Anti-poaching patrols paying off for safari wildlife in Tanzania

Anti-poaching patrols paying off for safari wildlife in Tanzania

Anti-poaching patrols paying off for safari wildlife in Tanzania
mongabay.com
November 23, 2006

Enforcement patrols are effectively cutting poaching of elephants, African buffaloes and black rhinos in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania according to new research published in the journal Science.

Employing a sampling technique used to estimate the abundance of fish, an international team of scientists showed that poaching is down significantly in the Serengeti since the mid-1980s due to law enforcement efforts.

Ray Hilborn, University of Washington professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and lead author of a paper, says that by their increasing abundance, the “animals are ‘telling’ us poaching is down now that there are 10 to 20 patrols a day compared to the mid-1980s when there might be 60 or fewer patrols a year.” Hilborn says that since wildlife populations are not declining, recent estimates of poaching in the Serengeti cited by National Geographic are too high.

Hilborn and colleagues showed this using a “catch-per-unit-of-effort technique” which estimated the total amount of poaching by dividing the number of poachers arrested by the number of patrols a day. The researchers assumed that “arrests per patrol were representative of poaching intensity.”

“We show that a precipitous decline in enforcement in 1977 resulted in a large increase in poaching and decline of many species,” wrote the researchers. “Conversely, expanded budgets and antipoaching patrols since the mid-1980s have significantly reduced poaching and allowed populations of buffalo, elephants and rhinoceros to rebuild.”

“Antipoaching is effective in protected areas,” Hilborn added.

This article is based on a news release from the University of Washington.