CHAPTER XVIIITHE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AFRICAN GAME
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AFRICAN GAME
Thanks to the diligence with which sportsmen and field naturalists have recorded their observations in the haunts of big game, it is not at all difficult to forecast the immediate future of the big game of the world. We may safely assume that all lands well suited to agriculture, mining and grazing will become populated by rifle-bearing men, with the usual result to the wild mammals and birds. At the same time, the game of the open mountains everywhere is thinly distributed and easily exterminated. On the other hand, the unconquerable forest jungles of certain portions of the tropics will hold their own, and shelter their four-footed inhabitants for centuries to come.
On the open mountains of the world and on the grazing lands most big game is now being killed much faster than it breeds. This is due to the attacks of five times too many hunters, open seasons that are too long, and bag limits that are far too liberal. As an example, consider Africa Viewed in any way it may be taken, the bag limit in British East Africa is appallingly high. Notice this astounding array of wild creatures thateach huntermay kill under a license costingonly $250!
The grand total is a possible 300 large hoofed and horned animals representing44 species! Add to this all the lions, leopards,cheetahs, cape hunting dogs and hyaenas that the hunter can kill, and it will be enough to stock a zoological garden!
Quite a number of these species, like the sable antelope, kudu, Hunter's antelope, bongo and sitatunga are already rare, and therefore they are all the more eagerly sought.
Into the fine grass-lands of British East Africa, suitable for crops and stock grazing, settlers are steadily going. Each one is armed, and at once becomes a killer of big game. And all the time the visiting sportsmen are increasing in number, going farther from the Uganda Railway, and persistently seeking out the rarest and finest of the game. The buffalo has recovered from the slaughter by rinderpest only in time to meet the onset of oversea sportsmen.
Mr. Arthur Jordan has seen much of the big game of British East Africa, and its killing. Him I asked to tell me how long, in his opinion, the big game of that territory will last outside of the game preserves, as it is now being killed. He said, "Oh, it will last a long time. I think it will last fifteen years!"
Fifteen years!And this for the richest big-game fauna of any one spot in the whole world, which Nature has beenseveral million years in developing and placing there!
At present the marvelous herds of big game of British East Africa and Uganda constitute the grandest zoological spectacle that the world ever has seen in historic times. For such an area, the number of species is incredible, and until they are seen, the thronging masses of individuals are beyond conception. It is easy to say "a herd of 3,000 zebras;" but no mere words can give an adequate impression of the actual army of stripes and bars, and hoofs thundering in review over a grassy plain.
But the settlers say, "The zebras must go! They break through our best wire fences, ruin our crops, despoil us of the fruits of long and toilsome efforts, and much expenditure. We simply can not live in a country inhabited by herds of wild zebras." And really, their contention is well founded. When it is necessary to choose between wild animals and peaceful agriculture for millions of men, the animals must give way.
In those portions of the great East African plateau region that are suited to modern agriculture, stretching from Buluwayo to northern Uganda, the wild herds are doomed to be crowded out by the farmer and the fruit-grower. This is the inevitable result of civilization and progress in wild lands. Marauding battalions of zebras, bellicose rhinoceroses and murderous buffaloes do not fit in with ranches and crops, and children going to school. Except in the great game preserves, the swamps and the dense jungles it is certain that the big game of the whole of eastern Africa is foredoomed to disappear,—the largest and most valuable species first.
Five hundred years from now, when North America is worn out, and wasted to a skeleton of what it now is, the great plateau region of East Africabetween Cape Town and Lake Rudolph will be a mighty empire, teeming with white population. Giraffes and rhinoceroses now are trampling over the sites of the cities and universities of the future. Then the herds of grand game that now make Africa a sportsman's wonderland will exist only in closed territory, in books, and in memory.
MAP SHOWING THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE LION
Incidentally, it is also an Index of the Disappearance of African Big Game Generally. From an Article in the Review of Reviews, for August, 1912, by Cyrus C. Adams, and Based Largely upon the Exhaustive Studies of Dr. C.M. Engel, of Copenhagen.
From what has befallen in South Africa, we can easily and correctly forecast the future of the big game of British East Africa and Uganda. Less than fifty years ago, Cape Colony, Natal, Zululand, and everycountry up to the Zambesi was teeming with herds of big wild animals, just as the northern provinces now are. As late as 1890, when Rhodesia was taken over by the Chartered Company, and the capital city of Salisbury was staked out, an American boy in the Pioneer Corps, now Honorable William Harvey Brown, of Salisbury, wrote thus of the Gwibi Flats, near Salisbury:
"That evening I beheld on those flats a sight which probably will never again be seen there to the end of the world. The variety deploying before me was almost incredible! There, within the range of my vision were groups of roan, sable and tsessebi antelopes, Burchell zebras, [now totally extinct!] elands, reedbucks, steinbucks and ostriches. It was like Africa in the days of Livingstone. As I sat on my horse, viewing with amazement this wonderful panorama of wild life, I was startled by a herd that came galloping around a small hill just behind me."—("On the South African Frontier," p. 114.)
That was in 1890. And how is it to-day?
Salisbury is a modern city, endorsed by two lines of railway. The Gwibi Flats are farms. There is some big game yet, in Rhodesia south of the Zambesi, but to find it you must go at least a week's journey from the capital, to the remote corners that have not yet been converted into farms or mining settlements. North of the Zambesi, Rhodesia yet contains plenty of big game. The Victoria Falls station is a popular starting point for hunting expeditions headed northeast and northwest. In the northwest the game is yet quite in a state of nature. Unfortunately the Barotse natives of that region can procure from the Portuguese traders all the firearms and ammunition that they can pay for, and by treaty they retain their hunting rights. The final result will be—extermination of the game.
Elsewhere throughout Rhodesia the natives are not permitted to have guns and gunpowder,—a very wise regulation. In Alaska our Indians are privileged to kill game all the year round, and they have modern firearms with which to do it.
And how is it with the game of that day?
The true Burchell's zebra is now regarded asextinct! In Cape Colony and Natal, that once teemed with big game in the old-fashioned African way, they arecounting the individual wild animals that remain! Also, they are making game preserves, literally everywhere.
Now that the best remaining game districts of Africa are rapidly coming under British control, it is a satisfaction to observe that the governing bodies and executive officers are alive to the necessity of preserving the big game from actual extinction. Excepting German East Africa, from Uganda to Cape Colony the game preserves form an almost continuous chain. It is quite impossible to enumerate all of them; but the two in British East Africa are of enormous size, and are well stocked with game. South Africa contains a great many smaller preserves and a few specimen herds of big game, but that is about all. Except in a few localities the hunting of big game in that region is done forever.
The Western Districts Game and Trout Protective Association of South Africa recently, (1911), has made careful counts and estimates of the number of individual game animals remaining in Cape Colony, with the following result:
Big Game In The Cape Province
From information kindly placed at the disposal of the Association by the Government, it was found that the following varieties of big game are still found in the Province. The numbers, however, are only approximate:
Blesbok: About 400 in Steynsburg, and 35 in Queen's Town divisions.
Bontebok: About 30 in Bredasdorp and 45 in Swellendam divisions.
Buffalo: About 340 in Uitenhage, 120 in Alexandria, and 75 in Bathurst divisions.
Elephants: About 130 in Alexandria, 160 in Uitenhage, 40 in Bathurst, and 20 in Knysna divisions.
Gemsbok: About 2,450 in Namaqualand, 4,500 in Vryburg, 4,000 in Gordonia, and 670 in the Kenhardt, Mafeking and Barkly West divisions.
Koodoo: About 10,000, found chiefly in the divisions of Albany, Barkly West, Fort Beaufort, Hay, Herbert, Jansenville, Kuruman, Ladismith, Mafeking, Mossel Bay, Oudtshoorn, Riversdale, Steytlerville, Uitenhage, Victoria East and Vryburg.
Oribi: About 120, in the divisions of Albany and Alexandria.
Rietbok: About 170, in the Komgha division.
Zebra: About 560, most of which are to be found in the divisions of Cradock, George and Oudtshoorn. A few are to be found in the divisions of Uniondale and Uitenhage.
Springbok: Being migratory, it is difficult to estimate their number. In some years they are compelled by drought to invade the Province in large numbers. They are then seen as far south as Calvinia and Fraserburg. Large numbers are, however, fenced in on private estates in various parts of the Province.
Klipspringers: About 11,200, in the following divisions, viz.: Namaqualand, 6,559; Kuruman, 2,100; Steytlerville, 1,530; Oudtshoorn, 275; Hay, 250; Ladismith, 220; Graaff-Reinet, 119; Kenhardt, 66; and Cradock, 56.
Hartebeest: About 9,700, principally in the divisions of Vryburg, Gordonia, Kuruman, Mafeking, Kimberley, Hay and Beaufort West.
Wildebeest: About 3,450 in Vryburg, 80 each in Gordonia and Kuruman, 65 in Mafeking, 20 in Queen's Town, and a few in the Bredasdorp divisions.
Eland: About 12 in the Graaff-Reinet division, privately bred.
The above showing of the pitifully small numbers of the specimens that constitute the remnant of the big-game of the Cape suggest just one thing:—a universal close season throughout Cape Colony, and no hunting whatever for ten years. And yet, what do we see?
The Report from which the above census was taken contains half a column of solid matter, in small type, giving a list of theopen seasonsall over Cape Colony, during which killing may be done! So it seems that the spirit of slaughter is the same in Africa that it is in America,—kill, as long as there isanythingalive to kill!
This list is of startling interest, because it shows how closely the small remnants of big game are now marked down in South Africa.
In view of the success with which Englishmen protect their game whenonce they have made up their minds to do so, it is fair to expect that the herds now under protection, as listed above, will save their respective species from extinction. It is alarming, however, to note the wide territory covered by the deadly "open seasons," and to wonder when the bars really will be put up.
To-day, Mashonaland is a very-much-settled colony. The Cape to Cairo railway and trains de luxe long ago attained the Palls of the Zambesi, and now the Curator of the Salisbury Museum will have to search diligently in far off Nyassaland, and beyond the Zambesi River, to find enough specimens to fill his cases with representatives of the vanished Rhodesian fauna. Once (1892) the white rhinoceros was found in northern Rhodesia; but never again. In Salisbury, elands and zebras are nearly as great a curiosity as they are in St. Louis.
But for the discovery of white rhinoceroses in the Lado district, on the western bank of the Nile below Gondokoro, we would now be saying thatRhinoceros simusis within about ten specimens of total extinction.
From South Africa, as far up as Salisbury, in central Rhodesia, at least 99 per cent of the big game has disappeared before the white man's rifle. Let him who doubts this scan the census of wild animals still living in Cape Colony.
From all the other regions of Africa that are easily accessible to gunners, the animal life is vigorously being shot out, and no man in his senses will now say that the big game is breeding faster than it is being killed. The reverse is painfully true. Mr. Carl Akeley, in his quest for a really large male elephant for the American Museum found and looked overa thousandmales without finding one that was really fine and typical. All the photographs of elephant herds that were taken by Kermit Roosevelt and Akeley show a striking absence of adult males and of females with long tusks. There are only young males, and young females with small, short tusks. The answer is—the white ivory hunters have killed nearly all the elephants bearing good ivory.
The slaughter of big game is going on furiously in British East Africa because the Uganda Railway opens up the entire territory to hunters. Anyone, man or woman, who can raise $5,000 in cash can go there and make a huge "bag" of big game. With a license costing only $250 he can kill enough big game to sink a ship.
The bag limit in British East Africa is ruinously extravagant. If the government desires the extermination of the game, such a bag limit surely will promote that end. It is awful to think that for a petty sum any man may buy the right to kill 300headof hoofed and horned animals, of 44 species, not counting the carnivorous animals that also may be killed. That bag limit shouldimmediatelybe reduced75 per cent!
As matters stand to-day in British East Africa, the big game of the country, outside the three preserves, is absolutely certain to disappear, in about one-fourth of the time that it took South Africa to accomplish the same result. The reasons are obvious:—superior accessibility, more deadly rifles, expert professional guides, and a widespread craze for killing big game. With care and economy, BritishEast Africa should furnish good hunting for two centuries, but as things are going on to-day, twenty years will see a tremendous change for the worse, and a disappearance of game that will literally astonish the natives.
German East Africa and Uganda will not exterminate their quotas of big game quite so soon. The absence of railways is a great factor in game-existence. The Congo Free State contains game and sporting possibilities—on the unexplored uplandsbetween the rivers,—that are as yet totally unknown to sportsmen at large. We are accustomed to thinking of the whole basin of the Congo as a vast, gloomy and impenetrable forest.
There is to-day in Africa a vast reserve supply of grand game. It inhabits regions that are either unknown, or most difficult to penetrate. As a species in point, consider the okapi. Only the boldest and most persistent explorers ever have set foot in its tangled and miasmatic haunts. It may be twenty years before a living specimen can be brought out. The gorilla and the chimpanzee are so well protected by the density of their jungles that they never can be exterminated—until the natives are permitted to have all the firearms that they desire! When that day arrives, it is "good-night" to all the wild life that is large enough to eat or to wear.
The quagga and the blaubok becameextinctbefore the world learned that their existence was threatened! The giant eland, the sable antelope, the greater kudu, the bontebok, blessbok, the mountain and Burchell zebras, all the giraffes save that of Nigeria, the big waterbucks, the nyala, the sitatunga, the bongo, and the gerenuk—all will go in the same way, everywhere outside the game preserves. The buffalo, zebra and rhinoceros are especially marked for destruction, as annoyances to colonists. You who read of the killing of these species to-day will read of their total disappearance to-morrow. So long as the hunting of them is permitted, their ultimate disappearance is fixed and certain. It is not the way of rifle-shooting English colonists to permit herds of big game to run about merely to be looked at.
Naturally, the open plains of Africa, and the thin forests of the plateau regions, will be the first to lose their big game. In the gloomy fastnesses of the great equatorial forests, and other really dense forests wherever found, the elephants, the Derby eland, the bongo, the okapi, the buffaloes (of three species), the bush-pigs, the bushbucks and the forest-loving antelopes generally will live, for possibly one hundred years,—or until the natives secure plenty of modern firearms and ammunition. Whenever and wherever savages become supplied with rifles, then it is time to measure each big-game animal for its coffin.
The elephants of the great equatorial forest westward of the lake region will survive long after the last eastern elephant has bitten the dust. The pygmy elephant of the lower Congo region (Elephas pumilio) will be the last African elephant species to disappear—because it inhabits dense miasmatic jungles, its tusks are of the smallest size, and it has the least commercial value.