EDITORIAL: Promising progress in anti-poaching efforts

 

By The Citizen

Posted  Monday, December 29  2014 at  10:06

In Summary

• The situation was particularly serious in 2012 and 2013 when consignments of elephant tusks worth billions of shillings were seized overseas and traced back to East Africa, specifically Tanzania and Kenya.

Reports that concerted wildlife conservation efforts are showing signs of success are good news indeed as the year draws to a close.  It will be recalled that Tanzania has for a long time been in the
international spotlight for the wanton slaughter of wildlife, particularly elephants, in its national parks, game reserves and other protected areas.   The country was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The situation was particularly serious in 2012 and 2013 when consignments of elephant tusks worth billions of shillings were seized overseas and traced back to East Africa, specifically Tanzania and Kenya.

With Tanzania’s elephant population in a nosedive, the government launched Operation Tokomeza (eradicate) to stamp out poaching and save elephants from imminent extinction.

Operation Tokomeza was a short-lived undertaking and was suspended following allegations of widespread human rights abuses.  The controversy led to the sacking of Natural Resources and Tourism minister Khamis Kagasheki along with four other ministers.

When Mr Lazaro Nyalandu was put in the hot seat at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism in February 2014, Tanzania’s reputation was in tatters, and he faced seemingly insurmountable odds to stop the unrestrained slaughter in our national parks and game reserves.

With powerful vested interests at the centre of the illegal trade in ivory, Mr Nyalandu’s work was cut out, but the new minister adopted a new approach to tackling poaching, which is showing promising results.

Instead of issuing directives and threats from the comfort of his plush office in Dar es Salaam, the minister has been out and about engaging local communities in conservation efforts and making them feel an important link in the current drive to elephants and other endangered species.

Hopefully, this will continue in 2015, but it should not be lost on us that conservation efforts will succeed only if all stakeholders pull in one direction with the aim of ending poaching once and for all.