Stopping the slaughter: The economic rationale to anti-poaching in Tanzania

Abstract

Having experienced significant declines in its wildlife populations, especially the elephant, Tanzania has embarked on a nation-wide anti-poaching program. These efforts are similar to those in regional countries and informed by security discourses that claim poaching is an issue of (inter)national security. However, far more widespread than the contemporary “poacher-as-terrorist” trope used to rationalize militarized conservation in other locations is Tanzania’s categorization of the poacher as an “economic saboteur,” who threatens the national economy. In this article, I show how this categorization is one aspect of a broader economic rationale directing the country’s increasingly militarized anti-poaching response. Here, the logic is that wildlife is central to the tourism industry, and critical for the economy, and therefore must be secured from its poacher enemies. Highlighting various examples of this economic threat discourse, the article details how conservation organizations and governmental actors, aiming to “stop the slaughter” of Tanzania’s elephant populations, utilize an economic rationality in their efforts to defend the value of wildlife to the Tanzanian economy. Premised on the desire to expand the economy, this economic rationale authorizes both the intensification of militarized conservation policy and practices and contradictory partnerships that arise within it, including with the extractive industries.