Matthew Evans 4/11/18 Period 4-5 CNN
Date of Publication: 4/11/18 Name of Article: "Tanzania takes historic step to save dwindling elephant population" Author of Article: Chris Giles This article talks about the declining elephant populations of Tanzania and how the Tanzanian government has made big steps to saving these amazing creatures. More specifically, the Selous Game Reserve is the area where the government has gone through with their plans so far. These teams have worked tirelessly to protect the elephants. The government of Tanzania, with support from the World Wildlife Fund, has gone through with a plan that will hopefully protect elephants in the Selous Game Reserve. The plan was followed through in early 2018 and will span for an entire 12 months. This plan is to tag 60 elephants with collars so it becomes easier for park rangers to track the herds and arrive much faster if the elephants are under threat. This is known as satellite collaring and it's best used in a large area, like the Selous Game Reserve. In fact, this reserve is larger than the entire country of Switzerland. Collaring one elephant takes around 30 minutes and the teams that are performing these procedures have been chosen by the government. Along with applying a collar, the teams will also take data on the health of the elephant. The goal is to hopefully protect these elephants and later start to rebuild the once big population. By increasing the population, the reserve hopes that these efforts will attract more tourism. Reserves in the north tend to receive more tourism than reserves in the south. The Selous Game Reserve is one of the southern reserves which has been financially struck because of the lack of tourism in those parts. The reason the government has come in and taken steps towards a bright future for elephants is because of their rapid decline in population. In fact, in just 40 short years, the elephant population in Tanzania has dropped from 110,000 to 15,200. Poaching is the biggest factor to this destructive decline, as hunters collect the ivory of the elephant to sell at high prices. With hunters roaming free and almost no protection, the amazing creatures are being driven to extinction. It has gotten so bad, that even elephants in reserves like the Selous Game Reserve are being killed daily. It is very difficult to quell this problem however because rangers have to cover large swaths of land along with the fact that finances limit the amount of protection on the ground. All of these reasons together make elephants very vulnerable. I myself am very happy that they are finally making steps towards improvements. I am speculating how much change it would bring though, if any at all. This does show though that the government is willing to start make changes to save elephants. All of this new technology is so helpful and hopefully will continue to be of use to the people committed to saving elephants in Tanzania. Link to article I used: www.cnn.com/2018/04/11/africa/tanzania-collaring-wwf-elephants/index.html In this picture, a team is working to safely collar an elephant in the Selous Game Reserve.
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