Selous Game Reserve, named by Frederick Courtney Selous was declared a World Heritage Site in 1982.  The Reserve was initially protected by the German Governor in 1896.  It is now one of the largest conservation areas in the World.

At the heart of the Selous Game Reserve, Tanzania’s largest river, the Rufiji, forms a complex network of channels, lakes and swamps that create one of the most outstanding ecological systems in East Africa. This river also splits the reserve into two different sections:

• The northern Selous covers only around 5% of the reserve’s total area. No hunting is allowed here; this area is dedicated exclusively to photographic safaris. Virtually all of the small exclusive camps which we offer operate in this area.
• The southern Selous, south of the Rufiji, is split up into a number of ‘hunting blocks’ – each of which typically cover about 1,000km². Expert Africa doesn’t offer hunting safaris.

Five years after Frederick Courtney Selous’ death, the British colonists incorporated a number of existing game reserves south of the river to extend the plains of the aptly named Selous. The Game Reserve reached its present size and shape in the 1940s, when the colonial government moved the remaining tribes out of the area to combat a sleeping sickness epidemic. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.

Hunting in the Selous

The vast majority, about 90%, of the Selous Reserve is used for trophy hunting. From what little we have seen of this area, there’s a lot of dense bush – and it is a much less interesting part of the reserve than the northern section.

Ro Scaverger Safaris doesn’t endorse hunting, or arrange any hunting trips, and so the only time we have ever sent travellers here was when one reserve – Lukulu Selous – decided to become a purely photographic area. Although this has now closed, we hope that as numbers of photographic visitors increase, some sections of the southern Selous will change from hunting to photographic safaris more permanently.