Tanzania is best known for Mount Kilimanjaro, Dar Es Salaam and the Serengeti plains. There are many national parks like Ruaha and Tarangire and several game reserves like the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. With thousands of square miles dedicated to protecting the animals and environment, Tanzania is home to vast numbers of types of wildlife including zebras, cheetahs, wildebeest, lions and hippos. Despite conservation efforts and anti-poaching laws, Tanzania is being set up to lose one of its most important, loved and well-known species: the African elephant (1). Illegal poaching presents an opportunity for major financial gain in many places around the world, which are home to vulnerable species like the elephants of Tanzania. The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) says that more elephants are dying from poaching than from natural causes (3). Tanzania has one of the highest populations of elephants in Africa and has become a poaching hotspot. In many countries, ivory is a common trophy which shows status and wealth (1). The Philippines and Thailand have some of the highest demands for poached ivory, but China has the highest in the world. It fuels almost 70% of the illegal trade, and was part of the cause of a shocking 60% drop in elephant population from 2009 to 2014 (2). In the 1970s and 80s, Tanzania suffered a severe elephant poaching crisis. The population fell from a little over 300,000 to barely 55,000 elephants by 1989. The international ban on commercial ivory sales in 1989 let the population rebound to 142,788 in 2006. However, in 2009, Asian markets also rebounded and increased the demand for ivory. In 2013 alone, Tanzania lost 10,000 elephants: more than 30 each day (1). In 2013, TRAFFIC raised concerns about poaching elephants in a report. The report pointed to shifts in smuggling routes in Tanzania’s Indian Ocean with exit points through the ports of Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. According to compiled TRAFFIC reports, at least 45 more tons of ivory have been smuggled from Tanzania to black markets in Asia than from any other country in Africa since 2009 (4). From a 2012 article from NPR, John Burnett visited Mloka. Mloka is a village right next to the Selous Game Reserve. The Selous Game Reserve is bigger than the entirety of Switzerland and is home to large numbers of giraffes, zebras, hippos, and elephants. In Mloka, there are many elephant poachers, but here only two are interviewed. The first one is named Mkanga. According to Mkanga, ivory buyers often visit Mloka to offer prices for elephants’ tusks, usually measured by kilograms. The second poacher is named Salma Abdallah and says that after settling on a price, the group will track elephants to their watering holes or feeding grounds. Salma says there are usually 10 people in a poaching group. Most of the time, the group will kill another animal like a wildebeest for food, then bring the leftover meat back to the village to sell (5). According to people in the town, elephant tusks can sell for up to $60 for every 2.2 pounds. Wildlife activists, safari operators, government officials and poachers say that elephants in Selous are being wiped out, confirming a 2010 report done by the Environmental Investigation Agency in London. The report says that Selous is one of Africa’s poaching hotspots, and DNA tests done on 1,500 tusks seized at seaports in Taiwan and Hong Kong trace the tusks back to Selous and the Niassa Reserve, a similar reserve located in Mozambique (5). Most wildlife trafficking rings are run by international networks, consisting mainly of Tanzanians, Chinese and West Africans. Identifying those rings can be difficult, since they tend to change and move very quickly depending on what those involved know about what the law enforcers are looking for (3).
The population of elephants on the Serengeti plains has increased, but beyond the touristy areas in the northern part of Tanzania, elephant populations have remained relatively low. One of those low population areas is the Ruaha-Rungwa ecosystem, where the population of elephants fell from 34,600 in 2009 to about 8,272 in 2014. The head of the World Wildlife Fund, Elisabeth McLellan, said that the sudden decrease in that area is because of international organized crime and weak enforcement and security in Tanzania. Around that time, Minister Nyalandu of Tanzania announced a plan to protect the country’s elephants. This plan included an additional 500 rangers plus the 500 others supplied by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism in 2014. Nyalandu also doubled the number of rangers in Ruaha-Rungwa and established closer cooperation with Zambia (a neighboring country) on anti-poaching laws (4). In the current day, poaching is illegal in Tanzania, and is treated as a serious breach of law, especially in protected areas. In other countries such as Kenya, hunting of elephants in any circumstance has been illegal since 1973. Certain ways of hunting elephants are legal, although you have to apply for special licenses from CITES and the Tanzanian government. There are additional laws surrounding what, when, and where you can and can’t hunt that come with the license. Limited controlled hunting has been talked about in many conservationist social and political circles. The hunting could be used to maintain a stable and balanced population to ensure a healthy ecosystem (6). Tanzania has an outwardly anti-poaching stance but they have never destroyed any of their confiscated ivory. This makes them have the largest ivory stash of any country in the world. According to the Tanzanian government, their ivory cache is sold to generate money to put towards the conservation of their wildlife, although there is no way to confirm that this has been done (6). Elephants as a species are valued, and they can provide money in many ways. Ivory can cost up to $1,500 per pound in Asian countries, and as two male elephant tusks can weigh 250 pounds, around $375,000 can be made off of poaching one male elephant (2). In Africa, ivory is estimated to be worth only about $2,800 to a local trader—even less to a poacher, depending on the place. However, another way elephants can be lucrative is if they are left to live out their normal lifespan. A single elephant can generate 1.6 million US dollars in tourism. In 2013, 13% of Tanzania’s GDP consisted of tourism and generated 402,500 jobs in the country. The average household size in Tanzania is 4.8 people, so adding it all up means approximately 2 million people were supported by tourism that year (1). The recent crisis in Tanzania caused U.S. embassy officials in Dar es Salaam to reach out to professional canine trainers from the Custom and Borders Protection to help prevent the smuggling of ivory over borders. At the time, Tanzania’s canine force maintained about 45 working dogs. The Tanzanian and U.S. governments came together to build a new canine training program to combat the rising problem. It was the first time the CBP trained dogs to detect ivory. To begin their training, the program used a four foot tusk and crushed ivory that had been seized by the Department of Fish and Wildlife in the U.S.. The operation used Belgian malinois, a breed chosen by the professionals who worked on how to train the dogs: two men named Montes and Spittler, both from CBP canine programs in the United States (2). Illegal poaching presents an opportunity for major financial gain in many places around the world, most of which are home to vulnerable species like the elephants of Tanzania. In 2014, the government established the Tanzanian Wildlife Management Authority, which is in charge of monitoring and patrolling game reserves and other protected areas within Tanzania. In 2016, the number of patrols totalled 69,278, and 1,563 poachers were arrested (3). As previously mentioned, conservationists do not condone the unnatural death of any animal, but there have been effective arguments made about how controlled hunting could be used to maintain a stable population. Wildlife preservation would generate revenues that would then be put back towards conserving species in general. The hope for the future is that poaching is stopped, and elephants and other wildlife can live safely in their homes (6).
