Nairobi, July 18

One of the little jokes of the last Kenya Parliament was the way Mervyn Cowie, a nominated member, was often referred to as “the Member for Wild Animals.” In this Parliament there is no place for the director of Kenya’s National Parks. Yet the plight of his wild animals is worse today than he has ever known before.

The immediate causes are those afflicting every farmer – the unprecedented devastation of grazing by army-worm and two years of terrible drought. But there is an even larger danger in the background: the indifference of African politicians to game preservation and the prospect that after independence they may let this greatest of East Africa’s tourist attractions vanish through neglect.

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Dying of starvation

Drought and army-worm plague have caused havoc this year. Of the 40,000 head of game that live in the Nairobi Royal National Park and the plains to which it opens to the south 10,000 are believed to have perished since November. Gregarious animals like wildebeest which rear calves best when in large herds have been pathetically discouraged by having to split up to find grazing; normally about 1,400 calves would have been born this year in the park area; so far only 43 survivors have been counted. In the Tsavo National Park 85 rhinoceroses died of starvation in November and another eight were found dead this month.

The fate of the rhinoceros in East Africa – as also of the lion and the cheetah – is very hazardous. There are estimated to be only 2,000 left in Kenya and they are dying at the rate of 500 a year while only 125 are born.

Most of the species will recover their numbers, although there is a danger that some will drop below what Mr Cowie calls “the red line for breeding potential” and fall away into a downward spiral to extinction. To avoid the risks another year of drought would bring he has launched a Water for Wild Animals campaign to raise £100,000 and turn the Tsavo National Park into a “fortress” for game.

Tsavo, 8,000 square miles of scrub country astride the Nairobi-Mombasa road, is far from an ideal game area but was the only large piece of Crown land available. At the moment only one tenth of it has enough water to carry game properly, although elephants are thriving there. Mr Cowie hopes to raise £90,000 to provide two main pipelines which with sidelines would carry water pumped from two large rivers to make 5,000 square miles habitable. He also plans boreholes in remoter parts of Tsavo, and with the other £10,000 a smaller scheme for watering the Nairobi park.

The campaign has had its encouraging moments. A Reader’s Digest article brought more money from all over the world. A Scottish jute manufacturer read of the plight of the Tsavo rhinoceroses and sent a cheque for £10,000. The Parks Department has used some imaginative forms of self-help; £1,300 has come from selling special stamps; £1,000 has been raised by selling plaques made from ivory seized from poachers. A soft drinks firm has run a bottle-tops competition, settlers’ wives have arranged fetes, and a newspaper provided free advertising with a photograph of an elephant and calf digging for water as appealing as any of the Rhodesian pictures of animals stranded by the rising waters of Lake Kariba.

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But the fund still stands only at £26,000. The building of the pipeline is soon to begin, however, even if enough money is not raised for the whole project. Perhaps more serious for the future, the campaign has found very little support among Africans, though a few have contributed in office collections.

This indifference extends to the African political leaders and seems to be based on feelings that game parks are simply white men’s playgrounds and that game are a menace to agriculture; indeed, Mr Ronald Ngala, the Leader of Government Business, was originally elected with the support of farmers who wanted protection from animals.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An appeal in a Nairobi newspaper, 1961. Photograph: The Guardian

New game policy

The Member for Wild Animals and his staff have done their utmost to change this attitude, from lobbying Legislative Council members about the importance of tourism in Kenya’s economy to arranging for thousands of African schoolchildren to visit the Nairobi park. But they find little active backing from the Government.

It is sometimes said that game preservation is impractical in an agricultural country. To meet this sort of criticism a new game policy was recently announced. Most important point was the decision to define zones where game preservation should be of paramount importance, others where wild and domestic animals may live side by side, and yet other zones where the demands of agriculture and forestry must mean the elimination of game.

The Government has also arranged that the Masai district councils should take over responsibility for game in their area, and the Governor took part this week in a handing-over ceremony at Amboseli, a park made famous by several films and blessed with the incomparable background of Kilimanjaro.

In September a conference at Arusha, just over the Tanganyika border, is being held by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Scientists of the standing of Sir Julian Huxley will be discussing the problems of game preservation, and many African politicians are being invited in the hope of impressing on them the importance of the campaign.

Persuasion will hardly be complete in a single day’s symposium, however, and Mr Cowie is planning ways to raise £500,000 during the next five years (which means doubling his department’s present revenue). He allows five years to convince African leaders that wildlife is one of their country’s greatest heritages. The alternative is a bleak prospect: “If an Uhuru Government allowed unlicensed hunting and a free-for-all, Kenya’s wild game would disappear in a twinkling,” he says.

Even as it is, the struggle against poachers is unavailing. Poachers are more numerous and more subtle than ever; the price of rhinoceros horn as an aphrodisiac in the East keeps rising. Mr Cowie does not blame the African poachers – “they have always been hunters and run big risks” – but castigates the Asiatic traders around Mombasa, none of whom has ever been convicted. His hope is only to make the game parks secure against poachers, and secured by the support of an independent Kenya Government and people.