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Bridging the Migration Gap
Connecting Africa's greatest wildlife areas

The new Selous-Niassa Wildlife Corridor in Tanzania spans more than 4,000 square- miles to link Africa’s largest protected wildlife areas—Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve and the Niassa Game Reserve in Mozambique. The Selous tract is as big as Switzerland, and it’s home to a significant number of elephant, buffalo, antelopes, wild dogs, and lions. Following decades of conservation work, some parts now contain more wildlife than they did a century ago. The Niassa Reserve boasts the greatest concentrations of wildlife in Mozambique, and it is second only to the Selous tract in elephant populations. Now both tracts are being connected.

The corridor project was launched in 2000 to identify ancient migration routes and provide legal protection into the future. Financed primarily by the German government in cooperation with the UN, the corridor will extend from Selous to the Ruvuma River, which separates Tanzania from Mozambique and forms Niassa’s northern boundary.

This region is considered the largest elephant range in the world. It is little changed from the time when P.J. Pretorius and Jim Sutherland poached tuskers between the Rufiji and Ruvuma rivers before World War I.  Though still mostly a wild land, the area is being threatened by high human population growth, loss of forests to farming, expanding development, uncontrolled fires, and poaching.

Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson first proposed the conservation wildlife migration routes in the 1960s. Today, most scientists recognize the importance of open corridors to wildlife populations. After all, animals were born to wander. Otherwise natural rhythms are disrupted, bloodlines go unmixed and populations fall. Small, unconnected wildlife populations are also more easily affected by human actions.

The corridor’s northern section, adjacent to Selous, is comprised of two hunting blocks drawn in the 1980s under Tanzania’s Wildlife Management Area (WMA) program. Two more blocks are being developed, and the four resulting blocks will comprise the entire corridor. The region’s landscapes include forests, grasslands, savannahs, wetlands and river bottoms.

“The expected result at the end of the six-year project will be a viable ecological corridor linking Selous and Niassa,” said Goetz Schuerholz, team leader of the feasibility study for the German government. WMAs utilize land-use plans drawn by local villages. They grant title to the lands, and they gain a stake in benefits from wildlife management. In Mbunga and its neighboring villages, the residents are often hired as guides and scouts, and they also enjoy a thriving business selling beer, locally grown produce, fuel, and other supplies to safari companies that operate in the area.

Studies tout eco-tourism, but Tanzania has realized greater benefits from hunting. In Selous, for example, 6,000 non-hunting visitors account for only 20 per cent of the annual revenue. The 400 hunters, in contrast, contribute 80 percent through licenses, fees and permits for the 3,000 trophy animals that they pursue.—Bill Miller