SELOUS GAME RESERVE.
Selous Game Reserve is named after Frederick Courtney Selous, the famous 19th century hunter and explorer whose books were bestsellers in Victorian England.
The Selous is the largest wildlife sanctuary on the African continent covering a staggering 54,600 square kilometres of southern Tanzania. It consists of vast tracts of archetypal east African wilderness containing perhaps the greatest concentration of big game left on earth. Only in its northern extremity in the area of forest, set around the mighty Rufiji River, has the Selous suffered the incursion of man, butit is still home to a bewildering array of birds and mammals.
This is the Africa experienced by many of its early explorers – raw and untouched. Your game-drives may take you to the lakes where, in the dry season, the herbivores gather to drink and the carnivores lie in wait. Walks accompanied by an armed guide offer the opportunity to see Cape buffalo, elephant and perhaps a lion and a boat safari provides you with the thrill of getting close to hippos and Nile crocodiles.
Although poaching affected the elephant population in the eighties, careful management and conservation schemes have brought their numbers back to a healthy level. There are also large numbers of wild dog, lion, leopard and many other species.