Environmentalists petitioned Tanzania on Monday to end elephant hunting in a vast wildlife reserve that straddles its border with Kenya.
About 2,000 elephants, including “super elephants” so called for their large tusks, roam the area in the wildlife conservation area known as Amboseli National Park on the Kenyan side and the Endoimiemte Wildlife Management Area on the Tanzanian side.
Unlike Kenya, where hunting is illegal, Tanzania allows elephant hunting for its valuable tusks and issues permits for the activity. This has led to cases of poachers killing Kenyan elephants across the border.
“The loss of these elephants is not just a blow to elephant populations but to our collective conservation efforts,” says Cynthia Moss, founder of the Amboseli Elephant Trust.
The petition, which was submitted by more than 50 wildlife conservation organizations in Africa, has been supported by 500,000 signatures.
Only 10 of the huge tusked elephants, each weighing about 45 kilograms, remain in the Amboseli ecosystem, which has the highest density of these animals, according to conservationists.
According to the petition, “hunting could cause the disappearance of super-tusked elephants within the next three years.”
In 1995, the two East African neighbors agreed that Tanzania would stop issuing hunting permits on its side of the reserve after poachers killed Kenyan elephants on the Tanzanian side. However, Tanzania began issuing permits again in 2022, the petition said.