Nyerere (ex Selous)

The Selous Game Reserve was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1982 under criteria (ix) and (x). Its origin lies in four German colonial hunting reserves established between 1896 and 1912, and it took its name in 1922 in memory of the explorer Frederick Courteney Selous, killed in action at Beho Beho in 1917. Its boundaries were extended through the twentieth century to more than 50,000 km², one of the largest protected areas in Africa.

In 2019 the northern part was separated off as Nyerere National Park, given over to photographic tourism, while the southern zone remained a game reserve. That division means two different administrations and two regimes of permitted activities within the same World Heritage property.

On 18 June 2014 the World Heritage Committee, meeting in Doha, placed the property on the List of World Heritage in Danger because of mass poaching: the elephant population had fallen from some 109,000 animals to little more than 15,000 in under forty years, and black rhinoceros had all but disappeared. In 2016 a second threat was added with the start of work on the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Project, at Stiegler's Gorge, on the Rufiji river and in the very heart of the property: the Committee declared it incompatible with World Heritage status. The 2022 aerial census indicated that most large mammal populations are holding steady against 2018, and the proportion of elephant carcasses fell from the 16 % of 2018 to far lower levels.