Though Selous has been visited by much fewer WHS enthusiasts than the other Tanzanian natural entries on the WH List, the park is by no means difficult to visit. Selous is located on a tourist trail, it is visited by many and there is no problem finding a safari there from Dar es Salaam or Zanzibar. Most of the visitors come there with small light aircraft from Zanzibar. You can get there from Dar by plane, but many tourists come also by land. The route takes about 5 hours and is terrible in places - I definitely do not recommend it without a decent 4x4. The accommodation base at the park itself is quite large, although due to the crisis caused by the pandemic, some places have been closed - temporarily or even permanently. I stayed at the African Safari Lodge, which I can recommend for its good cuisine.

At the beginning I would like to add that although the entry on the UNESCO list is still called Selous Game Reserve, the national park is not called that anymore. As part of the decolonization of names, at the request of president Magufuli, it was renamed into Nyerere National Park. This is how almost everything in Tanzania is named after the country's first president.

Selous is the largest national park in Tanzania, occupying 55 thousand square kilometers, which is about the same as the entire territory of Croatia. However, tourist traffic is concentrated mainly in its north-eastern part. A standard trip to Selous includes three elements - a boat safari on the Rufiji river, a short guided walking safari, and a standard car safari. All three are highly recommendable, although in my case only the car safari took place inside the park's gates. I started with a boat safari which is the best chance to see Nile crocodiles, hippos and water birds up close. In a pedestrian safari, you can even come across an elephant or a hyena, although a guide with a spear and a guard with a firearm make mzungu feel safe at any time.

The basis of the visit is of course the car safari and I tell you, there is probably no better place than Selous to observe the wildlife up close. Not because there is the most of it here (in terms of the density of animals, nothing beats Ngorongoro), but because Selous - as probably the only national park in Tanzania - can still be explored off-road. I was told that although off-road driving has been officially banned, the park management has yet to establish official roads and until this happens the ban is being ignored by everyone. Thanks to this, you can get very close to all animals that are not shy. In Selous you can meet most of the African animals, although, for example, rhinoceros are kept only in strict reserves. The peculiarity of the park is the East African wild dog, but I did not have the opportunity to see it during the 10-hour safari. From the big five you can easily see buffalo, elephant and lion, and from other animals - dozens of hippos, giraffes and antelopes and other smaller ones.

Although I liked the visit to Selous very much, I have doubts whether this park will remain on the UNESCO list for a long time. The current Tanzanian president Magufuli not only changed the name of the park, but also approved the construction of a giant hydroelectric power plant in its center.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Nyerere_Hydropower_Station

The project to build a power plant here has existed for a long time, but all previous presidents bowed to the global public alarming about the threat to wildlife. Magufuli had no such scruples. While European and North American companies boycotted the project, Tanzania found partners in Turkey and China. Currently, a wide road runs through the center of the park, on which trucks and cement tanks pass every few minutes. Sorry to see the animals scared by the roar of trucks. Of course, the greatest environmental impact will be from closing the dam and creating a huge artificial lake in the park. If that's not an argument for taking the park off the list, then I don't know what is. The magnitude of the infringement appears to be comparable to that of the Omani oryx case and much greater than that of the German Elbe Valley.