https://af.reuters.com/article.../idAFKCN1IF0ZJ-OZATP



MAY 14, 2018 / 4:02 AM / A DAY AGO

Tanzania invites bids for logging of Selous Game Reserve


Ed Stoddard


JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Tanzania aims to bring large-scale logging to the Selous Game Reserve, one of Africa’s most celebrated wildlife areas and already earmarked by the government for a hydroelectric plant.


The East African country’s forest service (TFS) intends to sell standing trees with a volume of almost 3.5 million cubic metres, according to a tender document issued on April 25 and seen by Reuters.

The UNESCO-designated reserve, in Tanzania’s southeast, is home to elephants, lions, rare birds and other species.

Authorities are also moving ahead with a plan to build a 2,100-megawatt (MW) hydro plant on the reserve’s Rufiji river, which flows into the Indian Ocean - despite concerns from conservationists over the project’s impact on the animal population.


The logging tender will be opened on Wednesday morning at the TFS office in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam, according to the document.

Neither the TFS nor the Natural Resources and Tourism Ministry were immediately reachable on Monday morning.

The government hopes construction work on the hydroelectric plant, designed to more than double the country’s power generation capacity, will begin as early as July. It approached the African Development Bank for financing in April.

Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Writing by Maggie Fick; editing by John Stonestreet

http://cceonlinenews.com/2018/...ge-hydropower-plant/

Tanzania invites bids for logging to pave way for huge hydropower plant


By cce news - May 15, 2018018



Tanzania has invited bids for mega logging in an area around the Rufiji River where it plans to construct a huge hydropower plant, Dos Santos Silayo, Chief Executive of the Tanzania Forest Services (TFS) Agency has said.

TFS has placed a tender invitation on its website inviting bids for logging of tradition standing trees with a total volume of 3,495,362.823 cubic meters in Rufiji district in Coast region, setting in motion plans to develop the project.

The logging tender will be opened on Wednesday morning at the TFS office in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam, according to the document.

Tanzania is optimistic that clearing the trees will allow construction of the Stiegler’s Gorge hydropower project to start June this year. Late last month, the country announced that it was in talks with the Africa Development Bank to finance the project.

The AfDB confirmed that it had received the request to finance the huge hydropower plant in Tanzania and that it was reviewing it.

Upon completion, the hydro dam project will provide 2,100MW of electricity to a country that is currently extremely under-supplied. With a population of approximately 53m Tanzania has just 1,400MW of installed grid capacity.

Spanning over 20,000 square miles, a land area larger than Denmark, the Selous game reserve is considered one of the largest protected wild areas in Africa and is home to several wildlife species as well as an “exceptionally high variety of habitats” according to Unesco.

Conservationists are opposed to this project saying it threatens the endangered animal species in the area especially the black rhinoceros and elephants.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature says the Stiegler’s Gorge dam project is likely to have a potentially negative impact to wildlife in the area especially the critically endangered black rhinoceros.

But Tanzania says that the country wants to industrialize and cannot do so unless it has reliable power. The east African second largest economy banks on the hydroelectric project to end its persistent power problem.

“The Stiegler’s Gorge power generation project was expected to completely end the country’s power woes and sustain local industries with electricity and sell the surplus outside the country,” says Medard Kalemani, Tanzania’s Minister for Energy.

You better hunt the Selous before it is too late!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
You better hunt the Selous before it is too late!

Never has a truer word been said............. The damn dam project is the death knell for the SGR as we know it.

Goodbye Selous. I bet the "loggers" might just poach an elephant or two- if there are any still living...

I'm glad I saw the reserve when it was a vibrant, special place.

https://www.iol.co.za/ios/news...-to-logging-15000575

Tanzania opens pristine World Heritage reserve to logging


NEWS / 16 MAY 2018, 12:21PM / ADAM CRUISE


Tanzania is proposing large-scale logging in the middle of the Selous Game Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most iconic wildlife areas in Africa.
Tender documents have revealed plans for extensive timber harvesting in the middle of the Selous Game Reserve which is also one of the oldest and largest game reserves in the world, covering an area of 54 600 km2. The reserve is an important refuge for Elephants and lions as well as the critically endangered African Wild dog and a host of other species.
The documents state that almost 1 500 square kilometers will be cleared, and almost 3.5million cubic meters of wood extracted, with 2.6 million trees felled, to an expected value $62million. It is not clear who the beneficiaries will be.
Selous has already lost 95% of its elephants in the last 30 years, and it is expected that opening up the park to logging and consequent related development will increase poaching as has been the case in many other parts of Africa.
Speaking at a conservation conference in South Africa over the weekend, Peter Lindsey, director of the World Conservation Network, said that the biggest threat to wild lions in Africa is the destruction of natural habitat. His point was echoed by dozens of conservation organisations including trophy hunters at the Conservation Lab conference.
Paul Stones, a professional hunter, said: “The single most important thing for both trophy hunters and photographic tourists is the protection of biodiversity, which is being lost at catastrophic rates. With the removal of natural habitat at current levels, wildlife in Africa is all but doomed.”
It is understood that no environmental impact study has been finalised prior to the tender, as required by the law, nor was any official notification sent to UNESCO as required by the rules for World Heritage Sites. According to sources within Tanzania, there has been no civil society protest and the state protection and park agencies have remained silent.
Conservationsts are concerned that the Tanzanian Government has sought funding on a hydropower project at Stiegler’s Gorge with construction work of a dam to start in July. The plan is to build a 2 100-megawatt hydro plant on the reserve's Rufiji river, which flows into the Indian Ocean. Budgets for road works and airstrip upgrading are currently being presented to parliament. Yet, UNESCO has a clear position that dam projects that harm World Heritage sites should not be built.
Ian Michler, specialist safari operator and environmental journalist points out that the move to open the reserve up for logging and other development may be as a result of the almost complete failure to attract tourism into the region.
“There are few permanent lodges in the reserve with most of the land given over to trophy hunting concessions,” says Michler. “Revenue from trophy hunting has been virtually non-existent in the Selous.” Michler believes the Tanzanian government ought to hand the entire area over to photographic tourism. “It’s the only way the Selous will be saved,” he said.
Already, two large conservation investments have been injected into the park – by KFW, the German government-owned development bank as well as the World Bank – as part of a tourism development project.
A meeting was held by World Wildlife Fund at the World Bank in Washington on Monday to urgently discuss the Tanzanian government decision. The WWF have already expressed deep reservations about the hydro-electric project asking potential investors, banks and construction companies not to invest in or lend to the project.
Forest clearance tenders are due in on Wednesday and will be opened this Friday.

And in some ways, I can’t blame them
We do plenty of logging in the West
Building dam same thing
We all did and do
In the end Africa is run by Africans and so it is their prerogative

quote:

“There are few permanent lodges in the reserve with most of the land given over to trophy hunting concessions,” says Michler. “Revenue from trophy hunting has been virtually non-existent in the Selous.” Michler believes the Tanzanian government ought to hand the entire area over to photographic tourism. “It’s the only way the Selous will be saved,” he said.

Absolute crap!

For starters the Selous is divided into 2 established zones:

1) is the Photographic area where there is no hunting permitted on the northern side of the Rufiji River;

2) would be the currently known hunting area on the southern side which I would roughly estimate as around 85% of the entire reserve.

Both sides are being poached and if one were to look at proportions, the photographic area is hit the hardest, meaning the photographic bunch are unable/unwilling to meet the realistic costs to maintain the anti poaching units to control such a small area.

God forbid if the entire reserve was to be handed over to "ecotourism"!

Shameful

quote:

Ian Michler, specialist safari operator and environmental journalist

There you have it.

An ignorant idiot claiming to know something about the environment!

Most of the money coming from the Selous is from hunting operations.

How much is he paying for the animals he photographs??

Where does he think the trophy fees come from?

Saeed I have a chainsaw if you are keen in putting in a bid?

I've met Ian Michler and even tried to speak with him about the merits of hunting as a conservation tool. He was a very nice guy, and he politely listened to my points, though he was ultimately dismissive of them, calling positive examples of hunting-based conservation "exceptions" and "outliers." Sadly, everything I've ever seen him write, whether before or after that conversation, has been aggressively anti-hunting, often on emotional/ethical grounds. You'd think someone who actually lives in Africa would understand the cultural and economic realities, even if they don't want to ever be involved in hunting.

He is being paid by someone!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
He is being paid by someone!

The name Derek Joubert rings a bell

Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,...

http://allafrica.com/stories/201805180157.html



Tanzania: Conflict of Interest Brews At Selous After New Discoveries

By Rosemary Mirondo


Dar es Salaam — Conflict of interests may be brewing at the Selous Game Reserve following the discovery of several mineral varieties in the area.

The Geological Survey of Tanzania (GST) revealed the new discoveries during an interview with The Citizen recently, hinting that environment conservationists would be up in arms when the need to extract them arises.

The extraction of the minerals, which would bring the country plenty of money, however, would take a few decades depending on advancement of technology .

GST senior Geologist Solomon Maswi named the minerals discovered as base metal, copper, silver, cobalt, Zinc among others while gold is among the precious minerals in the area.

Mr Maswi told The Citizen that to extract the minerals with the current technology would be expensive, adding that it would take a few decades to start mining them efficiently.

"We anticipate that with technological changes, there will come a time when we can easily mine the discovered minerals," he said.



GST did a survey last February in areas close to the Selous Game Reserve, specifically, at the boundaries of the reserve in Malinyi and Mahenge Districts in Morogoro region.

He explained that the GST was mandated to conduct such surveys in order to fill gap that will enable the country to understand where minerals are located for current and future extractions.

"After completing our survey, we took samples of the soil and rocks found at the site to our laboratory and after our primary investigation it was revealed that there were precious minerals at the sites," he said.

However, he noted that according to their analyses it would take a long time to attract investors because there are doubts about their quantity.

Elaborating further, he said that the minerals are available under ultramafic and mafic rocks, which are rich in magnesium, which is a favourable condition for the base metals. He added that for precious metals they are normally found in Nyanzian green rocks that are normally found in Lake Zone areas, but can also be found in other areas with similar conditions.


Tanzania had already discovered Uranium in the Selous ecosystem and plans to mine mineral at Mkuju River close to the reserve are afoot.

The Game Reserve is listed as of the World Heritage Site under the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

However, at its 36th session in St Petersburg, Russia, in July 2012, the Unesco's World Heritage Committee approved an application by the government of Tanzania for a minor adjustment to the boundary of the game reserve to facilitate the mining of Uranium.

Tanzania is a country rich in natural resources, which include metals (gold, iron ore, nickel, copper, cobalt, silver), industrial minerals (diamond, tanzanite, ruby, garnet, limestone, soda ash, gypsum, salt, phosphate, gravel, sand among others.

Mining makes up more than 50 per cent of the country's total exports, of which a large part comes from gold. The country has gold reserves of 45 million ounces, generating revenue of over billion dollars.

quote:

Originally posted by sandyhunter:
I've met Ian Michler and even tried to speak with him about the merits of hunting as a conservation tool. He was a very nice guy, and he politely listened to my points, though he was ultimately dismissive of them, calling positive examples of hunting-based conservation "exceptions" and "outliers." Sadly, everything I've ever seen him write, whether before or after that conversation, has been aggressively anti-hunting, often on emotional/ethical grounds. You'd think someone who actually lives in Africa would understand the cultural and economic realities, even if they don't want to ever be involved in hunting.

He flies his clients from one wildlife hotspot to another and totally evades any responsibility to that particular country.