Tanapa to introduce 3 national parks

Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania National Parks Authority(Tanapa) said yesterday that it was in final stages of establishing three national parks that will cover a total of 47,000 square meters.

Tanapa conservation commissioner Dr Allan Kijazi made the revelation when briefing journalists in Dar es Salaam yesterday on the achievements they have recorded in the past four years of President John Magufuli’s leadership.

He named the new parks as Nyerere, Ugola and Kigosi.

The Selous Game Reserve will be upgraded to Nyerere National Park as Tanzania endeavours to create the largest national park in Africa.

“The aim is to use our own natural resources in boosting Tanzania’s economy through attraction of tourists,” he said.

The three national parks will bring the total number of such conservation areas in Tanzania to 22.

A total of 850 people will get employment through the establishment of the three national parks, he said.

This will bring the total number of direct employment under Tanapa to 1,500.

So far, he said, a total of 100,000 people are indirectly employed in Tanzania’s national parks.

He also said Tanapa was working on an action plan on land use that will seek to reduce conflicts between itself and people who share boundaries with national parks. The project will cost a total of Sh5 billion.

He stressed that they used to have several boundary conflicts with wananchi but, so far they have sorted more than 80 per cent conflicts concerning boundaries therefore, coming up with a land use plan will create awareness to wananchi on restricted areas.

Explaining on the achievement, he said since 2015/19 they improved revenue collection at larger scale.

“Tanapa collected Sh3.5 billion during the 2015/16 financial year but the amount rose Sh42 billion during the 2018/19 financial year,” he said.