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Covering 45,000km² of wilderness, with grassy plains, open woodland, mountains and forests, the Selous Game Reserve (pronounced ‘seloo’, and named after the great explorer and hunter, Frederick Courtney Selous) is Africa’s largest game reserve. It’s about three times the size of South Africa’s Kruger National Park, and twice the size of the Serengeti National Park . In a fitting tribute, it is also one of Tanzania’s three World Heritage Sites.

Introduction to a Selous Safari

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.

Access to the Selous Game Reserve

Getting to the Selous is easy, it is served by light aircraft flights from Dar and Ruaha daily – a flight takes about 45 minutes from Dar, and about 90 minutes from Ruaha.
Park entrance fees are (at time of writing) US$75 per person per day (US$50 for park fees plus US$25 conservation charge). Current park fees are usually included by us in the price of a trip here.

History of the Selous

Selous is named in honour of the Englishman Frederick Courtney Selous, who lived and hunted in the region from 1871 for around forty years. He gained the reputation as the most accomplished hunter of his age and was also known for his writing, most notably he was the author of ‘A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa’. Selous was the right-hand man to Cecil John Rhodes in his campaign to annex present-day Zimbabwe to the British Empire, he also achieved brief notoriety in 1899 for speaking out against England’s war on the Boer Republics of South Africa.
When the First World War broke out Selous, at the age of 60, was made Captain of the 25th Royal Fusiliers, winning a DSO in 1916. With his detailed knowledge of the bush, Selous led the chase after the German guerrilla army that presided in southern Tanzania. On New Year’s Day in 1917, Selous was shot dead by a sniper close to the banks of the Beho Beho River where he remains buried today, near Beho Beho Safari Camp.
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.
Expert Africa 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.

Activities in Selous

One of the main attractions of the Selous is the variety of game viewing activities available here. They all offer trips through the reserve by boat, vehicle and on foot. Boat safaris allow you to drift on the lakes and channels, approaching birds and animals closely, including crocodile and hippo. All of the lodges also offer guided game walks for those aged 12 and over (16 at Lake Manze and Impala), which come with a real likelihood of encountering big game such as; elephant, buffalo and even lion on foot. Game drives are reliably rewarding, especially towards the end of the dry season, when large mammals concentrate around the five lakes. Better still are the overnight fly-camping excursions offered by some of the camps, which entail sleeping out beneath a glorified mosquito net in the middle of the bush.

The wildlife of Selous Game Reserve

Animals

The prodigiously large mammal populations found here, support the claim that the Selous is the greatest surviving African wilderness. Buffalo numbers are estimated at 120,000–150,000, and the reserve’s 40,000 hippo and 4,000 lion are probably the largest such populations on the continent. The Selous also harbors an estimated 100,000 wildebeest, 35,000 zebra, 25,000 impala and significant herds of giraffe, greater kudu, waterbuck, bushbuck, Lichtenstein’s hartebeest and eland. It is also one of the most important sanctuaries in Africa for the endangered African wild dog, sable and puku antelope. There are also huge populations of crocodile, hippo, spotted hyena and leopard to name just a few of the big game species found here. Historically Selous has been home to a large proportion of Tanzania’s elephants population, but unfortunately there has been a marked increase in poaching over recent years and elephant numbers are now much lower than they once were.

Birdlife

More than 440 bird species have been recorded in the Selous. On the lakes you’ll find pink-backed pelicans, African skimmers and giant kingfishers. The sandbanks are home to carmine and white-fronted bee-eater colonies whilst pairs of fish eagle, palmnut vulture, ibises and palm swifts nest in the borassus palms. Other waterbirds found in the Selous include: yellow-billed stork, white-crowned and spur-winged plovers, various small waders, pied and malachite kingfishers. Pairs of trumpeter hornbill and purple-crested turaco can also be seen between the riparian trees. Also worth looking out for among a catalogue of egrets and herons is the Malagasy squacco heron, a regular winter visitor, while the elusive Pel’s fishing owl often emerges at dusk to hawk above the water.