Chapter 20
Figure 20.1
Assemblage of large grazing herbivores thronging Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania.
Whither Africa’s Large Mammals?
Other animals have been part of our world since long before our lineage became human. We initially feared carnivores, but later boldly collected bones from the remains of their prey. Over time we developed the capacity to kill big herbivores ourselves, ultimately even those as large as elephants. Our ancestors depicted these animals on the walls of the caves and rock shelters that they occupied, both in Africa and in Europe, and wove them into folklore and ritual. Today, many people spend large sums of money to travel to places where they can still view big wild animals living under fairly natural conditions. Some of those who have become super-rich invest their wealth in buying wildlife preserves where they can retire far from city life.
My own involvement with Africa’s large mammals has deep psychological roots. I avidly read books about various animals as a schoolboy and longed to meet up with them where they lived, a wish fulfilled when at last my family visited Kruger National Park. Then I aspired to be allowed to step aside from the confines of a vehicle to share their world more intimately. Amazingly, I achieved this wish professionally. My research activities enabled me to investigate what these animals ate and follow where they wandered, on foot or overland by vehicle. I was able to visit wildlife reserves for ‘work’ reasons through much of Africa, absorbing experiences that money could not buy. I have drifted through moonlit nights trailing courting white rhinos, while gazing incredulously at satellites blinking across the starry sky. I have got to know kudu families individually, registering their births and deaths annually over a decade. I followed closely behind habituated young kudus, employing digital technology to record each bite they took from various plant species between sunrise and sunset. Guided by GPS tracking devices, I traced sites where sable antelope had stopped to feed or to rest in the back woods that they inhabited. I searched for wildebeest and gemsbok across the vast Kalahari from spotter planes so as to tag some to record how they coped with extremes of temperature and aridity. I have shed some of my fear upon meeting lions and leopards, because those encountered either ran away or tried to hide, rather than attempting to eat me. I have dodged round elephants in order to inspect what they had done to trees, large and small. My life has been hugely enriched through sharing the worlds experienced by these wild animals, the ‘umwelt’ within which my hominin ancestors evolved. My fascination with these animals surely has deep genetic roots.
But nowadays, large wild mammals are confined mostly to designated national parks and other formally protected areas. The domesticated ungulates that have displaced their wild counterparts are represented by just six species: cattle, sheep, goats, horses, donkeys and pigs. Only donkeys had an African origin. Pastoral lifestyles tolerating wild animals have become displaced by farms and feedlots fattening domestic animals for slaughter. Visitors to Africa’s national parks gaze out of car windows, enthralled by the proximity of fearsome lions, leopards, rhinos and elephants. Eco-tourists spend enormous amounts of money to be allowed to spend an hour near a group of gorillas, or chimpanzees (Figure 20.2). If rich enough, they may even be allowed to embark on a ‘walking safari’ led by a game ranger with a gun. Do the many people who have not had such experiences with wildlife miss them? Quite a few do so, judging by the prevalence of luxurious game lodges hosting them. But the vast majority of humankind remains oblivious to the rich natural heritage that their distant ancestors experienced so intimately.
Figure 20.2
Animal encounters. Looking across the evolutionary chasm separating human from ape: gorilla watching in Uganda – one primate contemplating another.
Do we really need to set aside land to conserve the big game heritage that still persists in Africa, at the expense of human settlements? Early Europeans and Native Americans did away with most of their large mammals shortly after their settlement on these continents. Some of their descendants are now trying to restore what they have lost by ‘re-wilding’, i.e. bringing back some of the big animals or their nearest equivalents. What would this achieve? The environments that these animals formerly inhabited cannot be reinstated, because they were partly created by the megaherbivores that had inhabited them, long gone. African counterparts could be assembled in vast zoos, but to the detriment of incentives for Africans to conserve the animals that they have uniquely retained in their back country. With climates shifting and human settlements pressing up against the boundaries of protected areas, wildlife is becoming squeezed out.1 Governments tend to value wild animals primarily as a drawcard attracting eco-tourists and hence the local employment that they generate, plus hefty fees paid into state coffers. But this should not be denigrated. The experience is enriching, even if engaged only through a car window or the back of a safari vehicle, because animals remain genuine in what they do, most of the time.
However, there remain vast areas of Africa where people choose not to live because these places do not offer prospects for more than bare sustenance. People are shifting progressively towards city living, opening more lightly inhabited back country where wildlife can be retained. In Europe, deer and wolf numbers are resurging, partly because fewer people want to hunt. Although a similar tendency is developing in Africa, far too many people remain mired in rural poverty with few options to move. This situation is likely to be worsened by global climate change and viral pandemics. I write under the lockdown imposed to restrict the spread of Covid-19.
If Africa’s wildlife is to be preserved across sufficiently vast areas in our changing world, the pressing priority is for people living alongside wild animals to benefit economically, improve their livelihoods, educate their children, empower women with controls over their fertility and settle within cities. If material needs are addressed effectively, the spiritual value of wildlife to humankind can be retained into the new era labelled the ‘Anthropocene’.
We all had an African ancestry. Only in Africa can we aspire to experience this magical world thronged with animals large and small, continuing to exist in reality rather than merely in recesses of our minds (Figure 20.2).
REFERENCE
1.Veldhuis, MP, et al. (2019) Cross-boundary human impacts compromise the Serengeti–Mara ecosystem. Science 363:1424–1428.