AfricaPress-Tanzania: The management of the Mikumi National Park management needs to strengthen efforts and work hard to restore rhino levels following extensive poaching and threat of disappearance of the species starting from the 1980s.
Dr Damas Ndumbaro, the minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, issued the directive here yesterday at a meeting with the park management to chart out how to improve tourism and fight poaching.
He reminded the management that the park had a large number of rhinos but they were decimated due to rampant poaching.
The minister asked the management to install special equipment on the rhinos so as to monitor their movements and find out if they are being followed by poachers or any other danger.
Currently the park has remained has four big game for tourism, namely lion, elephant, buffalo and leopard.
“So we should collect ourselves to ensure that we restore the rhino in this park so that park has all the big five,” he said.
The Mikumi ecology favours rhinos to grow and reproduce, he said, noting that the management has to ensure that the animals are more numerous, such that the park is counted among the best tourist attractions.
The management must enhance security in the park after having restored rhinos to protect their being poached , the minister elaborated, noting that the country registered a resounding success in fighting poaching, improving security and rare species stability in the national parks.
Dr Gabriel Ottawa, a senior member of the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) assured the minister that they are going to work hard to ensure that once brought into the park, rhinos will live safely and longer.
“We will carry out research before bringing the species, so as to identify challenges which may arise later and affect the animals. We should figure out solutions to the challenges to ensure that rhinos can stay safe,” he said.
Late last year, the Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) aired the view that rhinos are becoming more numerous, with the latest count putting their number at 190 and likely to reach 205 in the next two years.
Philbert Ngoti, assistant conservation commissioner and national rhino coordinator made this observation at the closure of a two-day working session with senior journalists
He said that in the 1970s Tanzania had 10,000 rhinos in various national parks and game reserves but the decimation of the animals thereafter threw them towards extinction during the 1990s, reaching the low end of 15 rhinos towards the end of the decade, stirring up international alarm.
There was a situation of uncontrolled poaching in the roaring days of the free market and adoration of all sorts of speculative visitors putting up a façade of investment but having other agenda.
At the same time, donor fatigue was creeping, occasioning a poachers’ haven of frustrated wildlife conservation staff and paperwork without effect in government accountability, so poaching went to the limit.
It was at that time that global pressures from CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) stepped in, but this time it was elephants whose numbers were being decimated, as rhino had become so rare that some had to be airlifted from South Africa to prepare for repopulating them in Tanzania’s national parks.
