Loss of Millions Seen as Animals Are Killed : African Poachers Periling Tourist Trade

Big game is big business in parts of Africa.

Tourists pay millions of dollars a year to come and see Africa’s wildlife--and smugglers pay millions more in strictly illegal purchases of ivory and rhino horn from poachers.

In Tanzania, the government charges $2,500 for each elephant legally shot by a hunter.

That is just the start of the money the government makes from the scores of big game hunters who come here, the main jumping-off point for the rolling plains and desolate mountains of northern and western Tanzania.

Tanzania is one of the few places left where hunters can legally kill big game.

“We have enough animals here,” said Muhidin Ndolanga, general manager of the Tanzania Wildlife Corporation, the state-owned company that runs all the country’s hunting safaris.

“If people want to pay money to kill some, well then they might as well do it here,” he said.

However, as poachers step up the slaughter, governments across Africa are concerned that soon they may not have the animals that tourists want to see.

Kenya banned big game hunting in 1977 and this year said poachers would be shot on sight. Three have been shot already, and even more have been killed in Zimbabwe, the only other country with a shoot-to-kill policy toward poachers.

In Zambia, the government has been steadily cutting down the number of hunting safaris allowed to about half a dozen a year. A handful of countries, including Ethiopia and the Central African Republic, allow a small number of hunters.

But about 200 hunters a year come to Tanzania.

Their bag runs to about 100 elephant a year, in addition to game ranging from lions to baboons.

In contrast, in just one August raid, Tanzanian police seized the tusks of 198 elephants killed by poachers.

Poachers kill several thousand elephants every year.

Tanzania gets nothing of their earnings, but the government made $3.5 million from its hunting safaris in 1987.

Ndolanga said he expects income will rise this year.

Only some of this comes from the government’s killing fees--$2,500 a head for elephant, $1,400 for lion and leopard and $365 for a zebra. Cheetah, rhinoceros and giraffe may not be killed.

To shoot elephants or the big cats, hunters must sign up for at least a 21-day safari, at a cost of between $560 and $825 per person per day, depending on how large their party is and how many professionals are hired to help them find their animals.

Every change of camp costs another $1,850, while transport to the hunting grounds ranges from $1,200 to $2,100 per vehicle.

Chartered aircraft, liquor and soft drinks are extra, as is the $1,000 fee for packing, documenting and shipping each trophy the hunter decides to keep.

The hunters, who mostly come from the United States, are the big spenders of Tanzania’s tourist industry.

They accounted for more than a fifth of the $15.3 million Tanzania earned from its 118,000 foreign tourists during the year to the end of June--a fraction of neighboring Kenya’s projected 1988 earnings of $385 million from 700,000 visitors.

But the poaching is threatening to wipe out this lucrative source of income.

Tanzania’s elephant population has been more than halved over the last decade to an estimated 77,000, largely because of poaching, Kenya-based conservationist Ian Douglas-Hamilton says.

The population is dropping by 5.5% a year, which is quick enough to wipe out Tanzania’s elephants by the end of the century.