Tanzania records zero poaching in largest game reserve

Dodoma: After years of incessant elephant poaching, Tanzanian authorities said that there had been no poaching in the Selous Game Reserve for the past three months.

Poaching of elephants in the 50,000 square km reserve, one of the largest protected areas in Africa, was rampant throughout the 2000s, forcing UNESCO's World Heritage Committee in June 2014 to inscribe the reserve on the list of World Heritage in Danger, Xinhua reported.

Tanzania's Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Lazaro Nyalandu, said the fight against poaching in the country has begun to bear fruits.

Nyalandu commended the game rangers and other stakeholders, who he said have given their lives to protect the wild animals in the area.

The Tanzania Elephant Protection Society, a non-governmental organisation dealing in elephant protection and conservation, said in 2013 that about 30 elephants were killed daily in Tanzania, warning that if the situation continued unabated the elephant population would be exterminated by 2020.

At the Selous Game Reserve, rampant poaching has caused a dramatic decline in wildlife populations, especially of elephants and rhinos, whose numbers have dropped by almost 90 percent since 1982, when the game reserve was inscribed on the World Heritage List.