Tanzania plans to launch fresh anti-poaching drive

Tanzanian authorities said on Thursday that plans were afoot to launch a new anti-poaching campaign that will mainly rely on intelligence.

"The new anti-poaching drive will depend on the use of intelligence than haphazard military crackdown that has negative implications," the east African nation's Permanent Secretary for Natural Resources and Tourism Ministry, Gaudence Milanzi, told a meeting of tourism stakeholders in Arusha.

Tanzania launched an anti-poaching operation in October 2013 called Operation Tokomeza but the operation was suspended a month later following reports of human rights violations.

The operation was launched by former President Jakaya Kikwete and it involved the police, the army and members of the militia.

"Unlike the previous controversial anti poaching crusade that was dominated by significant claims of torture of civilians, extortion and murder, the new drive will be intelligence oriented, with relatively no military activities involved," said Milanzi.

He said the new operation will involve formation of a wildlife crime and intelligence unit.

"We have begun the intensification of security at our border posts where we have deployed staff and sniffer dogs on the ground," said the retired army general.

Poaching has led to massive drop in elephant populations in Tanzania, with a 2014 elephant census report showing that the population of elephants in the country was 43,330, a decline from 109,051 in 2009, which was equivalent to a decline of 60.3 percent. Endit