Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 33

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 gra.s.s-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 been _several million years in developing and placing there_!

At present the marvelous herds of big game of British East Africa and Uganda const.i.tute 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 ma.s.ses 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 gra.s.sy 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 Africa between 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 every country 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, Burch.e.l.l 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 Burch.e.l.l's zebra is now regarded as _extinct_! In Cape Colony and Natal, that once teemed with big game in the old-fas.h.i.+oned African way, they are _counting 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation 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, princ.i.p.ally 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 const.i.tute 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 the _open seasons_ all 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 is _anything_ alive 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 when once 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 Nya.s.saland, 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 that _Rhinoceros simus_ is 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 over _a thousand_ males 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 s.h.i.+p.

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 300 _head_ of hoofed and horned animals, of 44 species, not counting the carnivorous animals that also may be killed. That bag limit should _immediately_ be reduced _75 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, British East 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 uplands _between 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.