Nyerere

TANAPA's own slogan for the park is the land of the mighty Rufiji, and it is the right place to start. The Rufiji is Tanzania's largest river. It crosses the north of the park slow and wide, and on the flat coastal plain — most of the northern sector lies below 100 metres — it wanders, splits and leaves water behind: oxbow lakes, side channels, swamps and sandbanks that shift from one rainy season to the next.

That water is what makes Nyerere different from the parks of the north. Instead of short grass to the horizon you get a patchwork of lake, palm, floodplain and woodland, and the game comes down to the water rather than spreading across the plains. The lakes beside the river — ringed with drowned trees and palms — are where most visitors spend their time.

It also means you can see the park from a boat. Boat safaris on the Rufiji and the lakes are an official TANAPA activity, and they put you at eye level with things a vehicle only looks down on: hippo in large pods, Nile crocodile on the sandbanks, elephant and buffalo drinking at the edge, and a long list of waterbirds. TANAPA notes that in the dry season the crocodiles, which live mainly on catfish, add to their diet the animals that come down to drink.

Away from the river the park rises into miombo woodland and low hills, up to about 400 metres. Almost all of the tourism happens north of the Rufiji, where the lodges and camps have always been; the south of the park is enormous and very seldom visited.

The animal people come for is the African wild dog. It is one of the most endangered large carnivores on the continent, gone from most of its old range, and the Selous has long held one of the largest surviving populations. TANAPA goes further and calls the park the last true stronghold for the species in Africa. We cannot verify that exact claim, but it is certainly among the best places in the world to see wild dog. TANAPA's brochure adds that they are most often found along the escarpment.

The other speciality is antelope that the northern circuit does not have. TANAPA lists sable, roan, Lichtenstein's hartebeest, greater kudu and the brindled (Nyasaland) gnu, a wildebeest of the south with a white chevron across its nose. Alongside them are the familiar species: elephant, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, impala, waterbuck, lion, leopard and spotted hyena.

More than 440 bird species have been recorded. The ones birders travel for live along the wooded riverbanks — Pel's fishing owl and the white-backed night heron among them — and the sandbanks, channels and oxbow lakes carry waterbirds in large numbers.

What is missing is rhino. TANAPA's website says the park holds "most of the Big Five except rhinos", although its printed brochure still lists them. The history explains the contradiction: the Selous held around 2,000 black rhino when it became a World Heritage Site in 1982, only 45 to 60 by 2010, and the latest aerial census did not count them at all. Do not come expecting to see one.

The protected area is older than the country. The German governor Hermann von Wissmann first declared it in 1896, and it became a hunting reserve in 1905. Under British rule it was consolidated in 1922 and named after Frederick Courteney Selous, the big-game hunter turned naturalist.

Selous is also buried here. A captain in the 25th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, he was shot by a German sniper on 4 January 1917, during the East African campaign of the First World War, at the age of 65. He lies under a tamarind tree near where he fell, in the Beho Beho area of the north, beneath a plain plaque: Captain F.C. Selous D.S.O., 25th Royal Fusiliers, killed in action 4.1.17.

UNESCO inscribed the Selous Game Reserve as a World Heritage Site in 1982, when it covered roughly 50,000 km². For most of its history it was split between photographic tourism in the north, along the Rufiji, and trophy-hunting blocks across the rest.

In 2019 the government divided it. The photographic north and a long stretch of country to the south became Nyerere National Park, 30,893 km², named after Tanzania's first president, Julius Nyerere. Hunting blocks do not apply inside the national park. The remainder, roughly 20,000 km² in the east, stays Selous Game Reserve. The World Heritage listing still carries the old name.

Two things put the Selous on UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger, and it is still there.

The first was poaching. In 1976 the reserve held about 109,000 elephants, then the largest population in the world. By 2013 it was about 13,000 — a fall of 66% in the four years from 2009 alone. It was listed as in danger in 2014. Anti-poaching work was stepped up, and the 2022 aerial census put elephant numbers at roughly 15,500 to 20,000, stable since 2018. But the population has not started to recover, which UNESCO reads as a sign that poaching continues, and IUCN's 2025 assessment rates the site's conservation outlook as critical.

The second is the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Station, built at Stiegler's Gorge on the Rufiji inside the protected area. The dam is 134 metres high, its reservoir covers about 1,200 km² and stretches about 100 km, and its nine turbines give 2,115 MW — which in the year to 31 May 2026 supplied about 45% of the electricity on the national grid. Construction began in 2019, all nine turbines were running by April 2025, and President Samia Suluhu Hassan formally commissioned it on 22 August 2026.

For the country it is its largest power station. For the ecosystem, UNESCO and IUCN regard it as incompatible with World Heritage status: it flooded riverine forest, and it changes the flow of water downstream to the Rufiji delta, a Ramsar wetland with one of the largest mangrove forests in the world. IUCN's assessment records a 2021 recommendation that the site be deleted from the World Heritage List altogether. Both views are fair to hold, and a visitor should know the debate exists.

By air is how most visitors arrive. There are scheduled light-aircraft flights from Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro and Arusha to airstrips inside the park, including Mtemere, Matambwe, Kiba, Beho Beho and Siwandu, and the hop from Dar takes under an hour. By road it is roughly 250 km from Dar es Salaam via Kibiti, about six hours to the Mtemere or Matambwe gates. The speed limit inside is 50 km/h.

Fees. On TANAPA's published 2023/24 schedule, Nyerere shares the top band with the Serengeti: USD 70 per non-East African adult per day in peak season and USD 60 in low, USD 20 for children aged 5 to 15, and TZS 10,000 for East African citizens. All of it is exclusive of 18 per cent VAT, so what you actually pay is USD 82.60 and USD 70.80. TANAPA's low season is only 15 March to 15 May; everything else counts as peak.

Everything else is charged separately. A boating safari is USD 20 per person; a walking safari USD 20 for one to four hours or USD 25 for longer; a night game drive USD 50. The park guide fee is USD 40 per group per day — double the rate in most parks. If you stay in a lodge or camp inside the park, a concession fee of USD 60 per night (July to September) or USD 50 (the rest of the year) is added on top.

Staying. There are lodges and permanent tented camps, mostly along the river and lakes in the north; public campsites at USD 30 per person per night; special and seasonal campsites at USD 60 in July–September and USD 50 otherwise; and fly-camps at USD 50. TANAPA notes that guided walking safaris with nights in light fly-camps are popular.

When to go. June to October is dry, the game concentrates at the water and the tracks are passable. The short rains fall in November and December, there is a partial dry spell in January and February, and the long rains run until early May. Temperatures range from about 13 °C to 41 °C.