Tanzanian game scouts have been around for decades. Their main duty used to be to make sure the safari hunters stayed in their assigned territories and kept to their quotas. Although they still do that, nowadays their main job is to catch poachers.
    Recently, the Tanzanian government organized its game scouts into anti-poaching teams. Team leaders have been game scouts for five to ten years. The other six or seven men on each team are usually recent recruits with one year of training in shooting weapons, living in the bush, and tracking animals and people. ​

     Each man carries an AK-47 (which can be set to one shot, semi-automatic or fully automatic) and a small supply of ammunition. The men are required to account for each bullet. 
​     Each man has one change of official clothing, consisting of a green beret, a green uniform, a black belt and calf-high, black boots to protect against snakes. Each man also carries a T-shirt and a pair of shorts in a small bag. Some of them have flip-flops.

     The typical fly camp has a lean-to for shade, built from tree limbs and woven grass. The men do not have tables, chairs, refrigerators, generators, Tupperware or mosquito netting. They cook over an open fire and eat sitting on their haunches. At night they share the tents or sleep outside on tarps or blankets. They take turns staying awake so they will not be ambushed by poachers.

     To find poachers, the game scouts watch for vultures circling (which indicates a kill) and for smoke (which indicates a campfire). They go to the tops of the hills where they can listen for gun shots or look through binoculars for movement. They walk to the known waterholes and walk along the rivers because the poachers often wait for the elephants near water. The game scouts also follow up on tips they get from the local people living on the fringes of the reserve, the safari hunters inside the reserve and the pilots who fly over searching for poachers.

     Of course, game scouts are not permitted to kill poachers unless they are defending themselves, which does happen. Although there are no records showing how many poachers or game scouts have died in Tanzania, the International Game Rangers Federation reports that twenty-seven game scouts were killed across Africa in a recent twelve-month period (Chinhuru). Notably, African game scouts are not the only victims. In early 2016 poachers shot and killed a British helicopter pilot as he was tracking them near the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania (“Tanzania Slain”).

     Game scouts face serious obstacles. For instance, the rules of engagement put them at risk. As one scout says, “Upon sight we are not allowed to forcefully challenge the poachers. We can only stalk or arrest them. It’s unworkable. They fire at us, evade us” (Chinhuru). Game scouts are also vulnerable to “revenge killings;” when the poachers discover who arrested or killed their associates, they hunt them down and kill them. In addition, game scouts and their families “live in constant fear for the future” because, when a man does get killed, the family has funeral costs and an unexpected, immediate loss of income (Chinhuru). Finally, game scouts face emotional challenges because they must ask themselves if they should kill people in order to save elephants.