Government to form task force to curb invasive species

Arusha. The government will form a task force to lay down strategies on how to address the problem of invasive plant and animal species.

The team will comprise experts from different sectors; agriculture and livestock to wildlife and forestry, it was announced here last week.

There will also be representatives from the academic and research insitutions as well as from the civil society.

The minister for State in the Vice President’s Office (Union and Environment), Mr January Makamba, has ordered that the team be assembled this week for the task, which has to be completed in a month’s time.

“We will render every necessary support to enable it do the assignment in the best way possible,” he said at the end of a one-day meeting he chaired in Arusha to discuss the crisis.

The minister described the invasive or alien species as a ‘national disaster’, saying their proliferation in the protected areas, rangelands, crop fields and aquatic environments posed serious challenges to economic activities.

Mr Makamba, who is an MP for Bumbuli, said the task would start anytime soon and that he would personally request for permission from their respective bosses for members picked from the public institutions.

The chairperson of the Natural Resources and Environment Committee of the Parliament, Mr Nape Nnauye, cautioned that the proposed task force should avoid politics.

“This will be a team of experts. They should study the root causes of the problem and suggest to us solutions they deem effective,” he said.

Mr Nnauye, who is the Mtama legislator, hinted that new legislations have to be formaulated and enforced in order to address the crisis, which he feared was almost getting out of hand.

“Invasive species should not be taken lightly,” he stressed, urging the experts to work independently and propose ways to get rid of them.

Among the economic sectors set to suffer from the proliferation of invasive plants is the multi-million dollar tourism where the strange and flowery alien weeds have taken over from the indigenous plants favoured by the wild animals.

Among the affected protected areas are the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the Serengeti National Park where patches of them have lately seen new covers of ornamental weeds in place of natural grasses.

Lake Victoria, the giant shared water body between Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, has not been spared either.

Experts say between 200 and 300 of its indigenous fish species have disappeared since the introduction of alient Nile Perch about 60 years ago.

Alien weeds, some with origins as far as South Ameria, have also locked down and impacted fishing in Lake Victoria as well as lakes Jipe, Babati and Ugalla river. The most noxious is ‘Eichhornia crassipes’.