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Six `barefoot` wardens in entire game reserve!
2008-01-03 08:46:15
By Editor
President Jakaya Kikwete spent part of his just-ended working holiday underlining the need to safeguard and promote the country`s natural resources, notably national parks and game reserves.
His observations must have been prompted by the fact that those resources constitute a proud portion of our national heritage and have over the years been indisputable crowd-pullers attracting foreign and local tourists and thus earning the nation much-needed revenue.
Many countries much less endowed with natural resources than Tanzania is have put the little they are blessed with to much better use than we have done.
It is true that we have registered some progress in promoting our natural resources, partly by learning from the rich experience of these and other countries which have really succeeded in developing theirs into effective wealth that has led to positive changes in the lives of their people.
But it is hard to say that there have been noticeable developments anywhere in our own country.
This applies irrespective of whether one is referring to efforts to spruce up our national parks and game reserves or whether what is at stake has a bearing on seriously helping the tourism industry tick.
Given this not-so-brilliant background, one is left wondering as to the relevance or viability of the short, medium and long-term plans of the Natural Resources and Tourism ministry, the Tanzania Tourist Board, the Tanzania National Parks and all those other agencies, institutions or stakeholders part of whose brief is the safeguarding and promotion of our national parks and game reserves for the benefit of the present generation and posterity.
We say this stunned by findings by this paper that the 2,228.36-square km Lwafi Game Reserve in Rukwa Region`s Nkasi District is under the supervision of a mere six poorly equipped game wardens.
Even more dumbfounding are reports that the hapless park rangers have all along been operating without a single support vehicle and have therefore had to walk long distances monitoring security in the reserve.
For all practical purposes, this means that these public servants have been marooned and left to take care of their fate in the face of marauding beasts, the ever-lurking heavily armed poachers and the vagaries of weather.
The government once saw mining and tourism as among the economic sectors thriving most and from which it could collect huge amounts of revenue if it moved appropriately.
It readily admitted being aware that more wealth was being created in those sectors than was taxed and that the market was unspeakably hazy.
The government would have played its cards marvellously had it gone on to support these sectors as conditions demanded.
Instead, too bad, it is sad cases like that of the tragically stranded six wardens in the far-flung Lwafi Game Reserve that keep cropping up.
Come to think of it, what would the authorities concerned lose by making these wardens mobile and therefore a little happier and more efficient – particularly relative to the amount of revenue the reserve must be making?
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