Elephant poaching curbed through joint efforts, says wildlife authority

Bagamoyo. Elephant poaching has, ultimately, been contained in Tanzania following years of concerted efforts by the government, local communities and international actors, an official from the Tanzania Wildlife Authority (TAWA) has said.

Conservation Officer from the Investigation Section at TAWA, Tryphone Kanoni, told journalists yesterday that the number of incidents of elephant killings has declined from 18 in 2016/17 to three in 2022/23.

Mr Kanoni was making a presentation entitled Role of TAWA in Combating Wildlife Crimes during a two-day tailor-made training on conservation for journalists organized by the Journalists Environmental Association of Tanzania (JET) and sponsored by the USAID Tuhifadhi Maliasili Activity.

“We can authoritatively report that elephant poaching has been contained in Tanzania. The number of elephant carcasses spotted during countrywide surveillance patrols have decreased drastically to three per year,” Mr Kanoni said.

Elephant poaching had reached critical levels in Tanzania, which required urgent action.

Between 2009 and 2014 Tanzania lost 60,000 elephants through unprecedented levels of poaching, according to figures from a government census.

About 87 tonnes of ivory seized worldwide between 1998 and 2014 was linked to Tanzania, the Environmental Investigation Agency reported at the time, making the country the global hotspot for ivory poaching during those years.

The situation was such that the government had to establish a multiagency task force in on June 30, 2015, which conducted special anti-poaching operations.

The taskforce led to 2,377 arrests including of 21 elephant poaching kingpins one of them being Yang Fenglan, famously known as the ‘Ivory Queen.’

Following the success of the taskforce the late former President John Magufuli went ahead to establish Tawa in 2016 to provided consistency in combating of wildlife crimes in Tanzania.

That role was previously carried out by the Police but the specific nature of wildlife crimes and the myriad responsibilities of the law enforcement agency proved a disadvantage to anti-poaching efforts.

“Tawa has now an investigation section, established in 2021, to relieve the police of investigative responsibilities for wildlife crimes,” Mr Kanoni noted.

The containment of elephant poaching has gone in tandem with an increase in the number of elephants in Tanzanian national parks and game reserves.

Elephant population rose from 43,000 in 2014 to 60,000 in 2019, according to official data.

TAWA manages wildlife in all reserved and non-reserved areas outside of national parks. These game reserves, game controlled areas, wildlife corridors, animal dispersal areas and wildlife management areas.

“In total TAWA manages wildlife of 54 percent of the protected land in Tanzania which is equivalent to 133,287 kilometres squares,” Mr Kanoni noted.

He further noted that most of the elephant tusks being seized currently by law enforcement agents come from elephants who were killed during the critical period between 2009 and 2014.

“When the crackdown was launched by the government most culprits hid tusks by burying them under the ground,” he noted.

Incidents of poaching that are still prevalent are those done by local communities for bush meat. Such incidents declined only slightly from 1000 in 2016/17 to 600 in 2022/23.

“It is difficult to contain such kind of poaching because it is mainly conducted by people from communities who have deep knowledge of the protected areas,” he noted.

He noted that they have increased surveillance patrols using high-tech equipment such as drones and boots on the ground to try to save animals from extinction.