TANZANIA BLAMES SAFARIS FOR WILDLIFE DECLINE.

Byline: The New York Times

Can a country have too many tourists?

Tanzania is beginning to think so.

Throughout its impoverished socialist years of the 1970s and early 1980s, Tanzania looked longingly to Kenya, its northern neighbor, and coveted the safari trade that pumped millions in hard currency into the Kenyan economy. Now, after liberalizing its economy, Tanzania is seeing its own tourism flourish, especially in the wildlife-rich parks along its northern border with Kenya - the Serengeti, the Ngorongoro Crater, Arusha and Mount Kilimanjaro.

Tanzanian officials are mindful, however, that Kenya has seen a significant decline in wildlife over the last decade, partly because the influx of tourists has undermined the viability of many habitats. Worried that the onslaught of visitors might destroy the ecology of these regions, they have embarked on a program to ``put on the brakes,'' said Juma Ngasongwa, the tourism minister.

The idea is to steer some tourists away from favorite wildlife reserves like the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro to more remote and less popular spots in the southern half of the country. At present, about 80 percent of the 300,000 people who visit Tanzania troop up to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro.

``Although we are a very poor nation, we are refusing to accept the temptations of quick riches,'' Ngasongwa said.

To that end, a moratorium has been placed on new hotels, lodges and tented camps in the Ngorongoro and the Serengeti, Ngasongwa said. The country has also introduced a new pricing system for hotels and game parks aimed at attracting well-heeled tourists in search of privacy and discouraging package-tour safarigoers, he said. The goal is to encourage more adventure-style excursions using tented camps and walking tours and to avoid building more concrete hotels.

Officials in Tanzania hope to raise the number of tourist arrivals to 500,000 by the year 2000, but to spread them out among less-traveled places. More visitors are envisioned at the Selous Game Reserve, for instance, a relatively untouched wilderness twice the size of Denmark. The biggest impediment to luring tourists to remote reserves has been the lack of roads and airports throughout most of the country. To rectify that problem, the European Union is financing a 10-year, $200 million program to improve infrastructure, and the World Bank is providing $700 million to improve highways and airports.

The new policy also involves promoting cultural and historical sites along the coast, like Bagamoyo, northwest of Dar es Salaam. An old slave-trading post, the town will become a center of tribal art. Nearby caves with prehistoric paintings and a gorge where early human remains were discovered will be made more accessible as well.

Tanzania's decision follows a similar shift by the Kenyan Wildlife Service, though for a different reason. Like Tanzania, Kenya is concerned that too many tourists each year are visiting a handful of parks - Amboseli, Tsavo and the Masai Mara - where they can see the ``big five'': lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and black rhinoceros. But Kenyan officials think the country can absorb up to 8 million visitors a year if they are spread out among the country's little-known reserves and parks, said William Meda, a spokesman for the Wildlife Service.

Meda acknowledged that Kenya has been losing business to other African destinations. Having hit a peak of 906,000 visitors in 1989, Kenya's number of safari-seekers has been falling steadily, to 680,000 in 1995. Much of that business appears to be going to South Africa, which is no longer a pariah state politically and has better roads, telephones and law enforcement. South Africa has seen a huge jump in its visitors, from 1 million in 1992 to 3 million for the year ending in March 1996.

One reason for the shift is crime. While South Africa is experiencing its own crime problems, they are primarily concentrated in urban areas. Both Kenya and Tanzania are suffering from a rising number of carjackings and armed robberies, many of which are taking place in game parks.

Tanzania has been particularly hard hit in recent weeks. Two dozen American and Italian tourists were hijacked by armed robbers in the Serengeti on Sept. 13. The bandits opened fire on several minibuses, seriously injuring two people. A few days later, a desk clerk was fatally shot in a holdup at the Hotel Impala in Arusha.

Ngasongwa concedes that crime in northern Tanzania has caused some consternation among tour operators. The government has responded with stepped-up park patrols supported by military helicopters and planes.

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Photo: Tanzania is trying to steer safaris to less-traveled game areas, hoping to restore wildlife habitats disturbed by too many tourists.