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The lion roared. A thunderous, gut-freezing roar. Followed by a ferocious growl, just to make sure that the adrenaline would reach explosive heights. Again, the thunderstorm effect, menacing, rumbling in the distance. This was a different storm. I could see the massive head. Its contour. Did I notice the eyes, yellow and green? A lion. Male and twenty yards away. Covered by a dense, green, bush. Since I am an admirer of Hemingway’s adventures, I was aware that the author estimated that a lion could run hundred yards in four seconds. I did not need my arithmetic to figure out how close I was to pain or even death.
The tracker, gun bearer, and the skinner, who were walking next to me in a leisurely pace on the potential path to tragedy, suddenly turned around and started to run. I followed. I had lost contact with the professional hunter and a game ranger armed with an AK 47, who were advancing, trying to find a spot to prepare a gazelle bait for a lion hunt. We reached our small truck. I climbed onto the platform. The African helpers took rifles out of the gun site and ran into the direction we had come from. I resisted heroism. I remained on the military style lorry. Suddenly, I was alone. Lost in Africa’s jungle. My first day on a safari. Four weeks to follow, if I would survive stampeding elephants, nasty rhinos and some hungry crocodiles. I forgot the leopard, an animal with razorblade paws and, when wounded, with an aggressive temperament.
NO MORE THOUGHTS OF THIS MYSTERIOUS, ENCHANTING JUNGLE
Sounds like drama. Drama it was. Suddenly, I noticed movement, silence in motion. A lioness advanced towards the truck. Slowly, accompanied by three cubs, which made my situation not much better. A touching scenario in a Disney movie, but this was reality--she would be ready to jump to protect her cubs. I was unarmed. In the jungle, a notebook does not count as a weapon. I remembered Hemingway’s story, “the short happy life of Francis Macomber.” Francis, a wealthy recreational hunter, is shot by his wife in a planned accident on an African safari. If the white hunter returned to the truck, facing the lioness, would he fire from the hip?
No more thought of this mysterious, enchanting African bush and unending herds of noble elephants and gazelles in formation, moving across the savannah like ocean waves. Cute monkeys, which for the first time amused me as a child in the Hamburg zoo. No smile this time.
It was hot, unbearably hot. The lioness circled the truck. No rush. I froze. Why did I accept the assignment to report on the last White Hunters, the end of glorious safaris? The heirs of Carl Georg Schillings, hunter, naturalist and one of the first wildlife photographers, blowing up powder to get light for nightly shots. He wrote a bestseller, in 1906, With flashlight and rifle. Bill Judd, one of the greatest hunters, killed at age 57, by an elephant, which was brain shot by his son. Philip Percifal, who hunted with Ernest Hemingway, and was used by the author as inspiration for his character “Pop” in the Green Hills of Africa. Denys Finch Hatton, a splendid beau (lover of Karen Blixen, the author of “Out of Africa”), who crashed his De Haviland “Gypsie Moth” in 1931 after take-off at Voi railway junction and burned to death. Harry Selbi, who hunted with writer Robert Ruark and became, after the publication of Horn of the Hunter, for a short time the best-known hunter of the world.
The lioness disappeared as she had arrived. In slow motion. The hunter returned minutes later, furious. He searched for me and had the lion, male, in sight. Just like the lion had me in sight. He did not shoot. The professional hunter (of German origin) did not know what had happened to me and he turned even angrier when I explained that I ran, just as the skinner, gun bearer and the tracker. Stupid, suicidal, he moaned. For a lion, anything, anyone running is dinner or lunch. Good to know. I would not run anymore. Promise. But soon, at another safari, I was on my belly, flat in the dust, 100 yards from a herd of buffalo. The hunter was leading a hunting guest, an American ambassador, towards a possible trophy. A buffalo. He told me to stay out of sight, staying close to the skinner and the gun bearer and not to cough, not to scratch. Stay down, really, crawl into the ground. I did not contemplate about the poisonous snakes. I was facing an enemy, an animalistic tank brigade.
AS SOON THE HUNTER WOULD FIRE THE BUFFALOS WOULD STAMPEDE
The herd divided itself, and three, five dozen of the ferocious animals moved towards our position. I heard them chewing. I noticed thousands of flies on their colossal heads. The large horns. Larger than in Hollywood films. Pointed horns and mean, really mean faces. The Africans suddenly moved silently backwards, ever so silent. We had to get out of the way of the buffalo group. As soon as the hunter would fire, they would stampede. There was no rock, no tree between the animals and us. Again, I asked myself why I did venture into Africa. The buffalos seemed to follow us. I could see them clearly and, fortunately, the wind did not change and the hunters did not fire, because the professional hunter did not see an animal with an impressive, record-breaking horn.
Adventures 25 years ago from today. Memories of the Mwansa Safari Camp on the Zambezi River. Hemingway committed suicide, with a gun, what else, and Africa’s wildlife is more threatened than ever before. Safaris are still organized, a 200-million-dollar-a-year business. Tanzania, South Africa, Botswana, and Mozambique all offer safaris, and their safaris include the big five: rhinos, elephants, leopards, buffalo and lions. These dangerous animals are drawing international recreation hunters into the bush, as one hundred years ago, or fifty, when Hemingway had glorified the hunts and safaris, which often took off for months or even longer than a year. Theodore Roosevelt, the former President of the USA (in 1909), hired 500 porters to carry his luggage into the bush, plus dozens and dozens of additional camping and hunting staff. Hollywood projected African elephant and lion hunters as heroes, a mixture of astronaut and Formula 1 driver. Stewart Granger starred in “King Solomon’s mines,” Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner in “The snows of Kilimanjaro.” Men without fear. Hundreds tried their luck and risked their lives. Women would fall, just as elephants, which the brave hunters killed in close encounter, usually 30 yards distance, to hit the small brain, hidden behind the ears. The White Hunters would meet at the “Norfolk” hotel in Nairobi, organize champagne safaris, choosing the animals to kill—a lion, for example, the king of the jungle, who had to be approached at a 50 meters distance for a perfect shot to be placed.
Former professional hunter Brian Herne explained in his bestseller White Hunters: The Golden Age of African Safaris: “If the first shot is not well placed on a lion, it will trigger a swift adrenaline response. If that first shot is not immediately fatal, the lion will quickly become the most formidable terrestrial animal on earth.” One more undisputed fact about an aroused lion: “He is likely to be extremely brave. In the opinion of many experienced hunters a wounded lion is the most dangerous of the big five—the bravest of the brave.” The choice is simple. Recreational hunters know the names of the experienced hunters and they pay them well. They are the backups, ready to protect clients overcome with fear and missing their shot. Some of the hunters turned into legends of their time, since they never feared death, as for example Frederique Banks, who killed a thousand elephants with his “Mannlicher-Schoenauer,” 700 buffalos, and still had time to write a bestseller, The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter. His competitor Jim Sutherland, who hunted in Portuguese East Africa, German East Africa, Belgian Congo and French Congo, shot between 1300 to 1600 elephants, just for the ivory. Henry Hartley, who did all his hunts from horseback, shot between 1000 and 1200 elephants and experienced an unpleasant death - a rhino he had shot collapsed on him and the injuries were fatal.
“I LOVE AFRICA LIKE A SECOND HOME”
Death and heroism created an image of lust, and the desire to be part of the group — as actors like William Holden, John Wayne and Gary Cooper, who hunted with Percival in Tanganjika (now Tanzania) or entertainers like Bing Crosby, industrialists like George Eastman of “Kodak Eastman,” and even the German car builder von Opel. Charles Lindbergh, the aviator, or bankers like Mr. Barclays from London and Mr. Rothschild express this desire just like cognac producer, Michael Martell. Even Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, as well as the later king Edward VIII are part of this list. Winston Churchill dubbed Uganda the “Pearl of Africa,” because it was rich in beauty and animals. Its population of big cats was so plentiful as to be considered a dangerous nuisance. Nowhere else in Africa could both chimpanzee and gorilla be found. Uganda, unlike Kenya and Tanzania, has two species of elephants, two of buffalos and, last but not least, the country has one of the most diverse and interesting bird populations on earth. Ernest Hemingway considered the continent “as another home.” The author loved Africa although he survived two plane crashes in a row on African soil, near Murchison Falls, Uganda. “Any time a man can feel that, not counting where he’s born, is where he’s meant to go.” His son, Harvard graduate Patrick, worked for years in Tanganyika’s small safari town Arusha for the hunting outfit “Whores and Shauris.” Hemingway, Junior, who finished some of the uncompleted works of his father, told me during a visit to his home in Montana, USA, that it felt natural to have the same passion: “The genes are definitely there whether I wanted to or not.” His younger brother Greg tried his luck as a hunter as well, but both kids never had one dream fulfilled, an exclusive African safari with their dad. Just a visit in Cuba, where Hemingway wrote his bestseller The Old Man and the Sea.
It is not the controversial safari crowd which is threatening the future of species such as the white Rhino (which still can be hunted for 125,000 dollars or more), but poachers and the explosive birth rate, which puts pressure on the animal habitats, forcing the noble animals of Africa into oblivion. Human population is growing faster than on any other continent, and the thousands of additional Africans born every day need food, energy and shelter. Earth’s changing climate is making much of Africa more prone to drought, putting ever more pressure on all species to compete for scarce water. Humans dam and divert rivers for their needs, leaving many other species high and dry. Already, in 1970-71, Kenya was suffering a catastrophic drought. The Tsavo national park alone lost 10,000 elephants. At the same time, Uganda’s thriving elephant herd of around 40,000 was reduced by half, following Idi Amin’s bloody coup d’état as camo-jacketed thugs went on a rampage, machine gunning entire herds of elephants.
A dream is being lost in Africa, because of the changes of our time - and nature cannot win. Wildlife bites the dust. Jorge de Lima told his colleague, and author, Brian Herne, how Africa disappeared in front of his eyes. A man who felt free, enchanted in the Africa he observed from 1946 on, until a terrorist attack on his camp in Angola in 1969. Bangui, the capital city of French Equatorial, was a large village. Hyenas and leopards stalked freely in the town. The Brazilian adventurer hunted exclusively for ivory “and just a few animals for the pot.” The tusks and skins were sold in Bangui to Arab merchants, who traded them in Nigeria. From Bangui, the hunter crossed the Ubangi Chari River into Belgian Congo where elephants were extremely numerous. In the late forties, de Lima shot for ivory in Angola and once, in 1955, sent two lorries into Kenya with heavy ivory.
“THE END OF THE AFRICA I HAD KNOWN HAD ARRIVED”
He also went to Mozambique, where it was not uncommon to meet buffalo herds with over six hundred animals. “Lions were plentiful and you could meet them in the plains without needing to resort to baits.” Then, the Brazilian hunted in the vicinity of Beni and Bunia (Belgian Congo), where elephants were “abundant as flies.” Back in Angola, the adventurer found “a true paradise for lions,” kudu in large herds, buffalos and colossal herds of red lechwe. In Southern Angola, he got the best horns of rhino. Because of the low temperature in the area during the dry season, he found splendid large lions, “some with magnificent manes, and leopards were plentiful and were large with brilliant coats.”
One day, history caught up with Jorge Alves de Lima Filho, the reality of change. His camp in Mavinga was attacked by terrorists (he claims), most of his staff, Africans, killed, his vehicles set on fire. “I knew that the end of the Africa I had known had arrived.” The Brazilian hunter expected that, as with age, the end would come for Africa as well. In half a century perhaps. It seemed such a remote possibility that Africa would change quickly: “We all clung to HER (Africa) without thinking that, in a future not so far from then, things would take such a course so melancholic and sad and depressive in such short period of time.” The Brazilian hunter departed from the continent, but he “left [his] soul and joie de vivre” on the continent. The wild Africa, that hunters like de Lima had experienced, was changing like the world surrounding the continent. New political systems, industrialization. Men in competition with wildlife for space, water. Wars were fought, the Mau Mau of Kenya demanding freedom from British colonialism. Others followed, without respect for wildlife, the noble cohabitants of mankind on earth. Governments lost control over their animals or conspired with poachers to cash in. 1973 brought rapid inflation on prices paid for elephant ivory and rhino horns, which marked a drastic turning point for the fate of these two species. That year, ivory worth 160 million dollars would leave Africa - the equivalent of up to 200,000 massacred elephants. According to Clive Spinnage’s book Elephants, between 1979 and 1989, 691 000 elephants died in Africa, from which 8,000 tons of ivory were recovered to fuel the insatiable demand in the far east.
“CAN THE BATTLE TO CONSERVE WILDLIFE IN AFRICA BE WON?”
In poor African countries, it is impossible to gain sympathy from hard-pressed small farmers for protection of elephants or any other animal. Adult elephants that consume daily 300 to 600 pounds of food can rapidly wipe out pitiful fields of hard won corn, cotton, cassava, or crops, destroying a family’s or entire villages sole sustenance and income overnight. A large number of lions constantly raid cattle, and occasionally humans. Along with the lions’ problems, leopards feast on coat and sheep wherever available. Herds of elephants leave national parks and raid sweet potato fields or corn in their neighborhood. Most premium game areas outside national parks and game reserves like Selous, Serengeti or Masai Mara have vanished forever. Can the battle to conserve wildlife in Africa be won, asked National Geographic and answered in the same breath that “many experts think we may be losing.”
Peter Raven, Chairman of the “Committee for Research and Exploration” of the National Geographic Society, believes that “by the beginning of the next century we face the prospect of losing half of our wildlife. Yet, we rely on the living world to sustain ourselves. It is very frightening. The extinctions we face pose an even greater threat on civilization than climate change—for the simple reason they are irreversible.”
Researchers at the Zoological Society of London and the University of Cambridge studied, a few years ago, animal population changes at 78 protected areas across Africa. They found the steepest falls in West Africa, where up to 85 percent of wildlife has been lost in the last 35 years, and in East Africa, where nearly half of the wildlife disappeared. Kenya, one of the most popular places in the world for wildlife has been hit particularly hard. A report, commissioned in 2009 by the country’s wildlife service, stated that its lion population has declined so fast that they could be extinct there within 20 years. The number of elephants, hippos and other animals are believed to have also plummeted in Southern Sudan following the years of war. The country had the world’s second largest annual migration of large mammals and vast herds of gazelle and antelope, but these have been decimated by fighters hunting them for their meat.
In 1979, an estimated 1.3 million elephants were roaming on the continent. These days, the number has been dwindling to about 415,000. Tanzania, which in 1976 counted a thriving elephant population of 350 000, had seen its elephant population reduced by 80 percent in 1989, and the decline, conservationists observed, “apparently is in a free fall.” Lions have disappeared from 80 percent of their historic African range and no one knows how many of these majestic animals are surviving these days. Between 1960 and 1995, black rhino numbers dropped by a sobering 98 percent, to less than 2,500. Thanks to persistent conservation efforts (since 2011, WWF has successfully helped to establish 11 new black rhino populations in safer, more spacious locations), black rhinos have doubled from their historic low 20 years ago, back to 5,400.
A few days ago, a tragic incident covered the front pages of the international press. Eight of 14 critically endangered rhinos had died in Kenya. Murdered by poachers? No, after a professional transfer by translocation specialists from the Nairobi and Lake Nakuru National Park to a new sanctuary created in Tsavo National Park, hundreds of miles away. The probable cause of death: salt poisoning. The rhinos were apparently unable to adapt to the saltier water in their new sanctuary. Wildlife crime, poaching and black market trafficking of rhino horn continues to plaque the species and threatens recovery. Political instability and wars have greatly hampered rhino conservation work, notably in Angola, Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan. The Western black rhino, which mainly lived in Cameroon, is extinct through poaching, as is the northern white Rhino. Southern white rhinos, once thought to be extinct, are thriving in protected sanctuaries and are classified as “near threatened.”
The remaining white Rhinos are kept under 24-hour guard in the “Old Pejeta conservancy” in Kenya. It’s from this same conservancy that rhino lovers were shocked with the news that “Sudan” had died, the white rhino bull, which is in his final years, was not able to naturally mount a female. Worse, he suffered from a low sperm count, which made his ability to procreate difficult. Najin, the survivor in the sanctuary, could conceive, but her hind legs are so weak that she may be unable to support a mounted male. No conception soon? Another specie eliminated. Forest elephants living in an area, which had been considered being a sanctuary in Gabon, are rapidly picked off by illegal poachers, who are primarily entering the country through the neighboring Cameroon. More than 80 percent of this population, 25 000 elephants, have been eliminated in a decade. Africa “the paradise without Adam and Eve,” as Theodore Roosevelt discovered, seems to be forced to abandon its vision of paradise as well, or transform paradise to government controlled, heavily guarded, national parks and reserves as the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania. In South Africa, the biggest hunting industry on the continent, it is legal (in contrast to Kenya) to hunt most big game animals, including the big five, which can be killed on private reserves. In Namibia, black rhinos are considered critically endangered, yet the government maintains an annual hunting quota of five post-breeding males, to stimulate population growth by allowing younger males to breed.
TROPHY HUNTING CAN BE AN EFFECTIVE CONSERVATION TOOL
During my safari adventure in Zimbabwe, recreational hunters already were asked to pay for their trophies. The price for the big five, including the professional hunter, could cost well over a hundred thousand dollars per client, including the flight by a four seater Cessna into the bush, landing on a rough patch of grass. The idea: the trophy money would be used to pay for water holes, game wardens and game rangers. “In certain limited rigorously controlled cases, including for threatened species, scientific evidence has shown that trophy hunting can be an effective conservation tool as part of a broad mix of strategies,” the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) conceded. “Because legal hunting provides jobs and revenues, it can work as a deterrent against poaching and helps to preserve the ecosystem.” The truth though: not all countries that support recreational hunting are transparent about where that income goes, and it is uncertain how much - if at all - is actually benefitting African communities or conservation efforts.
A report issued (in 2016) by the House Committee on Natural Resources of the Washington House of Representatives, suggested that income from hunting in African countries such as Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa and Namibia, from which the greatest number of hunting trophies are imported into the US, was not meeting conservatism’s needs.
“In assessing the flow of trophy hunting revenue to conservation efforts, we found many troubling examples of funds either diverted from their purpose or not being dedicated to conservation in the first place.”
It is obvious; Africa’s wildlife continues to suffer. The United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) which, in 1989, has acted to end the massacre of African herds has, largely, failed. The poachers are winning, because Asia pays a bundle to obtain the wonderful powder, made out of rhino horn for men, who do not trust Viagra. Governments do not have the resources to control their vast territories and, often, game wardens, rangers in national parks and reserves, have been cooperating with poachers, “operating boldly and with impunity,” Brian Henne observed. “The unfortunate animals, with the potential for high cash return with little risk, continue to be the target for well armed poachers.”
