PRESS RELEASE: ANTI POACHING EFFORTS LOWER ELEPHANT POACHING IN RUAHA

• Tanzania National Parks is not informed of the release of any official census results indicating the decrease of elephants in Ruaha National Park.

• The practice of conducting census in the protected areas including National Parks is done on the basis of ecosystems as animals do migrate from one area to the other. Therefore, it is expected that any official release of the census results should have included the whole ecosystem of Ruaha-Rungwa and not Ruaha alone.

• Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) is an authority mandated to conduct wildlife census in all protected areas in Tanzania. Therefore as of now they have not released any official results regarding the census.

• As pointed out in our regular news releases, there have been significant improvement in efforts to fight poaching in Ruaha National Park that has resulted to a significant decline of elephant poaching incidences inside the park from 82 in 2012/2013 to only 36 in 2013/2014 and only 12 incidences between July 2014 and March 2015. These efforts will eventually lead to further decline and/or halting of elephant poaching in all National Parks.

On 23rd April, 2015, the ITV News network of UK ran an article with a title “Exposed: Tanzania’s elephant killing fields”.  The article cited a decrease of elephants in Ruaha National Park from 8,500 in 2014 to just over 4,200 now. The article further pointed out that the main reason for the decline is “poaching and claimed that these findings are part of the Great Elephant Census, an ambitious two year project to conduct an aerial survey of elephant numbers and distribution across Africa”.

Tanzania National Parks would like to categorically deny the above accusations and is hereby giving clarification on the same for the interest of the general public:

In view of the above, Tanzania National Parks would like to assure the public that once the official results of the census are out, the public will be officially informed.