In Tanzania’s Selous game reserve an age-old scourge has returned to haunt Africa’s biggest wildlife stronghold. Poaching is back, big time, with an average of 50 elephants being killed every month to fuel the ivory trade.
Tanzania has become the leading source of illegally exported ivory, with Dar es Salaam as its major transit point. Yet even as the slaughter continues, sending black-market prices soaring to more than $1,000 (£636) a kilogram, Tanzania is urging CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) to lift the worldwide ivory trade ban ???
Unless Tanzania shows the same determination to secure its wildlife heritage as it have shown in the past, the elephants could soon be gone and the Selous will drop off the tourist map.
