is patchy.

"It’s no use having laws against ivory smuggling if the legislation is not enforced properly," says Mary Rice of the Environmental Investigations Agency.

In Tanzania, a special task force including the military, is being deployed in what many are calling Africa’s new war.

On their biggest raid, our cameras followed them to the remote west of the country; to Katumba.

In the dead of night they surround and surprise a sleeping gang of poachers.

There are ninety arrests and weapons seized. But whatever ivory they had is long gone.

The gang are blamed for killing hundreds of elephants in the Katavi National Park and using the proceeds to arm rebel groups in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

It’s just one example of poaching’s malign links to wider African problems.

The ivory trade is big business, the gangs highly organised, fuelling corruption that leads to the top.

"They arrest the small time players who might make a few hundred pounds from each elephant," says Mary Rice.

"But the people making millions seem to act with impunity."