“Tembo!” exclaimed one of the men. A large elephant had unexpectedly materialized from the bamboo a few hundred feet away. Like a spirit, it moved silently across an arm of the glade and vaporized into the thicket on the other side. If the laborer hadn’t happened to look up when he did, we would have missed it completely.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
Elephants in a glade of manyatta grass.
It was 1964. My African crew and I were scouting a route for a track that would allow tourists to view wildlife on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. The proposed route ran through light green bamboo thicket, spotted by dark-leaved pillar wood trees, and punctuated by sun-filled glades of tall manyatta grass. That this was buffalo and elephant habitat was evident from the abundance of their dung, tree trunks worn smooth by the rubbing of large bodies, trails forced through the dense bamboo, and mud wallows. (Refer to last page of blog for maps of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and of the vegetation of Ngorongoro Crater.)
Smoothing a stump while easing an itch. Photo by David Bygott.
Sometimes we heard them, especially elephants: snapping branches as they browsed, the low rumbles of their stomachs, an occasional sharp, thrilling trumpet. . . But we also saw them, and not just the elephant in the first paragraph, but also buffaloes.
Three times, while sticking tall lengths of bamboo into the ground to mark where the new track would go, we jumped buffalo herds of forty to fifty animals. Luckily however, we scared them more than they scared us. What a noise they made as they blundered away, grunting and snorting, heavy hooves rumbling across the ground–they were big animals. They always paused at the edge of the bamboo to look back at us. We could see the sun glinting off their horns. They were mean-looking critters!
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
Mean-looking critters.
Elephants and buffaloes also used open, grassy habitats. For instance it was not unusual to see elephants grazing the grasses, sedges, and herbs of Munge and Gorgor swamps on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. However, most of my encounters with the two species were either in or near forest.
Gorgor Swamp. The large plants are Cyperus immensus, a species of sedge.
Elephant in Ngorongoro Crater’s Lerai Forest. Fed by a stream flowing down the crater wall, the forest is dominated by yellow barked fever trees (Acacia xanthophloea).
For instance, there was that cool sunny afternoon, following a rainstorm, when several elephants on the crater rim, seemingly stimulated by the rain, became amusingly animated: trumpeting, and pushing one another about. I could hear the click of their tusks–ivory on ivory–as the large animals playfully sparred. The dry season was coming to an end and they were happy to see the rain.
Elephant near my house on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater.
“In or near forest” included my small house, around which buffaloes often grazed at night.
The rooms of the house (a main room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom) didn’t interconnect. Instead, each opened directly onto the yard. On foggy mornings, after carefully checking for the presence of buffaloes, I groped my way to the bathroom through heavy mist. At night, I checked again with a flashlight before going to bed.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
My “yard” was mown at night by grazing buffaloes.
Not what one wants to meet while groping through fog to the privy. Photo by David Bygott.
At night, buffaloes also grazed the grounds of the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge. To prevent mishaps, the lodge hired Maasai warriors, armed with spears, to escort guests to their scattered cabins, following the evening meal in the main building.
Tourist cabins on the grounds of the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge. The main building, which included the dining room and bar, is at the far right.
While I commonly saw elephants in the swamps on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater, there were few buffaloes there in the 1960’s. In contrast, in terms of biomass, they are now the dominant herbivore, and for a very interesting reason. This significant change probably resulted from the removal of Maasai from the crater in 1974. With the Maasai went their traditional grassland management in which grazing and controlled burning kept grasslands short, palatable, and suited to small and medium sized grazers, such as wildebeests. Subsequently, grasses on the crater floor became longer, less palatable, and more suited to less selective grazers, such as buffaloes. Consequently, buffaloes became more abundant while the numbers of wildebeests, once the crater’s dominant herbivore, significantly declined. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority has since returned grass fires to the crater ecosystem through a program of controlled burning. (Also see https://storiesofeastafrica.com/2022/09/27/maasai-pastoralists-of-ngorongoro-as-they-are-now/)
Buffaloes are more difficult prey than wildebeests. Will this cause lions to prey more heavily on the latter? Photo by David Bygott.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is thought to contain over 300 elephants. However, much of the habitat of Ngorongoro’s elephants is dense forest. This makes them hard to count. Thus, their true number is unknown. Although elephants are endangered throughout Africa by loss of habitat, and by poaching for ivory, little elephant poaching has been recorded in the NCA over the past several years. That said, on my last visit to Ngorongoro, in 2004, I was startled to see a tuskless adult elephant, something I had never encountered before.
Notice something missing ?
In well-protected areas, elephants without tusks may comprise as little as 2% of a population. This may be the case in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Let us hope so, anyway, because populations with significantly higher amounts of tuskless elephants (especially if the amounts are increasing), reflect heavy, unrelenting poaching. Simply speaking, elephants without tusks are less apt to be killed by poachers. Over time, therefore, their genes will dominate the population. Even thirty years ago, up to 25-38% of some African elephant populations were without tusks. A more recent study in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park reported over half of all female elephants in to be tuskless. For more information on this subject, check out the on-line articles by Garrigan, Preston, and Associated Press in the reference section.
MAPS
Ngorongoro Crater is in the Crater Highlands, east of Tanzania’s famous Serengeti Plains. Graphic by David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.
Ngorongoro Crater vegetation. Light blue (wet meadows), dark blue (reed swamp), yellow (medium grassland), light yellow (short grassland), light brown (bushland), dark brown (high woodland), green (forest). ( Herlocker, D.J. & H.J. Dirschl. 1972.)
REFERENCES
African Elephant Specialist Group. 2014. African elephant data-base: Serengeti-Mara. https://africanelephantdatabase.org/population_submissions/527
Associated Press. 2021. Elephants have evolved to be tuskless because of ivory poaching, a study finds. Oct. 22, 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1048336907/elephants-tuskless-ivory-poaching-africa
Garrigan, K. Going tuskless. AfricanWildlife Foundation. https://.www.awf.org/blog/going-tuskless
Herlocker, D.J. 2009. Buffaloes by My Bedroom:Tales of Tanganyika. iUniverse.
Herlocker. D.J. & H.J. Dirschl. 1972. Vegetation of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. Canadian Wildlife Service– Report Series Number 19.
Oates, L. & P.A.Rees. 2013. The Historical Ecology of the Large Mammal Populations of Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, East Africa. Mammal Review 43(20013) 124-141.
Preston, E. 2021. Tuskless elephants escape poachers but may evolve new problems. N.Y. Times. Oct. 28th. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/science/tuskless-elephants-evolution.html
World Heritage Convention. 2017. Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. UNESCO. https://whc.unesco.org/en/soc/3573
____. Poaching elephants in Ngorongoro down. The Citizen. April 17, 2021. https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/national/poaching-of-elephants-in-ngorongoro-down-2611720
How interesting that the tusk-less elephant is evolving so rapidly. An indication, I suppose of the extent of poaching. Interesting too that they are bringing the Maasai range management methods back to the crater but not the Maasai themselves. Or are the Maasai the ones managing now?
Nope, in fact, the Tanzanian government is trying hard to move most of the Maasai from Ngorongoro miles east to a completely different place closer to the Indian Ocean. The reason given is that there are now so many in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area that they are endangering the ecology and wildlife. The latter is especially important to the government because wildlife viewing is now one of, if not the most, valuable source of foreign exchange in the country. Of course, ecology is important too, rangeland degradation, for instance, but if it didn’t reduce tourist visits then the government wouldn’t mind about the population size of the Maasai. (In my opinion.)
Hello Dennis,A good article – as usual – full of interesting details. And the photos help a lot. jeanentte
Thanks, Jeannette. By the way, I’ve read your book, Feathered Canyons, and even worked up a review (favorable, of course). The next thing on my list is to put it on Amazon,com and Goodreads.
Thanks so much for this great blog with photos, very interesting indeed !!! Timely in that Im currently visiting my daughter and family in Laos (she works for USAID he is at the US Embassy) and we just came back from two days at an elephant sanctuary here in Laos. Fascinating blog Dennis and thanks again so much for sending these interesting details out. Cheers Dennis McCarthy PhD, International Livestock Consultant.
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Thanks for the good words, Dennis. Did you get to ride an elephant?
Dennis. Good addition to your story. Thanks. Gilles
How are things at the ranch?
Dennis, When the Masai burn the savanna, are the species of grasses altered or is it simply a practice to provide a more palatable fresh growth for the cows. It looked to me that the antelope, preferred the already grazed areas because it was safer. The buffalo are bigger and more capable of defending themselves and so are more able to use the taller coarse grass. The mature grass would also be higher in lignin and lower in protein. Bovines are more able to utilize that type of feed than the smaller ruminants who need a more nutritious diet.
Gilles
Gilles, What you say is true, but yes, a regime of regular burning does result in increased abundance of certain grasses. Themeda triandra or red oats grass is a good example throughout much of Maasailand. In fact, it’s an indicator of regular occurrence of grass fires. And it works the other way, too: The absence of burning in Ngorongoro Crater for many years resulted in significant changes in grassland species composition compared to what was there when I mapped the vegetation in 1967. For instance, Chloris gayana spread over a larger area.
Dennis