Don’t you just hate it when you solve a problem and move on — only for the problem to start up again as soon as you’ve turned your back?

And of course, there’s one difference: it’s rather more resistant to solution than it was before.

It’s hard for any of us to deal with, whether it’s a medical problem, a family problem or a professional problem. But it’s doubly hard for a journalist, for this is a profession that thrives on the new.

To write a piece saying “the same old same old problem is keepin’ on keepin’ on” really doesn’t cut the mustard.

Out in Tanzania, the old problem — the one we all thought had been solved — is back again and twice as bad as before. Like an outbreak of retro fashion, like the second coming of a rock dinosaur, the great African wildlife problem is back in full swing.

Elephant poaching. So Eighties, so last century. But it has been upgraded to an ultra-cool 21st-century crime. The worst of it is happening in the Selous Game Reserve, the largest protected area in Africa. Protected! Ha! They are killing elephants at the rate of 50 and more a month, and the authorities, such as they are, are torching the carcasses to cover it up.

The Selous is one of Africa’s great destinations. Out there you can find luxury in the wilderness, out there you can have those great African experiences. It is a place where the African immensities are at their most immense. There is, then, a financial as well as a moral imperative behind the need to stop the killing.

But there is also a great deal of short-term money in killing elephants. Much of the ivory goes to China and Japan. In Japan, if you want to prove you are a fully jumped-up member of the middle classes, you must stamp your name with a chunk of a dead elephant. DNA technology has established that great quantities of this ivory come from Tanzania.

The finger is well and truly pointed. Tanzania has established itself as the leading country for the illegal slaughter and export of ivory.

Action on the ground is urgently needed, and that requires political will from the top. But in the heart of the Selous, the game scouts have been deprived of their allowances, and are disgruntled and demoralised. Many of them are not blind-eying the poachers, they are now taking an active part in poaching themselves.

In 1988, after ten years of intense poaching, there were 32,000 elephants in the Selous. By 1998, numbers were back up to 67,0000. The most recent counts, made last year, show that there are now 38,000. How long can the population sustain such a rate of loss? How long before recovery becomes impossible? Some estimates put this at two years.

It is not just the waste of good elephants that gets me; it is the fact that they are being killed for such a silly reason. Across Tanzania, and throughout the Selous, elephants are dying of vanity.

So what is Tanzania’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism doing about all this? It is seeking to stop the illegal trade — by making it legal. Tanzania, in a joint effort with Zambia, is making a serious attempt to get elephants off the list of prohibited species when CITES — the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species — next meets in March. This is ostensibly to allow them to make money from old stocks of ivory; it would also make things twice as easy for poachers and smugglers.

Yet Tanzania once ran one of the most devastating anti-poaching campaigns in history. At the end of the Eighties, the Tanzanian Government set up Operation Uhai, in which soldiers from the Tanzanian People’s Defence Force were deployed against the poachers. In 1988 alone, they confiscated 10,000 guns and 700 people were prosecuted; a triumph of action and organisation, but more especially, a triumph of political will. Tanzania is rightly proud of it. What the country needs now is the same sort of will and action. There are many people who care very much about the wildlife of Tanzania, not least because the tourism industry depends on it. I have been to the Serengeti; I have mingled with the wildebeest migration, perhaps the most extraordinary sight on Earth. I have had a fine time, and met many fine people.

But people involved in wildlife in Tanzania are not being listened to. No personal representation at the ministry is granted, no letter is answered. As with the game scouts, the problem is being at best blind-eyed. The elephants are being killed: and it seems that no one in authority wants to know. The Selous also holds an internationally important population of rhinos: how long before the poachers turn on them? Meanwhile, the retro fashion for elephant killing continues and the need for a second coming of Operation Uhai is more acute with every passing day.