1965. A small group of tourists and I were in Tanzania’s Oldupai Gorge listening to an African guide talk about paleontological discoveries at the gorge. He was a young man, one of five trained by paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, and was clearly enjoying his job. However, he really came alive at the discovery site of a nearly two-million-year-old species of ape, Zinjanthropus boisei, nicknamed Nutcracker Man because of its huge teeth. “A very important find” he excitedly announced. “Why? Because this ancient ape walked upright, just like us! This same creature may also have been the first to use rudimentary stone tools!” Then, gesturing to a small concrete monument at his feet, our guide proudly stated, “And Dr. Mary Leakey found the skull of Nutcracker man right here!”
Discovery site of Zinjanthropus boisei (Nutcracker Man). It has since been reclassified, first as Australopithecus boisei and then Paranthropus boisei. (Paranthropus means Robust Ape.)
The tour guides, in place since 1963, had been taken on to deal with a sudden surge in visits stimulated by artlcles about Oldupai Gorge and Nutcracker Man published in National Geographic Magazine. Safari companies, instead of driving their clients directly from Ngorongoro to the Serengeti National Park, were beginning to include Oldupai Gorge in their itineraries. Visitor numbers, already too high to be handled directly by on-site scientists, rose from 600 in 1963 to 3,335 in 1965, initiating a rising trend that continues to the present day.
The Oldupai Gorge Site and Visitor Center is only a short diversion from the main road about halfway between two of Tanzania’s most visited tourist sites, Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park. (Graphic by (David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.)
Of course, increasing tourism in Tanzania primarily reflected the allure of its wildlife, especially in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Serengeti National Park. For instance, in 1965, four of five visitors to Ngorongoro and the Serengeti bypassed Oldupai Gorge entirely. Nonetheless, findings excavated there continued to attract visiters by keeping it in the news. Examples not included in a previous post https://storiesofeastafrica.com/2024/09/20/the-leakeys-and-their-discoveries-at-oldupai-gorge-tanzania/ include:
A 1.75 million-year-old stone circle, the oldest-known evidence of a man-made shelter from weather.
A computerized depiction of the remains of a stone circle at Oldupai. It was built by piling basaltic rocks in a ring structure and was used as a windbreak and / or base to support upright branches covered by skins and grass. (https://www.dennisrhollowayarchitect.com/Olduvai.html)
Rudimentary stone tools, associated with Australopithecus apes, that are a million years or more older than those associated with Nutcracker Man and Homo habilis (Handy Man).
An array of extinct animal species that co-existed at Oldupai with early humans, who first scavenged their remains and later hunted them. Some of these animals were remarkably large.
Weighing up to two tons and with horns up to 2 m (6.6 ft) long, Pelorovus was one of the largest bovines (and even ruminants) to have ever lived.
(Mr. A. GNU Free Documentation License.)
At 4-5 tons in weight, Deinotherium (Greek for “Terrible Animal”), was one of the largest mammals that ever lived. Not directly related to modern day elephants, it probably browsed tree foliage in open woodlands. Its tusks weren’t used for digging but rather for removing branches that hindered feeding. Isolated populations survived until 12,000 years ago, possibly hunted into extinction by modern man (Homo sapiens). (Concavenator. C.C. Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.)
Almost sixty years later, tourism at Oldupai Gorge is booming, with 3,000 visits a day during Ngorongoro-Serengeti’s five-month peak tourist season. (Thus, out of the nearly 1.5 million visitors to Ngorongoro and Serengeti last year at least 450,000 visited Oldupai Gorge.)
Traffic jam in Ngorongoro crater. Most of these vehicles later continued to the Serengeti National Park, a significant number visiting Oldupai Gorge along the way. (David Bygott.)
This good news, however, brought with it a need for upgraded infrastructure, not only to handle the large numbers of visitors, but also to interpret the findings that have made Oldupai Gorge a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of the most important in the world depicting human evolution.
This led to the construction, in 2018, by the J.Paul Getty Museum, of the Oldupai Gorge Site and Visitors Center (replacing a smaller original museum dating from the 1970’s). Situated at the very edge of the gorge and under the jurisdiction of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), its one of the largest on-site museums in Africa.
Oldupai Gorge Site and Visitor Center.
(David Bygott.)
Backed by a view of Oldupai Gorge, an interpretive guide does his bit at the visitor center.
(David Bygott.)
Also, to better direct tourists to Oldupai Gorge, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority erected a large monument depicting Nutcracker Man and Handy Man at the turnoff from the Ngorongoro-Serengeti Road. The junction is now so well marked that even tourists unaccompanied by experienced drivers and/or tour guides will notice it.
Monument to the discoveries at Oldupai Gorge of Nutcracker Man and Handy Man.
(David Bydgott.)
Thus, the NCAA has reason to be pleased about the present state of tourism at Oldupai. However, there is still room for improvement: Most Tanzanians can’t visit Oldupai Gorge. This is partly because it’s far from population centers, but also because of the NCAA’s prohibitively high entry fees (except for school field trips). Reducing entry fees for Tanzanian citizens would help the country’s small (10% of the population) but growing middle class better appreciate an important part of their (and the world’s) national heritage.
Featured image: African wild dog pack, Kruger National Park, South Africa. Bart Swanson. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 unsorted license
“Wild dogs!” John yelped. Pointing out the right window of his Land Rover, he exclaimed “Over there–ten of them.” Then he really got excited: “And they’re chasing something! See how they’re trotting, strung out in a long line? Fantastic!” Abandoning our search for rhinos, we promptly sped off to follow the hunt.
It was 1965 and I, the assistant conservator (forests) for the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), was temporarily without official transport because the NCA had prematurely exhausted its government-imposed monthly fuel allowance. For the time-being I would be unable to supervise the crew constricting a road around the western and northern rim of Ngorongoro crater or visit forest guards patrolling the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve; they were all too far away. What I could do, however, was accompany my neighbor, John Goddard, a Canadian biologist studying black rhinos, into the Crater. John had his own source of funding, which meant he was unhampered by government fuel allowances.
Rattling across the crater floor in John’s Land Rover, we followed the pack for about a mile before it brought down its prey, an adult Grant’s gazelle. Then, instead of resting from their exertions, the wild dogs immediately started ripping it apart; John and I arrived to find one dog pulling on a foreleg of the gazelle, another yanking the other direction on a hind leg, and two others tugging at its stomach while the rest of the pack danced about uttering excited twitters and whines. John quickly took several photographs, but then surprised me by leaving the vehicle to approach the frenzied melee taking place only thirty feet away. What was he thinking? They’ll eat him for dessert! But then another surprise: instead of aggressively defending their kill, the wild dogs warily backed away, allowing John to walk right up to it.
Wild dog pack tearing into a Grant’s gazelle in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania.
In his 1972 book, Ngorongoro: The Eighth Wonder, Henry Fosbrooke remarks on how wild dogs in the crater always gave way when John approached. He did this, Henry said, to collect the prey’s mandibles–aging its teeth showed an animal’s age at death. John wanted undamaged specimens so he collected them as soon as possible after the wild dogs made their kill. However, in this case at least, there also was a fringe benefit: Returning with both the gazelle’s head and part of one of its hindquarters, John announced, “This takes care of dinner, tonight!”
My three years (1964-1967) at Ngorongoro exactly coincided with the presence of a wild dog pack in Ngorongoro Crater. Few were seen prior to this time and the pack left the crater in 1967. But then African wild dogs have a reputation for being rare and elusive. For instance, Henry Fosbrooke saw a wild dog only once during his 30 years of on and off acquaintance with Ngorongoro. George and Lory Frame, who studied cheetahs and wild dogs on the Serengeti Plains in the 1970’s, often spent days or weeks searching for dogs to study, then, having found a pack and studied it for a few days, woke up the next morning to find the dogs had vanished.
“Where’d they go?”
Being rare and elusive makes the African wild dog difficult to study. Nonetheless, it’s worth the effort, and not just because the wild dog occupies its own taxonomic genus (Lyacon) differing from the genus Canis (jackals, wolves, coyotes, domestic dogs) by dentition highly specialized for a hyper-carnivorous diet, and in having four toes on each foot. Both attributes support survival, the first by enhancing the shearing of meat, which increases the speed at which prey is consumed (thereby lessening the chance that lions and hyenas can steal the kill), and the second increases an animal’s stride and speed, allowing long distance pursuit of prey.
To the average viewer, however, the African wild dog’s most distinctive features are its large, round ears, and a splotchy black, white, and brown (sometimes verging on yellow) body–hence its other name, the painted dog. Happily for those who study this species, each animal has its own unique, readily distinguishable coat color pattern. African wild dogs also apparently really stink, although, unlike John Goddard, I never got close enough to tell.
Painted dogs, Kruger National Park, South Africa. Unlike those pictured here, the wild dog in East Africa generally has a white-tipped tail. (The Maasai call it Oloibor kidongoi, the white-tipped one.)
Bernard Dupont. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.
The African wild dog is a habitat generalist able to survive in a wide range of environments (An extreme, although undoubtedly short-lived, example is the sighting of a pack near the summit of Tanzania’s 19,341 ft Mt. Kilimanjaro). However, wild dogs are most commonly found in relatively open habitats which provide good views and running conditions.
Almost exclusively carnivorous, killing most of what it eats, the species is specialized as a pack hunter, concentrating on whatever medium-sized antelopes are most abundant. More enduring than its prey, it pursues the latter at up to 35 m/h (56 km/h), one dog leading , and the rest strung out behind, until the prey is exhausted, usually within 3 miles (5 km). Their ability to run their prey down without having to conceal their approach allows African wild dogs to be conspicuously colored, and like cheetahs, hunt only during the day.
African wild dogs chasing prey in Botswana’s Okavango Swamp.
Probably one of the most successful African carnivores, African wild dogs are such effective hunters that when prey is abundant, a pack can regularly have both breakfast and dinner. For example, wild dogs in Ngorongoro Crater killed twice a day, catching 85% of the animals they chased. Even the lowest recorded success rate for this species (39%) exceeded those of all other large predators except cheetahs. Furthermore, the entire pack benefits from a kill because it is shared among them.
Wild dogs in the Serengeti primarily prey upon Thompson’s gazelles and, in season, wildebeest calves (pictured here).
One reason for their rare and elusive nature is that wild dog packs are frequently on the move, averaging 10 km (6 miles) / day, or when game is scarce, up to 40 km (25 miles) / day. In the latter case, hunting ranges can be huge, up to 1500-2000 sq. km / 580 – 770 sq. miles (The largest recorded range is greater than the total area of London), exceeding in area even those of cheetahs. However, a range can be smaller when prey is resident and numerous.
The African wild dog has specialized on an abundant food resource which it can only exploit efficiently by hunting in packs. In East Africa these typically consist of about 10 animals but can go as high as 20 or even 60. Social bonds are strong; when separated from its pack, an African wild dog becomes so depressed that it may die. Each pack has only a single breeding pair, composed of the dominant male and female, which needs assistance from the other adults to provision large litters of up to 10 pups during an extended (12-14 month) period of dependence. Food sharing, by regurgitation of meat obtained from a kill, is supported by an emphasis on submissive, begging behavior within a pack. Aggressive behavior is rare. In-breeding is prevented by the emigration of females to other packs whereas the males, related to one another but not the breeding female, remain.
Wild dog pups. Litter sizes , larger than any other canid, are enough to form a new pack every year.
David Bygott
Despite being such effective hunters, and having an exceptionally efficient reproductive system, African wild dogs are the least common large predator in Africa. Furthermore, their population is declining. With under 7,000 animals remaining in the wild (there are fewer wild dogs than cheetahs) and having disappeared from much of their former range, African wild dogs are the continent’s 2nd most endangered large carnivore, after the Ethiopian wolf. Reasons given include:
(a) infectious diseases: Wild dogs are highly susceptible to canine diseases spread by domestic dogs;
(b) competition from lions and spotted hyenas, which appropriate wild dog kills, and in the case of lions, also kill their pups and adults;
(c) habitat fragmentation and loss.
The fragmented continental habitat of African wild dogs. The full extent of the original habitat can be roughly approximated by the distribution of smaller relict ranges. (Approximately 700 wild dogs live in northern Botswana.)
IUCN. CCA-SA 4.0 International license.
The results are smaller, less efficient and viable wild dog packs. Once African wild dog packs are reduced to small sizes, and suitable habitats are fragmented and altered by humans, wild dog populations seldom recover.
Lions are bad news for wild dogs.
David Bygott
So are domestic dogs, which carry infectious diseases.
Bothar at English Wikipedia CCASA 3.0 Unported.
Thus, the most effective way to ensure the conservation of African wild dog populations is thought to be by creating and protecting areas connecting isolated habitats. A good example of the importance of extensive, connected, ecologically diverse wild dog habitats is provided by the Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem in Tanzania and Kenya. Probably due to a combination of disease and competition from lions, (the major source of wild dog mortality in the Serengeti), and from spotted hyenas, African wild dogs disappeared from the 5,700 sq. mile (14,763 km) Serengeti National Park in the early 1990’s. However, the wild dog populations survived by moving into other parts of the greater (15,444 sq. mile / 40,000 sq. km) Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem. These include Ngorongoro Crater where wild dogs have returned after a 30 year absence, but primarily the Loliondo Game Controlled Area where a more hilly habitat provides greater security from larger predators while the wild dogs are denning and raising their young. Currently, the Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem contains about 120 African wild dogs.
The Loliondo Game Controlled Area (dark green) lies east of the Serengeti National Park.
Abrah Dust. CCA-SA 4.0 International license.
REFERENCES
Estes, R.D. 1991. The Behavior Guide to African Mammals: Including Hoofed Mammals, Carnivores, Primates. The University of California Press. Fosbrooke,H. 1972.
Fosbrooke, H. 1972. Ngorongoro: The Eighth Wonder. Andre Deutsch.
Frame, G. & L. Frame. 1981. Swift & Enduring: Cheetahs and Wild Dogs of the Serengeti. E.P. Dutton.
A cheetah cub purred as it chewed on a windshield wiper; another admired itself in the Land Rover’s fender mirror; a third, sitting on the roof, dangled its tail beside an open window . . . George and Lory Frame, who studied cheetahs and wild dogs in the Serengeti in the late 1970’s, recount how, one day, five large, playful cheetah cubs, members of a family they were studying, turned the tables on the two researchers and investigated them, instead. For the Frames it must have been a welcome break from their usual routine of hours and hours of careful observation and note-taking.
A nice patch of shade.
George and Lory certainly had an interesting animal to study: An inhabitant of wooded savanna, open plains, and desert, the cheetah is a striking cat: lightly built, with long, thin legs, small feet with blunt, unsheathed claws, and small rounded head, it’s built for speed–the field version of a greyhound, as one researcher put it. Capable of top speeds of 60-70 mph (90-112 kph), it’s the fastest animal in the world, a specialist in hunting small, but fast antelopes, such as Thomson’s gazelles (and hares), seldom killing animals larger than itself.
Built for speed. Photo by David Bygott.
However, becoming so speedy has involved tradeoffs. A sprinter with little stamina for chases beyond 300 m / 985 ft., a cheetah must use whatever cover (tall grass, shrubs, trees, ravines) is available to get as close as possible to its prey before attacking it. Furthermore, the cheetah has sacrificed not just stamina, but also the strength (it’s less than a fourth the weight of a full-grown lion) and weapons (note those dull claws) needed to protect itself from other predators. Consequently, cheetahs must avoid large predators, especially lions, which often kill cheetah cubs as well as steal kills. Hyenas also frequently appropriate prey killed by cheetahs. Therefore, cheetahs do not hunt at night, which is when lions and hyenas are most active.
Cheetahs also are unique in that males are social while females are solitary and shy (but still highly promiscuous). Furthermore, they have large home ranges, the largest, up to 400 sq. miles (1,036 sq. km), being those of individual females. Groups of males, called coalitions, defend smaller territories, 14-62 sq. miles (36-160 sq. km) in area, within female home ranges.
Cheetah stalking a Thomson’s gazelle, its favorite prey on the Serengeti Plains. The adult zebra and wildebeests in the background are too large. Photo by David Bygott.
Large home ranges, and mortality from larger predators so intense it limits cheetah numbers even when prey is abundant (less than half of all cheetahs live beyond three months), means that cheetahs never achieve high densities–they are always less abundant than other African carnivores. For instance, the 15,444 sq. mile (40,000 sq. km) Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem (see map at end of post), an area larger than the state of Maryland, and almost twice the size of Wales, has 275 cheetahs (the world’s highest density of these cats), but also 3,000 lions and at least 7,200 hyenas. (The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is part of the Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem.)
Two of the Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem’s 275 cheetahs. Photo by David Bygott.
Most other protected areas are too small to protect viable cheetah populations. Of the roughly 10,000 cheetahs in Africa, about 2/3 live in unprotected areas where. due to persecution and loss of habitat, their numbers are declining. Low populations, the need for young males to sometimes travel large distances to establish new territories, and an extraordinarily low degree of genetic diversity means that cheetahs, of all carnivores, are most vulnerable to habitat loss and fragmentation. (Low genetic diversity also raises the possibility that a disease could devastate wild populations.). Thus, steps are needed to conserve them outside protected areas.
Some conservationists see the cheetah’s future linked to the survival of traditional pastoral livestock management. This is because, historically, there has been little conflict between cheetahs and traditional pastoralists, who minimize stock losses to carnivores by seldom leaving their animals unattended during the day and corralling them at night in protected enclosures.
Traditional pastoralists seldom leave their livestock unattended. Photo by David Bygott.
MAPS
Vegetation of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. Forest (darkest green–far right) is the poorest of these habitats for cheetahs. Graphic by David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.
The seasonal movements of the Serengeti-Mara wildebeest populations occur within all or part of each protected area. Graphic by Abrah Eust. Creative commons 4.0 international license.
MAJOR REFERENCES
Estes, R.D. 1991. The behavior guide to African mammals: Including hoofed mammals, carnivores, primates. The University of California Press.
Fosbrooke, H. 1972. Ngorongoro: The eighth wonder. Andre Deutsch.
Frame, G. & L. Frame. 1981. Swift and enduring: Cheetahs and wild dogs of the Serengeti. E.P. Dutton.
Durant. S. 2004. Survival of the fastest: The cheetahs of the Serengeti. Africa Geographic. Pages30-32.
Zoological Society of London. Cheetah conservation in Africa. ZSL.org
My previous post, LEOPARDS: WILDLIFE OF NGORONGORO, stimulated some comments worthy of sharing:
Yvonne Stephenson*
When Yvonne and her husband Steve lived in the Serengeti National Park “many moons ago,” Kay Turner had two pet serval kittens given her by a warden of Tanzania’s game department. His rangers had found them at the bottom of a six-foot-deep pit that poachers had covered with grass to trap passing animals. Kay raised the two servals for six months. Then, one night, while they were sleeping on her bed, a leopard crashed through the bedroom window’s wire mosquito screen and caught one. Luckily, Kay was in another room at the time, entertaining guests. (*The husbands of Yvonne and Kay were, respectively, chief, and deputy chief wardens of the park in the early 1970’s.)
Young serval cat.
Photo by Su Neko. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.
On another occasion, Yvonne continues, “A ranger burst into our house to report that a leopard had been spotted up a tree with a cheetah, which it must have killed, because the cheetah’s tail could be seen hanging down from the branch. This was very sad for few cheetahs were being seen at the time.”
Herman Dirschl
Herman, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area’s ecologist in 1966, relates a leopard encounter experienced by John Goddard, a biologist studying rhinos in Ngorongoro Crater. John was on the porch of Lerai Cabin when he noticed his little dog, which had wandered several hundred feet away to the edge of Lerai Forest, racing toward him with a leopard in close pursuit. John opened the cabin’s door just in time to let his dog in, slamming it in the leopard’s face.
Lerai Cabin at base of crater wall, 1964.
Patrick Furtado
Patrick thinks he remembers reading a passage in Beryl Markham’s memoir, West with the Night, about her bulldog fighting off a leopard that leaped through a window to catch it. I can easily believe this happened because West with the Night is about Beryl growing up in Kenya in the early 1900’s when it was British East Africa, and wild animals still prowled the outskirts of Nairobi. Beryl’s bulldog would not have been the only domestic pet to have a close–and sometimes deadly–encounter with a leopard.
David Bygott*
David, commenting on my statement that leopards were rarely seen in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, says this has changed due to an increase in tourism, which is habituating leopards to people (or perhaps the vehicles they ride in). And, of course, leopards also are more commonly seen because more people are looking for them. ” I have seen leopards several times on the main road from Lodoare Gate to Ngorongoro, and in the crater. In the Ndutu area I’ve seen them many times.” (*David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby are the authors of Ngorongoro Conservation Area: A Complete Guidebook. https://www.hanby-bygott-books.com)
Tourists: Agents of habituation.
Photo by David Bygott.
David continues: “Here’s one of my favorite leopard memories: Years ago, staying at Serengeti’s Migration Camp, Jeannette and I slipped away and climbed a small hill to enjoy the sunset. As we sat there, I chanced to look over my shoulder and saw a leopard sitting about ten yards away, illuminated by the sun, peering at us over the tall grass. In the time it took me to whisper ‘Chui!‘ it vanished completely, leaving only an indelible mental picture.”
(This, the first of two posts on the Ngorongoro Maasai, describes them as they were in the 1960’s. The second, coming in a few months, will describe their present situation, over half a century later.)
Kapenjiru, 1965. That night we ate goat meat roasted over a campfire while Solomon ole Saibull regaled us with stories, including how the agro-pastoral Arusha, who had originated from elements of the Kisongo, the principle sub-tribe, or section, of the Maasai, had, a few hundred years ago, pushed the agricultural Meru people from some of their land on Mt. Meru. Even more interesting, however, because we were near the place concerned, was his story about how the Kisongo defeated another sub-tribe of the Maasai, the Lumbwa, for possession of the Crater Highlands. The decisive battle took place on the rim of Empakaai Crater.
“What happened to the defeated warriors?”
Solomon shrugged, “What do you think? They were thrown over a cliff.”
Maasai murrani or warrior. Photo by Herman Dirschl.
Given the propensity in the nineteenth century for the various elements of the Maasai to slaughter one another, the Kisongo and Lumbwa might just as easily have fought over possession of barren rock. The Ngorongoro Crater Highlands, however, were a prize worth fighting for because they contained prime dry season grazing. Furthermore, in times of drought, they were a refuge for herders living in he surrounding, drier rangelands (or at least those on good terms with the Crater Highland’s occupants).
Grasslands (yellow) of the Serengeti Plains comprise the largest area of rangelands in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. However, the grasslands of the Crater Highlands can support 2-5 times as many livestock and people. Map courtesy of David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.
Thus, it isn’t surprising that the rangelands of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area have been inhabited by livestock-keeping peoples for a very long time. The Iraqw or Mbulu people first introduced livestock, and possibly also agriculture, to the area some 2,000-2,500 years ago. Around 1,000-1,500 BC, they were replaced by the Datog (or Barabaig, Tatua) who were in turn driven out by the Maasai sometime around 1850.
A deeply worn livestock trail on Makarut Mtn, indicative of thousands of years of use by herds of livestock. Pictured: Herman Dirschl, Canadian Wildlife Service.
A century and a half later, Maasai pastoralists still occupy the Crater Highlands and adjacent eastern Serengeti Plains. Most are Kisongo Maasai. The smaller Serenget and Salei sections occupy the eastern Serengeti Plains and Oldoinyo Gol Mtns. Many of these Maasai pastoralists were moved there from the western Serengeti Plains in what is now the Serengeti National Park.
When I was at Ngorongoro in the mid-1960’s, the Maasai still largely subsisted on milk, meat, and skins from their livestock. However, whenever milk was scarce, as in the late dry season and during droughts, they also ate grains obtained from dukas (shops) or neighboring agro-pastoralists, such as the Arusha Maasai, who also farmed. They raised goats, sheep, and donkeys (the latter for hauling things), but strongly emphasized cattle, which were the principal producers of milk. In the wet season when milk was most abundant, the Maasai lived only on it. Cattle, primarily bulls, were slaughtered for meat only on special occasions, such as ox-feasts helped by the warriors. Instead, the Maasai ate goats or sheep when they wanted meat.
Donkeys being used as pack animals in the Crater Highlands. The 6-7,000 ft (2,000-2,135 m) high grasslands pictured here were used for dry season grazing. In the background is 11,811 ft (3,600 m) Lolmalasin Mtn.
Having large herds was important. The more animals, the greater chance some would survive to rebuild the herd after a drought, outbreak of disease, or major stock theft. Also, the more milk a pastoralist’s herd produced, the more people he could support. (Human carrying capacity is maximized by emphasizing milk, rather than meat in diets: Milk has a higher caloric value.) Having many cattle also conferred prestige–he with many animals was an important man.
As were their predecessors, the Datog, and probably also the Iraqw/Mbulu before them, the Maasai were transhumant pastoralists, who moved between dry season and wet season pastures (the latter in the eastern Serengeti Plains and floor of the Rift Valley). Thus, when water sources dried up and forage was depleted by grazing on the lower, drier rangelands, livestock were returned to dry season pastures in the highlands where water and forage, the latter often still green and nutritious, were still abundant.
Cattle on wet season pasture in the Olbalbal, a large, shallow depression watered by outflow from Oldupai Gorge.
A Maasai’s home, or boma, consisted of huts encircled by a stockade of cut thorn bushes or upright logs (depending on the local vegetation), which also served as a corral for livestock. Constructed of frames of poles plastered with fresh cow dung mixed with mud and cow urine, the huts were dark and smoky inside. Nonetheless, they were remarkably free of flies and mosquitoes, and fluctuated little in temperature day and night.
A view of the Olbalbal Depression and Crater Highlands from a Maasai (Serenget or Salei) boma in the eastern Serengeti Plains.
Bomas were abandoned when cow dung and parasites reached unacceptable levels. Long after fences and huts disappeared, old boma siteswere marked by dense stands of dark green nettles and other plants growing on their nutrient-rich deposits of dung.
Building and maintaining a boma’s huts were the responsibility of the women, who also did the milking, gathered water and wood, cooked, cared for the children, attended calving, and dealt with night-time disturbances within the herd of corralled livestock.
Maasai ladies on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. Note the brand new (and therefore almost pristine white) Amerikani cloth, a cheap, bleached calico named for American traders who exported it to East Africa in the mid 19th century.
Young boys and girls did the herding, assisted by warriors and elders whenever herding and watering became difficult. After circumcision, the boys became warriors or murran, who carried out difficult, long-distance herd movements, defended their locality, recaptured stolen cattle, and (at least in the past) raided other tribes, including the neighboring Mbulu and Sukuma, for livestock. Exempt from regular herding, murran hunted lions, feasted on ox-meat, consorted with young, unmarried girls, and formed strong, lasting bonds with their age-mates. Boys looked forward to becoming murran, and elders fondly remembered their time as warriors. However, like it or not, by their mid-40’s, all murran became married elders responsible for managing their herds, and taking part in political and religious affairs.
Maasai murran watching an airplane being refueled on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater.
Despite what a European visitor to a Maasai boma, swatting away flies that bred in the accumulated dung on the stockade floor, might think, the Maasai felt they were living the ‘Good Life.’ Proud of their reputation for being fierce warriors and possessing an abundance of that which, in their eyes, any sane person would want, i.e., cattle, they had everything they desired.
Thus, the Maasai have tended to be conservative and resistant to change, such as in educating children and selling cattle at livestock markets. This attitude has frustrated government officials, both pre-and post-independence, and given the Maasai a reputation for being backward.
Even so, despite contributing little to the regional economy, subsistence pastoralism, prior to the advent of tourism, was the major land use throughout most of what is now the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
PRINCIPAL REFERENCE.
Homewood & Rodgers. 1991. Maasailand Ecology: Pastoralist Development and Wildlife Conservation in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. Cambridge University Press.)
Suddenly, ahead, a soft clunk sounded. Cowbell! The chief forest guard, an older man whose stiff curly hair was sprinkled with white, whispered that we should be especially quiet now. He and I were leading a group of forest guards and game scouts on a patrol for livestock trespassing in the forest reserve. Easing our way slowly around stumps, we carefully pushed branches aside to look ahead, studying each clearing before entering it, tense with anticipation.
“Wewe! Simama!” You! Stop!
“Kamata yeye!” Catch him!
Guards and scouts alike charged into the bushes . . .
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.
Now that I’ve grabbed your attention, and you’re wondering what happens next, I’m taking the opportunity to introduce some important background information before resuming the story. In my previous post, I promoted the scenery and wildlife of Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) to the extent that some readers probably wondered why, if it was so great, it wasn’t a national park. The answer is that it once was. From 1951-1959 it comprised the western part of the Serengeti National Park.
However, difficulties encountered from having people, in this case Maasai pastoralists and non-Maasai cultivators, living in an area strictly devoted to the conservation of wildlife forced the then territorial government to remove the eastern Serengeti Plains and Crater Highlands from the park and place them within a separate entity, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This allowed the Maasai to continue their pastoral existence while the government controlled the use of certain key areas, including Ngorongoro and Empakaai craters, the eastern Serengeti Plains, and the archeological site at Oldupai Gorge. Thus, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area became a multiple-use management area, the only one in Tanzania to protect wildlife while allowing human habitation.
A relief map of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). Yellow (grassland), gray (bushland and woodland), green (forest), and brown (agriculture). Courtesy of David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.
The NCA’s montane forests provide an example of multiple use. Ranging in elevation from 5,000-10,000 ft (1,600-3,000 m), most forest cover occurs within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve, a 50 mile (80 km) band of green on the southern and eastern slopes of the Crater Highlands. Here, monsoonal air masses off the Indian Ocean 200 miles (320 km) away are forced to rise, cool, and condense into mist, clouds, and rainfall. This, together with cool high-elevation temperatures, is conducive to a moist environment. Thus, unlike elsewhere in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, where green foliage is a seasonal phenomenon, montane forest remains green throughout the year.
Lichens and other epiphytes trailing from branches are associated with abundant mist.
The first thing that struck me upon entering an undisturbed (by cutting, fire, etc.) stand of montane forest was the dim light filtering through the dense canopy 50 to 60 feet overhead. Only here and there did a beam of sunlight slant down to brighten a patch of he forest floor. The next was how a dense understory of shrubs and small trees often hampered my movements, while at other times it was so scattered (or absent) that I could walk freely across the forest floor, the latter made soft and springy by several inches of decomposing organic matter. This made it easier to appreciate the trees, which I differentiated by their many types of bark, which ranged from silver to black, and from smooth to rough, including fissured, corrugated, scaly, flaking, and peeling.
Montane forest within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve.
Ngorongoro’s forests comprised many tree and shrub species. Some were worthy of note, if only for their descriptive names, including pillar wood (Cassipourea malosana), cheese wood (Pittosporum viridiflorum), brittle wood (Nuxia congesta), and black ironwood (Olea capensis). The latter, also called Elgon olive (for Mt. Elgon on the Kenya-Uganda border), stands out because it is so dense and heavy that it will not float. (Check out the world’s ten heaviest woods at https://www.wood-database.com/top-ten-heaviest-woods/).
Cape chestnut.
Cape chestnut (Calodendron capense) has beautiful flowers. East African pencil cedar (Juniperus procera) is the largest species of Juniper in the world. Mountain bamboo (Arundinaria alpina) is a very large woody grass. The fresh leaves and shoots of Khat or Miraa (Catha edulis) were chewed as a stimulant throughout much of eastern Africa, especially the Horn of Africa. Podo (Podocarpus milanjianus), African mahogany (Entandrophragma angolense), and East African pencil cedar woods were highly prized for construction and other uses. However, these species were not abundant enough in Ngorongoro’s forests to attract commercial operations.
East African pencil cedar forms pure stands in high-elevation ravines within the NCA. The wood of this species was once extensively used to make pencils. Photo by Sema Tu. Creative Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Dense stands of mountain bamboo on Oldeani Mountain (Oldeani is the Maasai word for bamboo). Mountain bamboo has the strange habit of gregariously dying out over large areas every 15 to 40 years or so.
In the case of the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve, a lack of commercially exploitable tree species didn’t matter because its principal purpose, ever since its establishment in 1927, was the protection of forest catchments for water production. Thus, although the forest fulfilled local domestic wood product needs, such as building poles, and firewood, it was far more important for the water (twenty-four small streams and seven springs) it provided beyond its boundaries to coffee and wheat estates, tourist facilities, Mbulu farmers, and Maasai pastoralists. Water infiltrating into the forest’s soils also sustained important groundwater forest habitat over ten miles (sixteen km) away in Lake Manyara National Park (see earlier post, On the Road to Ngorongoro: Part III)
Farms abutting the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. Most are new since 1965. Photo by David Bygott.
However, the main reason for including the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve in the Serengeti National Park (1n 1951) and then the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (1959), was its value as wildlife habitat, especially for buffaloes, elephants, and rhinos. At the time it was thought that the large animals living in the forest seldom left it, although tourists would often see them along the road. However, subsequent studies revealed that rhinos often traveled back and forth between the forest and the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. Furthermore, before their access routes were blocked by new farms, elephants once moved between the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve and the Rift Valley floor near Lake Manyara .
Picture encountering this while pushing your way through dense undergrowth. Photo by David Bygott.
Finally, the montane forests of Ngorongoro supported yet another use, a great deal of it illegal. Much of the forest within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve was discontinuous, separated by secondary scrub and grassy glades. Possible causes included cultivation carried out many years ago, fire, and grazing/browsing by livestock. Maasai herders were sometimes allowed, under permit, to pasture their livestock in forest glades during droughts. Fires, set in the glades to remove dry grass often escaped into the forest, damaging trees. Browsing by livestock destroyed tree seedlings. Trampling hooves compacted soils, reducing their ability to absorb rainfall. These impacts had the potential to seriously reduce the forest’s water catchment value.
It was for this reason that Henry Fosbrooke, the conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, wanted me, the NCA’s assistant conservator (forests), to stop forest trespass by Maasai livestock. “The forest guards aren’t doing their job properly. You must shape them up.” This explains why, in the first paragraph of this post, I and a group of forest guards and game scouts are portrayed sneaking through the trees trying apprehend trespassing herders and their animals. We now return to that story.
Cattle illegally grazing a glade within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. The tall grass, manyatta grass (Eleusine jaegeri), is unpalatable to livestock. The other grasses have been grazed and trampled so heavily that in places only bare soil remains, Fires set in the glade have, in the past, burned away parts of the adjacent forest, giving it an irregular, often open appearance.
The person caught by the scouts and guards was a Maasai herd boy. Soon afterward, they caught another herder, and then another. We nabbed six herders and roughly a thousand cattle that day. Together with those apprehended a few days earlier in another part of the forest, this made ten people and two-thousand cattle. No wonder the forest reserve was degraded. Three days later, the herders and I appeared in a magistrate’s court in the town of Karatu where the African magistrate levied such a small fine that a relative of the herders paid it on the spot.
“They treat these fines as grazing fees” whispered a senior staff member of the NCA, Solomon ole Saibull, into my ear. “They would willingly pay even greater amounts.” Keeping his voice low, he told me that in his experience, African magistrates seldom imposed heavy fines for forest trespass because they didn’t think it was a very important offense. Most Africans, educated or not, considered forest reserves to be relicts of colonialism, set aside by the ‘wazungu’ for their own purposes, not the African’s. “He [the magistrate] probably thinks the reserve should be converted to farms,”Solomon hissed.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.
Here was another factor contributing to degradation within the forest reserve. Now I understood why the forest guards weren’t interested in braving elephants and buffaloes to catch trespassing livestock. Why bother if it did no good? Consequently, despite our efforts, I and the forest guards were to have little impact on the numbers of trespassing livestock during my time at Ngorongoro.
Maasai herders caught trespassing with their livestock in the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. They were so engrossed in chewing honeycombs that they didn’t hear us approach.
We now jump ahead thirty years. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) general management plan, published in 1996, emphasized, among other things, the continuing need to better control both fire and forest grazing. Apparently, the NCA foresters who came after me also had trouble controlling forest trespass.
Furthermore, the management plan also stated that Ngorongoro’s forests were under considerable pressure from illegal harvesting of trees for local domestic use. This to the extent that Mafu (Fagaropsis angolensis) and Khat or Miraa (Catha edulis) were listed as ‘threatened’ tree species in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area due to extensive logging of the former for building materials, and heavy harvesting of the latter for its drug properties.
This undoubtedly reflects rapid population growth, both within and outside the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (Tanzania’s population approximately tripled from 1960 to 1996), which has created a higher demand for forest products. (For information on population growth in Tanzania, go to https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/tanzania-population.)
I wonder what the situation is now, twenty-six years later.
Man, it was cold! Dense fog had formed during the night to wrap my little house on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater in a silent, gauzy blindfold. Peering through the window, I shivered, something I hadn’t expected to do so close to the equator. But then I also hadn’t expected to be living at 7,000 ft elevation ( 2,134 m). On the other hand, a fire in the fireplace was beginning to making its presence felt. Pulling up a chair to huddle near its warmth, I reviewed what I had learned from my first staff meeting as the Ngorongoro Conservation Area’s new assistant conservator (forests).
Ngorongoro’s forests and crater rim are often cold and foggy during the wet and early dry seasons. Photo by David Bygott.
Wearing a sweater to ward off the cool morning air, Henry Fosbrooke, conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, addressed the assembled officers from behind his sturdy African olive-wood desk. He confirmed that I was to oversee a large forest reserve, ten forest guards, a tree nursery, and a small fuelwood plantation of eucalyptus trees. He emphasized the need to stop livestock trespassing in the forest reserve, but he also wanted me to locate game-viewing tracks for tourists in and around Ngorongoro Crater. Then, he said something I hadn’t expected. Pausing to wipe his glasses, Henry admitted that neither activity would be possible until he obtained more vehicle fuel and a bulldozer. In the meantime I was to take over the conservation area’s rain gauge system and set up a meteorological station near the office. Also, I was informed, Richard Leakey had ordered a lorry load of bamboo for the archeological site at Oldupai Gorge; buffaloes had broken the fence around the tree plantation again; and I needed to familiarize myself with the files in my office. After the meeting, John Goddard, a Canadian wildlife biologist, and my neighbor, invited me to accompany him into the crater while he studied rhinos. Checking the fog again through the window, I decided I was in little danger of being bored. I also decided to borrow a heavy sweater from John.
In fact, I was never to be bored for long at Ngorongoro, especially when my official duties expanded to take me throughout the entire Ngorongoro Conservation Area. And, what a place it was, too!
A relief map of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Yellow (grassland), gray (bushland and woodland), green (forest), and brown (agriculture). Courtesy of David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby (more about them later).
Bracketed by three rift valley lakes, Manyara, Eyasi, and Natron, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, at 3,200 sq. miles (8,300 sq. k), is nearly as large as Yellowstone National Park, which it rivals in scenic appeal and biological diversity (both are UNESCO World Heritage Sites). And how could it not what with the high peaks, plateau, and volcanic calderas of the Crater Highlands in the east, the vast sweep of the world-famous Serengeti Plains in the west, and, in the southwest, Lake Eyasi and the rugged Eyasi Escarpment (not to mention extensive areas of thorn tree bushland and woodland).
Empakaai Crater dramatically backdropped by Oldoinyo Lengai, an active volcano rising from the rift valley floor. At 10,700 ft (3,200 m) elevation and 980 ft (300 m) deep, Empakaai is highly scenic. Views from the crater rim often include Mt. Kilimanjaro 90 miles (145 km) to the east.
The Melinda grasslands, a high plateau (including the Embulbul Depression) in the rain shadow of >11,000 ft (3353 m) Loolmalison and Olosirwa mtns. The trails reflect many millennia of use by wildlife and, for at the least the last 2,000 years, livestock of a succession of pastoral peoples. The area is now grazed by Maasai livestock. The distant peak is Oldeani Mountain.
Composed of numerous species, including bamboo on Oldeani Mtn., montane evergreen forest is sustained by high rainfall, primarily on the southern and eastern flanks of the Crater Highlands. It is a major habitat for rhino, buffalo, and elephant. The pictured tree is a species of Dracaena.
Thorn tree woodland on the drier, west slope of the Crater Highlands. The dominant tree here is a species of Commiphora. This is giraffe and impala country. The eastern Serengeti Plains are visible in the distance.
Migratory wildebeest on the eastern Serengeti Plains. During my time at Ngorongoro (1964-67), approximately 400,000 wildebeest moved onto the eastern plains every wet season to graze and calve, only returning to the Serengeti National Park when the grass and water dried up. (In 1980 they numbered around 1,400,000.)
The Eyasi Escarpment rising 1300 ft (400 m) above Lake Eyasi (barely visible at far left). Shallow Lake Eyasi fluctuates widely in area both seasonally and annually. Flamingoes and waterbirds visit the lake. Agriculturalists, Hadza hunter-gatherers, and Datoga pastoralists use the adjacent semi-arid thorn bush flats.
Pretty cool, eh?
(The authors/artists Jeannette Hanby and David Bygott lived for nineteen years in Mangola Village near Lake Eyasi’s eastern shore just a few miles east of the area pictured above. Their books, Spirited Oasis: Tales from a Tanzanian Village, and Beyond the Oasis: Safaris of Song and Stone, relate their experiences during this time. Check them out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU1L-sZJs8Q; David and Jeannette tell a good story.)
(For more information on the present-day Ngorongoro Conservation Area see https://www.ncaa.go.tz/
Summary of the past four posts:It’s September, 1964. I’m traveling with Henry Fosbrooke, the conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, to Ngorongoro a hundred miles west of Arusha, Tanganyika to take up my duties as a forester. A newly arrived Peace Corps volunteer, I soak up impressions like a dry sponge: the Great North Road (Cape Town to Cairo); the Maasai Steppe with its spear-wielding cattle herders and air smokey from grass fires; buying bananas at a village named after mosquitoes; sweeping views from the Great Rift Escarpment; and, finally, crossing a once empty plateau now being settled by Mbulu farmers.
Several miles past the village of Karatu we came to Lodoare Gate, the entrance to Henry’s domain, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Beyond the gate’s wooden barrier, the road disappeared into the dense forest of the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. In Arusha, Henry had complained about how the forest needed protection from illegal grazing by Maasai cattle but wasn’t getting it because the guards supervised by an African forester weren’t doing their job properly. As we waited for the gate guards to raise the pole and let us through, he abruptly switched from tour guide to boss mode and returned to the subject. Fixing me with a tight smile, he nodded toward the forest and declared, ” As the new assistant conservator (forests) this is your responsibility now. You must shape these chaps up!”
Lodoare Gate, entrance to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It has since been replaced by a larger, more modern structure. (Photo by David Bygott, co-author with Jeanette Hanby, of Spirited Oasis, and Beyond the Oasis.)
I needed no reminder. Cloaking the southern and western slopes of the Crater Highlands, the forest had been a brooding presence, a few miles to the north, for the last twenty miles, its dark green foliage sharply contrasting with the dried-up savanna of the plateau. Yes, I certainly intended to do something about those forest guards.
The road began to climb, passing through thickets of broad-leaved shrubs, vines, and creepers that reduced visibility away from the road to a few feet. Only where it crossed high on the slope were we able to look out and see trees with smooth silvery bark rising from a dense cover of shrubs.
Pillar wood trees (Cassipourea malosana) in the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve rising above a dense cover of shrubs dominated by Vernonia auriculifera
“Any wildlife here?” I asked. “Yes indeed,” Henry enthusiastically replied, back in tour guide mode again, “elephants, buffaloes, rhinos . . . We might encounter some at any time.” Then with a grimace, “I’m driving a government Land Rover today because I don’t want my private ghari damaged should we meet a stroppy rhino.” Well, that gave pause for thought; the shrubs lining the road sometimes were so dense that rhinos, or possibly even elephants, would be nearly invisible until they stepped onto the road. If we arrived just as this happened, we could easily hit one, or find ourselves dangerously close. I decided to keep alert, especially when we rounded blind curves.
An example of what we might have met while rounding a corner. Look at those horns! (Photo by George and Lory Frame)
Jack Meyers would have understood. A livestock marketing advisor traveling from Arusha to Mwanza, he passed along this same stretch of road in 1976. However, he did so in different circumstances. Rain was bucketing down, the road was muddy and slippery, and his driver, the manager of the project he was advising, was proving worryingly erratic. At one point where the road cut across a steep slope, the vehicle wavered so near the edge that Jack almost grabbed the steering wheel. But then something happened that made his partner slam on the brakes. Crack! Pop! Crash! Shrubs violently shook and swayed, and where an instant before had been only muddy road, there was now an elephant. Flat on its butt.
What had happened was that the big animal, finding the wet soil on the steep slope too slippery to safely navigate on foot, had simply sat down and tobogganed, crashing through bushes and ricocheting off trees, downhill to the road.* Peering through a rain and mud-streaked windshield, the two men watched, wide-eyed, as the tembo, leaves adhering to its wet skin and a broken branch balanced precariously on its head, heaved itself to its feet and shook off the accumulated vegetation. Then it ambled across the road, carefully sat down again, and disappeared, sliding farther down the hill. Jack and his partner did not linger. Seeing another elephant materialize from the bushes close behind them, they quickly moved on.
(*Elephants have more than one way to negotiate steep slopes. For instance, some friends of mine, Andrew and Barbara Clark, rode an elephant in Thailand a few years ago which drug its hind legs like a sea anchor while walking and steering with its forefeet. In another example, a pachyderm in a recent televised nature program [name forgotten] tucked in all its feet and slid down a hill on its belly. And, of course, many of the big animals just carefully walk, especially when the ground is dry or rocky. )
In our case, no large animals impeded our progress up the mountain. However, we did occasionally see their spoor on the road, and, funnily enough, it conjured up memories. Cape buffalo droppings resembled cattle pats I had stepped around in fenced pastures in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Piles of elephant dung looked to my untrained eye like those of horses, except that the fibrous brown boluses were the size of grapefruit. At one point I caught the scent of horses wafting in through an open Land Rover window. “Elephants,” Henry corrected me. “Somewhere close by.”
Dung beetles on a pile of elephant dung. (Author: NJR ZA. GNU Free Documentation License.)
Eventually, we arrived at the top where the road branched both ways along a narrow ridge. Henry stopped and suggested I look over the other side.
It took several minutes to absorb the details of that startling view. Expecting a forested valley, I was unprepared to see, far below, tawny grassland stretching away across the floor of an immense crater, Ngorongoro Crater! All through the forest, we had been driving up the Crater’s southern flank.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
Ngorongoro Crater as seen from its southeastern rim. The dry lake bed in the distance reflects drier conditions than when I arrived in 1964. (Photo by David Bygott.)
Wow!
We were near our destination now. Late afternoon shadows darkened the western walls of the crater and accentuated small hills on the crater floor. The road kept to the crater rim, passing through grassy glades, and dipping into forested gullies. Occasionally, wonderful views presented themselves northward over the darkening crater to the highlands beyond. Then we began to see animals–my first ever free-ranging African wildlife; two gray elephants daydreaming in an open glade, a reddish bushbuck standing startled at the forest edge, the massive rear end of a buffalo disappearing into dense green bush. And finally, the best: two lions walking down the middle of the road, so certain of their right of way that, as far as they were concerned, we weren’t even there. I started mentally composing my first letter home.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.
Elephants in a glade on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater.
Then we were there. Passing a tourist lodge, we turned onto a smaller road leading past office buildings with red corrugated metal roofs to a large cul-de-sac serving four residences. Parking beside the smallest, Henry turned to me and said, “This one is yours”
September, 1964: Leaving the LakeManyara Hotel, Henry Fosbrooke and I continued west on the murram (a type of gravel) road to Ngorongoro. We were now on the Mbulu Plateau, 1,500 ft (455m) above the Maasai Steppe.
The plateau is named for the Mbulu (Iraqw) people, who, in contrast to the pastoral Maasai, are mixed farmers with large numbers of cattle, and a variety of crops, including wheat. They are noted for their system of intensive cultivation (possibly including at Ngaruka, a 500-year-old [at least] abandoned settlement at the base of the escarpment north of Lake Manyara, where there are remnants of a sophisticated irrigation system and terraced stone houses). They speak a Cushitic language so ancient it no longer exists in its ancestral home, southern Ethiopia (their nearest Cushitic-speaking neighbors are 400 miles [approx. 645 km] away). Their ancestors introduced livestock (and, perhaps also agriculture) into East Africa at least 2,000 years ago. They’ve assimilated so many foreign groups that only three of an estimated 150-200 Mbulu clans are thought to be of Mbulu descent. In 1959, five years before my arrival, they comprised about 100,000 people.
Figure 1. The Mbulu Plateau extends from the Crater Highlands (upper left) seventy miles south to the Mbulu Highlands (purple area at lower left).
My impression of the plateau was of a wooded savanna rumpled here and there by small hills and shallow valleys. The trees were a mix of thorny acacias and broadleaved species (they had been small and thorny on the Maasai Steppe). The grass was dry and tawny. Scattered fields of golden wheat punctuated the savanna, as did occasional buildings roofed with thatch or shiny corrugated metal (mbati). There was one exception: Low, dark, and rectangular, plastered with a mix of mud and cow dung, and with a flat roof supported by wooden posts, it crouched defensively against a low ridge. “That’s a tembe,” Henry informed me. “It’s the traditional Mbulu dwelling. There aren’t many around anymore.”
Figure 2. A traditional Mbulu dwelling (tembe). In this case, it also served as a small store (duka).
Henry went on to say that this part of the plateau had once been held by the Maasai who called it Ngotiek. The German colonial government removed them in the late 1890’s, possibly to allow the development of German-owned farms near Karatu and Oldeani.
Figure 3. This farm near Karatu, originally developed during the German colonial period, now focuses on tourism. (Photo by David Bygott, co-author with Jeannette Hanby, of Spirited Oasis.)
The Maasai, decimated by losses of livestock to the cattle disease, rinderpest, and to the effects of a serious drought, were too weak to resist. They did, however, return to the Ngotiek in the early days of the British administration following the First World War, only to be forced out again. This time it was by another cattle disease, probably nagana, a trypanosomiasis carried by tsetse flies which meanwhile had invaded the area. The 15-20 year absence of Maasai from the Ngotiek where they routinely set grass fires to kill ticks and remove dead grass, had likely resulted in fewer fires, allowing trees to become dense, creating habitat for the tsetse flies.
Figure 4. An Mbulu man escorting donkeys carrying sacks of flour. It’s difficult to see here but he has a flat-top hair style that was then common among the Mbulu.
In 1929, the British territorial government allocated the Ngotiek area to the Mbulu people. Noted for their intensive cultivation--vistas of alternating fields, neat strips of green pasture, homesteads, and well-tended plots of woodland–they were at the time concentrated in highlands far to the south where their rapidly expanding population had outgrown the carrying capacity of the land, causing it to degrade.
Figure 5. Bus taking on passengers at Karatu, an Mbulu settlement on the road to Ngorongoro. Bulky items went on the roof, accessed by a ladder at the rear of the bus. They would be well-covered by dust at journey’s end.
Initially assisted by a colonial development project, the Mbulu, over the next thirty-five years, cleared tsetse-infested bush, reduced the numbers of their livestock, instituted soil conservation measures, took up the use of tractors, and, in doing so, spread throughout the rest of the plateau, including the Ngotiek. So successful was the project that jump-started it all that the head of the department of agriculture, sounding pleasantly surprised, reported that, the native authority (i.e., the local native-run administration) will now inherit not an embarrassing burden but a scheme with a momentum of its own.) For his part, Henry was impressed by how the Mbulus had adapted to tractors. “They’re now one of the best examples of mechanical farming by Africans,” he enthused.
Figure 6. Karatu’s bus station: packed earth, eucalyptus trees, blue and white matatu or passenger van, corrugated metal roofs, on-lookers, and, in the distance, wooded savanna.
Nonetheless, despite the presence of wheat fields and buildings (including the settlement of Karatu), the area through which we passed that day was still largely savanna. The occupation of the Mbulu Plateau by its namesake people was still underway.
However, that is no longer the case. Leap ahead now to the present, over fifty years later. The area once named Ngotiek is wall-to-wall cultivation (Figure 7). Karatu, only a village in 1964, is a large town. The Mbulu (Iraqw) population is in the region of a million people. Times have changed.
Figure 7. Mbulu cultivation between the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve and the Great Rift escarpment near Lake Manyara National Park. (Photo by David Bygott.)
Henry and I were enjoying the view from the veranda of the Lake Manyara Hotel. Perched atop the escarpment above Lake Manyara National Park, the hotel commanded sweeping views to the east, south, and north. The Park began almost at our feet, a jumble of trees, shrubs and rocks tumbling down a steep 1800 ft (545 m) escarpment to a narrow, irregular plain of forest, woodland, and grassland bordering the shallow muddy waters of Lake Manyara. Beyond stretched the dry, withered vastness of the Maasai Steppe, its occasional hills and dry stream beds obscured by a haze of smoke from dry-season grass fires.
Figure 1. Lake Manyara National Park begins at the top of the escarpment, extends across Lake Manyara and halfway toits distant southern tip. The building on the right is the Lake Manyara Hotel.
It was 1964. I was a newly arrived U.S. Peace Corps volunteer and Henry was Henry Fosbrooke, old Tanganyika hand and conservator, Ngorongoro Conservation Area. He was driving me to Ngorongoro where I was to take up my duties as assistant conservator (forests). While Henry finished drinking his tea, I gazed over the park. Twenty-five miles long, it was only a few miles wide, and much of this was steep, rugged escarpment. This made me wonder what was important about the park besides a striking view. “Tree-climbing lions,” Henry stated, setting down his tea cup with a forceful clink. “Unique to this park; the only place in Africa where lions climb trees.” (Note: since then, populations of tree-climbing lions have been found elsewhere, including Ngorongoro, Tarangire, and the Serengeti in Tanzania as well as Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda.) Beckoning for a waiter to bring the bill, he added, “There also are rather a lot of elephants.” That did it: I would visit the park the first chance I got.
Figure 2. A tree-climbing lioness in Lake Manyara National Park. (Photo by David Bygott, co-author with Jeanette Hanby of the book, Spirited Oasis:Tales from a Tanzanian village.)
Lake Manyara National Park is a good example of how the escarpments, lakes, and volcanic highlands of East Africa’s eastern rift valley have influenced the region’s biological diversity, not to mention its scenery.
At 123 sq. miles (318 sq.km), 70% of them water, the park was small. In comparison, the Serengeti National Park, 55 miles to the west, could contain 46 Lake Manyara National Parks.
Figure 3. Lake Manyara National Park includes the northern half of Lake Manyara. The Tarangire Game Reserve (now a national park) lies to the southeast, across the Great North Road.
Nonetheless, it was ecologically diverse. The combination of rocky escarpment composed of ancient basement system and younger volcanic rocks, large shallow lake, and narrow plain watered by perennial streams and springs has created habitats ranging from closed canopy forest through deciduous woodland and thicket, to open grassland and swamp. Examples of three of the most important habitats follow:
Figure 4. Elephant dreaming in a forest glade. (Photo by David Bygott.)
Forest: Fed by springs flowing from volcanic rock at the base of the escarpment, groundwater forest consists of plants that could not grow under the existing rainfall. It also contains grassy glades and swamps. The spring water originates outside the park, from rainfall falling on the forested outer slopes of the Crater Highlands thirty miles away.
Figure 5. Acacia woodland. (Photo by David Bygott.)
Acacia woodlands: haunt of tree-climbing lions. No one knows for sure why they spend so much time resting in trees. The more plausible theories include keeping away from herds of buffaloes and elephants and/or from biting flies. (Another, possibly tongue-in-cheek, suggestion is that the trees are simply easy to climb.)
This raises a question: buffaloes are the principal prey of the park’s lions, so why should lions avoid them? Buffaloes are big, mean, and hard to kill. They can put up a real fight when attacked. Consequently, Manyara lions lead harder lives than their Serengeti cousins, who frequently feast off hyena kills. This probably accounts for their desire to keep clear of buffalo herds until hunger drives them to hunt again.
Figure 6. Open grassland. (License:: Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International [CCBY-SA 4.0]) OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Grasslands support a large proportion of the park’s animal biomass. One of the more important types is strongly influenced by Lake Manyara in that it occurs on alkaline soils of periodically flooded mud flats. Alkali grassland fluctuates widely in area depending on the level of the lake, but is, nonetheless, heavily grazed by buffaloes, gnus, and zebras.
Large and shallow (max. depth 12 ft or 3.6 m), Manyara, like other rift valley lakes, has no outlet, losing its water only through evaporation. Therefore, its area and depth can vary significantly over time. For instance, in 1961, the lake was so dry it could be crossed in a Land Rover, whereas in 1962 rising waters killed many trees along the shore and forced zebras and wildebeests, the latter then the principal grazers on alkali grasslands, into the woodlands where they were easy prey for lions. This destroyed the wildebeest population, which took several years to return. The lake gives, but can also take away.
The varied habitats of Lake Manyara National Park provide optimal conditions for many species of wildlife: klipspringer and Kirk’s dik dik on the rocky escarpment, impala and giraffe in the woodlands, various waterbirds (at times an estimated two million) on the lake . . . However, none benefit more from this habitat diversity than elephants, which can use them all (except perhaps the lake). They can pull up tussocks of grass, forage branches up to 20 ft (6 m) high, wade into swamps to eat aquatic plants, and even carefully negotiate parts of the escarpment. Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that there were a lot of them in the park.
Figure 7. Elephant browsing an umbrella acacia (Acacia tortillis). (Photo by David Bygott.)
However, there was another, more ominous, explanation for their high numbers: hunting and loss of habitat to agriculture might be driving elephants into the park. If so, they could become so numerous as to outgrow their food supply. In such cases it’s the trees and shrubs that are most affected. If short on forage, elephants will strip bark and eat the cambium, push trees over to get at out-of-reach foliage , dig up tree roots, and gouge holes into baobab trees to access water stored in their trunks. Thus, the most visible impact of elephant overpopulation is the destruction of forests and woodlands.
Furthermore, this already was happening elsewhere. For instance, in Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park some 1000 sq miles (2290 sq km) of woodlands would be destroyed by 1969. Worse yet, there were signs of damage to trees in Lake Manyara National Park where many Acacia tortilis (umbrella acacia) trees had been knocked down and/or stripped of their bark.
Figure 8. Elephants in the Serengeti browsing the upper branches of a fever tree (Acacia xanthophloea) they have pushed over.
This led Tanganyika National Parks to ask a young British zoologist, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, to study the situation. Iain spent the next few years identifying individual elephants and studying their behavior. He recorded what they ate and their impact on the vegetation. He learned how to age them and monitor their growth. He recorded births and when one died tried to find out why. He counted them and followed their movements. Large as they were, elephants still were hard to spot in areas of dense vegetation, so Iain immobilized a few of the big animals, fitted them with radio collars and tracked them from an airplane, which he also used to census their numbers.
Figure 9. Iain Douglas-Hamilton’s camp on the Ndala River
And, along the way, he had some exciting experiences. A partial list includes being hospitalized by an encounter with a rhino while on foot in dense bush, being swept downstream from a causeway while trying to cross a river in flood, and, on three occasions having his vehicle bashed up by elephants. As described in Among the Elephants, these incidents were scary enough to make a prospective wildlife biologist choose another career. That said, except for the rhino encounter, it was Iain’s Land Rover that sustained the most damage. Holed, ripped, bent, and lifted by angry elephants, its fenders were crumpled, roof squashed, and windows broken; the big animals sometimes pushed it around like a baby carriage. It’s a wonder the vehicle lasted through Iain’s study. Nonetheless, it did and here are some of Iain’s findings:
(a) Manyara had the densest elephant population of any park in Africa, well over 10 / sq. mile (3.0 / sq km). Elephants dominated the park’s large-mammal biomass (with buffaloes coming in a close second);
(b) Fortunately, the park’s elephants were not completely confined to the park but had access to the Marang Forest Reserve above the escarpment to the southwest. This reduced the chances, at least for the time being, of their numbers overwhelming the food supply;
(c) Nonetheless, Manyara’s elephant population still might someday outgrow their food supply, destroy their habitat, and starve.
Therefore, Iain proposed the acquisition of land owned by European farmers (many of whom were already leaving the country) at the south of the park. This would provide more room for the park’s elephants but also allow them access, across lightly settled land south of the lake, to the Tarangire Game Reserve (now national park) ten miles to the east (Fig. 3).
Over thirty years later, in 2009, Tanzania National Parks finalized this acquisition, providing hope for the future of Manyara’s elephants.
