The Selous Game Reserve is the largest protected wet wilderness area in Africa and indeed in the world. It is 54,000 square miles, making up almost 6% of Tanzania’s land surface.

The park was originally gazetted by the German colonial government in 1905 and was renamed by the British after World War I when Germany lost the war.

The park has undergone a number of changes and was originally created for hunters who were attracted to the huge elephant herds of southern Tanzania. After independence, Tanzania’s first President, Julius Nyerere, placed a high priority on conservation and protection of wildlife and expanded the Selous Game Reserve to its present boundaries.

The primary purpose of the Reserve was for hunting and it was not until the late 1960s that a small area in the northern part of the Reserve was allocated for safari tourism.