"The Government has managed to reduce poaching incidences in the country by 90 percent, with the number of elephants increasing," the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Dr. Damas Ndumbaro has said.
Tabling 571.6bn/- budget estimates for 2021/2022 Financial Year, Dr. Ndumbaro said apart from reducing poaching, the Government managed to beef up security on tourism resources, including illegal business on government trophies.
He said his Ministry had also recorded achievements in curbing illegal harvesting of forest products, illegal invasion of areas reserved for Agriculture, Livestock. "The 2020 census shows that the number of elephants in the ecology system of Serengeti increased from 6,087 in 2014 to about 7,061 in 2020," he said, adding that the success in reducing illegal poaching was attributed to intensification of frequent patrols which nabbed about 5,609 criminals.
He also added that the Government had managed to crack the whip on 95 networks of poachers as well as preventing about 302 incidents that were intercepted before occurring.
In the 2021/2022 fiscal year, Dr. Ndumbaro said that the Government plans to implement eight key development projects within the Ministry, among them Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (REGROW), which seeks to strengthen the management of protected areas and promote nature-based tourism in Southern Tanzania.
Others are the project for capacity building in national parks, game reserves and a special unit dealing with illegal poaching, the project for the fight against poaching and protection of government trophies, the project for tree planting and capacity building project for institutions of forest training and bee keeping.
Other priorities are pegged on a special project on empowering the value chain on bee keeping project (BEVAC) and the project for Forestry and Value Chains Development Programme.