Day: November 3, 2022

Tanzania’s Ministry of Tourism released a census this week showing the country’s elephant population has stabilized.

Tanzania’s elephants were among the hardest hit by poaching in Africa, with numbers dropping 60 percent between 2009 and 2014. But authorities say joint efforts with conservation groups and local communities have drastically reduced poaching and helped to attract tourist dollars.

Just under 20,000 elephants were recorded in a survey that covered about 90,000 square kilometers of the Katavi-Rukwa and Ruaha-Rungwa landscapes in western Tanzania, including parks, game reserves and other protected areas.

The government said the results confirm that the landscape remains the most important in East Africa in terms of elephant numbers and contains the largest population on the continent outside Zimbabwe and Botswana.

Ernest Mjingo, a managing director of the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, a department of the Ministry of Tourism, said the world would now see Tanzania as very serious about conservation and doing well at it. And if the world does see that, he said, it would be a credit to the government and would also increase revenue, because Tanzania will become a prime destination for tourists because of the animal population. He added that it could also become a U.N. World Heritage Site, since it would have species that would not be available in other places.

The report said poaching had dramatically decreased over the last few years.

In the last report, conducted in 2018, the ratio of elephant carcasses to live animals was 14 percent. Now, it’s just 1.4 percent, thanks to government and stakeholders’ efforts in strengthening wildlife protection.

Tourism experts such as Makubi Mabula see the results of the census as a good sign for Tanzania’s economic prospects.

“Honestly, the results show a green light toward the future of tourism in our country,” he said through a translator. ” … Many tourists come to see animals like elephants, lions, rhinos and others. So, with the elephant population stabilizing, the national income will increase. It really gives us the peace we tourist stakeholders need to believe that the tourism industry will grow fast.”

Along with elephants, the survey also confirmed that the populations of 25 other key mammal species in Tanzania have stabilized, including buffaloes, zebras, hartebeests, impalas and giraffes.

Source: Voice of America

The United Nations reports that up to 222 million people globally are facing acute hunger — and that 47 million of them in the Greater Horn of Africa.

Most parts of the region are battling the worst drought in 40 years. After four consecutive years of drought and a fifth season of failed rains looming, health experts fear great loss of life.

A new World Health Organization analysis of seven countries in the region finds disease outbreaks and climate-related emergencies have reached their highest level this century.

Analysts have recorded a total of 39 health emergencies this year in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.

Egmond Evers, the WHO’s Incident Manager for Greater Horn of Africa Food Insecurity and Health, said the food insecurity crisis in the region also is a health crisis, and that these twin disasters are interrelated.

“Malnourished people become sick more easily and sick people become malnourished more easily. The outcomes when disease and malnutrition are combined are much worse,” he said. “We know this because the combination of cholera and malnutrition, measles and malnutrition, common childhood diseases and malnutrition — there is more severe disease and more death. We know globally already that 45 percent of all child deaths are linked to malnutrition.”

Evers said lack of food also leads to increased displacement. People who suffer from food insecurity, he said, leave their homes in search of something to eat. He notes this makes the region’s more than 18 million refugees and internally displaced people particularly vulnerable to illness and death.

“Displacement means interruption of life-saving health care, such as immunization, maternal and childcare, but also increased risks, such as poor water and sanitation, overcrowding, malnutrition, risky coping behaviors, and loss of life events,” said Evers. “We are seeing that these public health events are becoming more common and the combination with increasing food insecurity and malnutrition, means they will also be more deadly.”

Drought is not the only extreme weather event in the region. In recent weeks, Sudan and South Sudan have been hit with widespread torrential rains.

The WHO said South Sudan is experiencing its fourth consecutive year of flooding; an estimated 40 percent of the country is under water.

Source: Voice of America