THE WILD LIFE OF AFRICA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22101, 3 November 1933, Page 8

THE WILD LIFE OF AFRICA

The International Conference in London to discuss methods by which the preservation and protection of the flora and fauna of Africa may be secured is addressing itself to no mean task. The British Government, recognising its responsibilities in this matter, is represented at the conference by Lord Plymouth, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, who has emphasised the need of controlling the indiscriminate destruction of wild life in that country. According to the High Commissioner for South Africa, professional big game hunters, poachers, and amateur sportsmen threaten with extinction the wild game of the continent. The official representative of Ethiopia has expressed his country’s intention to deal with hunters who dash about in motor cars shooting at herds and scattering them, but has pointed out that it will be more difficult to legislate against the modern peril of aircraft, the noise of which frightens the wild beasts with much consequent damage. That the aeroplane, flying low, causes harmful disturbance among the larger wild animals in Africa has been shown by responsible observers, and the fact that air ti’ave! is only in its infancy strengthens the argument for the adoption of measures for the protection of these creatures that still roam in their natural habitat. The matter has received consideration by the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire, of which Lord Onslow is president, and the evidence on the subject would appear to Ijp sufficiently conclusive. The activities of the “ air hog ”—a term not shunned by Lord Onslow—not only call, it is considered, for a general tightening up of the law, but demand a great extension, with more supervision, of existing reservations and national game preserves. The Government of East Africa has introduced a regulation prohibiting -aircraft from descending to within less than 1500 feet of game animals, and perhaps its example may be followed by other authorities. In the enforcement of such a prohibition there may, however, be difficulty. The African elephant is said to provide the most disturbing factor in a- state of affairs which organisations that are interested in these matters are striving to remedy, for it is notoriously “nervy,” and, once thoroughly panic-stricken, is beyond all control. A writer in the Empire Review who refers with a good deal of sarcasm to the anxiety of well-meaning folk in England over the fate of the Empire’s fauna, and to the restrictions placed by the various colonial Governments, of Africa upon the shooting of giant game, is likely to find the International Conference a considerable irritant. He does not seek to minimise the slaughter of big game that has occurred. Some of those responsible for it, he observes, were tourists who brought in armoured cars and even aeroplanes with which to trail and kill elephants and rhinoceroses, lions, giraffes, buffaloes, and great antelopes. Upon this followed an outcry and the institution of protective measures. “ There was to be no more target practice,” he laments, “at the huge bulk of hippos and crocodiles from the deck of lake and, Nile steamers; no more potting at zebras or giraffes from the carriage windows of trains—either in motion or standing still. Above all, the shooting of wild elephants was made an expensive sport.” In support of his contention that the protective measures have tended to swell the wild elephant mobs which refuse to stay in their allotted sanctuaries and reserves, he gives a somewhat lurid account of the raids perpetrated by these animals and of the problem created for the settlers whose crops they devastate. But it has been pointed out that if elephants and other wild animals are stampeded from their reserves and natural feeding grounds by aeroplanes, the danger of their invasion of cultivated areas must be considerably increased, with unfortunate results both for themselves and mankind. Unquestionably there has been too much ruthless destruction of Africa’s remarkable fauna, and the International Conference has a highly laudable objective in view in aiming at the introduction of measures such as will ensure that the remnant of the larger wild life of the country may still be preserved to enjoy an existence which civilisation is rendering more and more difficult.