Africa Exports to World’s Zoos

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 816, 9 November 1929, Page 32

Africa Exports to World’s Zoos

WILD BEAST HUNTING TRADE INCREASING Almost every liner departing from the South African ports is now carrying many crates of roaring, scratching, cooped-in ferocity, for never in the continent’s chronicles has there been such a boom in the wild animal trade as at present, says the Johannesburg correspondent of a United States exchange. Twelve lion cubs were part of a single shipment recently, and innumerable antelopes, zebras, jackals, crocodiles, snakes, etc., are going forth from the jungles “up country” las the South African phrase has it) to the wild beast merchants of America and Europe. Although specimens of Africa's fauna have been purchased by Chapman, Hagenbeck and other famous firms for many years, the business has increased to an extent unheard of a decade back. Zoos are being established in many United States cities; others need enlargement, and from Europe Africa now obtains innumerable orders for "live stock" to replenish cages depopulated by the World War. Owing to the fact that most of South Africa is well settled and that generations of hunters kept shooting down the wild creatures until recent protective laws came into force, the areas in which animals may now be caught lie many hundred miles inland. A whole class of European trailsmen makes a specialty of trekking, with black helpers, into the bush, where they trap the animals. Special portable cages are built for the transport of the brutes to the railheads, and often these boxes must be carried by porters down the veld tracks for innumerable miles. Animals Miles Inland The Zoutpansberg district, in the Northern Transvaal, a country that io as large as Holland, furnishes the animal dealers, who have their branch offices in Pretoria and Johannesburg, with a great number of candidates for the zoo. kinds of monkeys (particularly difficult to catch) and numerous gazelles. Elephants, giraffes,, zebras and rhinocerosses, hippopotami, etc., however, are much more difficult and expensive. To obtain them the trappers go many miles toward the Equator, into Rhodesia and Nyasaland and even toward Kenya. They are classed as "royal game,” and the law forbids any man, unless authorised by the Government, to molest them. Only a limited number may be removed each year to the world's menageries, and for the needful licence sometimes thousands of pounds have to be paid. Giraffes are costly owing to difficulties of transportation.

On more than one occasion these animals have thrust their long necks over the sides of carriages and, coming into collision with trees' by the side of the railroad tracks, were instantly killed. America pays £I,OOO and more for a single giraffe. Elephants and llofis are in continuous demand. Several large zoological gar-

dens exist in the country, and those at Pretoria and Johannesburg make a specialty of breeding cubs for export. Statistics for the wild beast trade are not trustworthy because the government returns show only nominal values. The most recent figures, some £20,000,. must be multiplied several times to give an idea of the actual extent of the trade.

The wild animal business of Africa is not a trade for amateurs. Large staffs are employed not only at headquarters, but on the veld and even aboard the ships, -where men have to act as “stewards” to their frequently seasick animals. Financial facilities are given by African banks to these merchants in as matter-of-fact a way as to any more usual customer.