Category: Wildlife

LEOPARDS: WILDLIFE OF NGORONGORO

LEOPARDS: WILDLIFE OF NGORONGORO

Featured image: Leopard on rock, by David Bygott

Ngorongoro Crater, Tanganyika, 1964.

John Goddard and I were twenty feet up in a sturdy acacia at the edge of the floor of Ngorongoro Crater, searching for rhinos hidden by a dense understory of head-high shrubs. We saw three right away, one a young calf. Also in sight were sixteen elephants shouldering their way through the shrubs to a nearby swamp. But John focused his camera entirely on the rhinos. Not having seen these individuals before, he was ecstatic. However, it was late afternoon, and I was thirsty, so I climbed down to walk back through the shrubs to where his wife and young daughter (and a jug of cool water) were waiting in the car. But then a loud cry stopped me.

“Dennis!” John yelled from high in the tree. “Run for the car!”

I wheeled in alarm. About a hundred yards away, John was in trouble.

“Leopard!” He shouted while frantically breaking off a dead branch to use as a club. “At the base of the tree!”

He was as high in the tree as he could get, shouting excitedly and waving his improvised club; the leopard was probably this very moment preparing to bound up the tree and chew his ankles off. Running back to the Land Rover, I drove it through the bushes toward the tree while John’s wife tried to calm their daughter’s anxious queries about her father’s safety. But we never saw the leopard. The noise of our approach–racing engine, the screech and whap of branches against the car, wheels bumping over rough ground–probably scared it off. John clambered down as fast as he could, and we returned to the road. By this time, his wife had had enough. She had not slept well in their tent. She had almost stepped on a cobra earlier in the morning. And now the leopard. It was time to go home.

And home they went.

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika

Was John in real danger? Many years later, comfortably far removed from the possibility of eye-to-eye contact with an uncaged leopard, I can say that he probably wasn’t. Leopards have indeed killed people when other food was unavailable. However, that wasn’t the case in Ngorongoro Crater which contained an abundance of prey species more attractive to leopards.

Leopard with kill. Photo by David Bygott.

Jackals, of which three species inhabit Ngorongoro Crater, are a good example–leopards really like jackals. That they also like domestic pets was discovered by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area’s first conservator, Henry Fosbrooke, when a leopard snatched his small dog from beside his house one night, grabbed one of his cats from the veranda the next day in broad daylight, and then returned the following evening to see if anything else was on offer. (Leopards have been known to come through open windows to catch sleeping pets.)

Black-backed jackal, a favorite food of leopards.

The leopard’s fondness for domestic pets, however, has not kept it from becoming one of the most economically important animal species in Tanzania. Tourists want to see them, sports hunters want to shoot them, and both groups pay substantial amounts of money for the opportunity.

Tourist photographing a leopard. Photo by David Bygott.

That said, leopards are rarely seen in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area–I saw none during my three years there. This is because leopards are animals of bush and forest rather than open grassland, and usually try to stay inconspicuous (see habitat map at end of post). Nonetheless, tourists with competent guides have a reasonable chance of seeing one. Location is also important. For instance, leopards are frequently seen resting on the branches of fever trees near Seronera in the Serengeti National Park. The trees provide cover from which they can hunt gazelles in adjacent grasslands, then haul their carcasses up a tree to keep then from being appropriated by lions.

Leopard at edge of the Serengeti Plains.

Finger-like extensions of trees into open grassland (pale yellow) provide good habitat for leopards. Adapted from Herlocker (1975).

Their cryptic nature makes leopards difficult to count and monitor. Nevertheless, photo-trapping surveys show them to be widespread within the Serengeti-Ngorongoro region. Furthermore, ranger patrols have sighted a good number of leopards throughout the Ngorongoro Conservation Area’s Northern Highlands Forest Reserve (NHFR). The forest reserve is excellent leopard habitat, providing plenty of food for an animal that will eat anything from beetles and birds to wildebeests (not that the latter are found in forests). It’s such good habitat, in fact, that female leopards living in the NHFR give birth to a minimum of three cubs rather than the usual two.

Excellent leopard habitat: Northern Highlands Forest Reserve, Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Photo by David Bygott.

Leopards are often poached for their valuable pelts, leading to a probable decline in their numbers world-wide. However, even though they sometimes attack cattle, and are consequently regarded by Maasai pastoralists as a threat, leopards appear to be relatively unthreatened within the 3,200 sq. mile (8,288 sq. km) Ngorongoro Conservation Area, which contains an estimated 1,000 of these predators.

Let’s hope it continues this way.

MAPS

Vegetation of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. In terms of habitat for leopards, Grassland (yellow) is the poorest. Graphic by David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.

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.

Herlocker, D. 1975. Woody vegetation of the Serengeti National Park. The Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, College Station. 4M–9-75

Proceedings of the 1st Tanzania lion and leopard conservation action plan workshop. Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) 20-22nd, February 2006.

BUFFALOES AND ELEPHANTS: WILDLIFE OF NGORONGORO

BUFFALOES AND ELEPHANTS: WILDLIFE OF NGORONGORO

“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).

Elephant in Ngorogoro Crater

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

THE WILDLIFE OF NGORONGORO

THE WILDLIFE OF NGORONGORO

September 1964. One of the things I remember from my first day as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ngorongoro Crater were the reactions of Henry Fosbrooke, conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and John Goddard, a Canadian wildlife biologist, to tourist vehicles tightly clustered around animals of interest, such as lions.

“Why don’t they stay on the main tracks?” Henry complained. “There’s quite enough off-track driving going on. It’s wearing down the grass and disfiguring the crater floor. I must talk with our guides about this.” John wasn’t pleased either. “Crowding the animals makes them edgy.”

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.

That year, 12,137 tourists visited Ngorongoro. In 2018, over half a century later, the amount was closer to three quarters of a million. If Henry and John were worried about the impact of tourists on the crater’s environment and wildlife then, I wonder how they would feel now.

Not that I blame people for wanting to visit the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, for there is much to see. Here are some examples:

Lions. Tourist vehicles were most apt to crowd around the big cats, of which lions are both the largest, and usually easiest to find. And who wouldn’t want to see one, for the lion is the epitome of ferocity, the King of the Beasts lording it atop the food chain. Even from a distance, the large carnivore’s booming, moaning roars have a way of concentrating one’s attention, especially when sleeping in the fragile protection of a tent.

Meal time in Ngorongoro Crater. Photo by David Bygott.

Ngorongoro Crater has long been considered one of the best places on earth to see lions. In 1975, at 125 animals, it contained one of the densest populations in Africa. As of 2014, however, only 55 lions, comprising four prides, ruled the crater. Unfortunately, the lions of Ngorongoro Crater have a problem. Back in the early 1960’s most of them died, weakened by a plague of Stomoxys biting flies. Although the population subsequently grew, so few new lions entered the crater to replenish the gene pool over the next three decades that the crater’s lions became inbred. Immigration of new lions into the crater apparently has always been rare. However, a growing belt of Maasai communities may have exacerbated the situation by detering movement of lions between plains and crater (Maasai warriors kill lions to protect their livestock; they also once did it to prove their manhood.) This is one of the reasons why the Ngorongoro Conservaton Area Authority (NCAA) worries about the impact of an increasing human population on wildlife conservation (See MAASAI PASTORALISTS OF NGORONGORO: AS THEY ARE NOW). That said, however, KopeLion https://www.KopeLion.org and The Lion Recovery Fund, https://www.lionrecoveryfund have recently had some success in improving the relationship between lions and the Maasai.

Wildebeests. High-shouldered, broad-muzzled, and with cow-like horns and spindly legs, the wildebeest, or gnu, will ever win a beauty contest. (That said, I must admit to the cuteness of gnu calves.)

Wildebeest calves in Ngorongoro Crater.

In compensation, the wildebeest has a comical personality best displayed when, for instance, one of the funny looking animals cavorts about, kicking it’s heels in the air, or again, when sparring males drop to their front knees and butt heads with their hind ends in the air. Then, there’s those bleating grunts–ngggh. . . ngggh. . . ngggh–which sound like the large antelopes have sinus problems. (The name, gnu, might come from an approximation of that sound. However, the Swahili word for wildebeest is Nyumbu.)

The most spectacular wildebeest population in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) comprises the over a million animals of the migratory Serengeti herds which visit the eastern Serengeti Plains in the rainy season to graze nutritious forage and give birth.

Wildebeests on the Serengeti Plains. The animals calve on the eastern plains, which lie within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Photo taken in 1972 by Dirk Kreulen.

The eastern Serengeti Plains are bisected by Oldupai Gorge. See https://www.expertafrica.com/tanzania/info/serengeti-wildebeest-migration for a full picture of the movements of the Serengeti wildebeest migrations. Graphic by David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.

The wildebeest population in Ngorongoro Crater contains both resident and migratory animals. Thus, about 7,000 wildebeests are present throughout the year, blending in with a similar number of other ungulates, larger mammals, such as rhinos, and predators. (The present wildebeest population is about half what it was in the 1960’s. This is because removal of Maasai cattle from the crater, combined with a ban on setting grass fires, reduced wildebeest numbers by encouraging taller grass, a habitat more conducive to buffaloes.)

Wildebeests and zebras in Ngorongoro Crater

The year-round presence of wildebeests in Ngorongoro Crater strongly contrasts with that on the Serengeti Plains where the migratory herds provide an overwhelming visual impact in the wet season but are completely absent during the five-month dry season. In fact, few ungulates of any kind use the plains in the dry season.

Dry season on the Serengeti Plains. Photo by David Bygott.

In the 1960’s, I occasionally encountered oryx on the drier parts of the Serengeti Plains. Adapted to dry environments, they also make dry season use of areas which other herbivores only use in the wet season.

Black rhinos. While only half the size of an 1,750,000-year-old ancestor discovered by archeologists at Oldupai Gorge, the black rhino is still a heavy animal, weighing in at about a ton. However, as it is able to gallop at 30 mph (50 kph), and turn in its own length, it is a surprisingly nimble large animal.

Black rhino in Ngorongoro Crater.

The rhino’s inability to distinguish a motionless object beyond 15 yards (14 meters) may explain why, rather than charge a perceived threat, it’s more apt to snort loudly and, tail looped over its rump, trot away. Even its “charges” tend to be more impulsive and confused than aggressive. I once experienced this when, while rapidly retreating from what I thought was a charging rhino, I tripped and fell flat on my face only to find my presumed pursuer trot past fifty or so feet away.

Rhinos also can become habituated to the presence of humans. I remember one, named Horace, who was fast asleep when Henry, John, and I visited him that first day in the crater, and stayed that way as we ate lunch a few feet away.

The only signs of activity from Horace, other than heavy breathing, came from several yellow-beaked tick birds (ox peckers) that hopped and fluttered about as they poked into nooks and crannies of his body in search of ticks.

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.

Non-habituated rhinos, however, can be dangerous. For instance, when Horace first appeared in the crater, he vigorously charged everything in sight. John and I barely escaped the wrath of an angry female, who only managed to bump our Land Rover as we sped away. A colleague encountering a grumpy rhino in the Serengeti National Park, did not escape so easily, the big animal hooking it’s horns under his Land Rover’s fender and banging the vehicle up and down several times before disengaging, leaving the fender looking like it had been holed by artillery shells.

A rhino charging a vehicle that came too close.

Sadly, the black rhino, as it is elsewhere in Africa, is the most threatened large mammal in the NCA. Intensive poaching wiped out the entire Oldupai Gorge population of 70 animals by the 1980’s and reduced their numbers in Ngorongoro Crater from over 100 in the late 1960’s to a mere 12 in 1996. Subsequently, however, a program of intensive monitoring and protection carried out by the NCAA and Frankfurt Zoological Society, increased the population to 30 by 2017. Yet another problem is that, as with the crater’s lions, its rhinos also may be genetically isolated and inbred. This has been partially addressed by the translocation into the crater of two female rhinos.

Mobile ranger post used for monitoring and protecting rhinos in Ngorongoro Crater. Photo taken in 2004.

Nonetheless, the black rhinos of Ngorongoro Crater continue to be a major tourist attraction.

Tourists viewing a distant rhino in Ngorongoro Crater. My old colleagues, Henry Fosbrooke and John Goddard, would be startled by the numbers of vehicles, but highly gratified that none have left the road. Photo taken in 2008 by David Bygott.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Ashley Maberley, C.T. 1962. Animals of East Africa. Howard Timmons, Cape Town.

Estes, R.D. 1991. The Behavior Guide to African Animals. The University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Fosbrooke, H. 1972. Ngorongoro: the Eighth Wonder. Andre Deutsch, London.

Ham, A. 2017. The Lions of Ngorongoro: A Remarkable Tale of Survival hips://www.afktravel.com.

Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. 1966. General Management Plan. Tanzania Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism.

Oates, L. & P.A. Rees. 2013. The Historical Ecology of the Large Mammal Populations of Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, East Africa. Mammal Review 43 (2013) 124-141.

MAASAI PASTORALISTS OF NGORONGORO: AS THEY ARE NOW

MAASAI PASTORALISTS OF NGORONGORO: AS THEY ARE NOW

In the mid-1960’s, the pastoral Maasai of Ngorongoro, proud of their reputation for being fierce warriors, and possessing an abundance of cattle, were content with their way of life. Thus, they were conservative and resistant to change, an attitude that frustrated government officials, both pre-and post-independence, and gave the Maasai a reputation for being backward. (Adapted from the previous blogpost, The Maasai of Ngorongoro: 1960’s.)

Over half a century later their situation has changed–drastically.

For instance, due to better health care, and the immigration into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) of other pastoralists (especially during droughts), the human population is now twelve-fold greater.

In contrast, several factors have constrained growth of the livestock population: (a) Valuable grazing lands have been lost to other uses, primarily wildlife conservation and tourism, (b) Livestock carrying capacity has declined due to overgrazing, a ban on setting grass fires, and recurring droughts, (c) Livestock deaths have increased due to diseases and droughts.

DETAILS

Valuable grazing land was lost when the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), concerned that the Maasai and their livestock were hindering wildlife conservation, removed them from Ngorongoro, Olmoti, and Empakaai craters in the 1970’s. (Ngorongoro Crater was an especially hard loss.)

Ngorongoro Crater is the largest in the Crater Highlands. Empakaai Crater contains a small, but lovely lake. Graphic by David Bygott and Jeanette Hanby.

Ngorongoro Crater, 97 sq. miles (252 sq. km) of productive rangeland. (View from my house on the crater rim in 1964.)

Also, expanding numbers of wildebeests calving in the wet season on the eastern Serengeti Plains, and the associated risk of cattle catching malignant catarrh fever (MCF), forced herders to keep their livestock in the highlands for extended periods. The reduced ability of the Maasai to use this wet season grazing area caused an estimated 35% reduction in cattle numbers.

Wildebeest calves on the eastern Serengeti Plains, which lie entirely within the NCA. From 1961 to 1977, the Serengeti wildebeest population grew from 250,000 to its present level of approximately 1,277,000. This caused the area used for calving to significantly expand. Photo by Dirk Kreulen.

Afterbirth of a wildebeest calf. If cattle graze grass that has been touched by it they are apt to contract (and die from) malignant catarrh fever (MCF). Photo by Dirk Kreulen.

Forage quality and production dropped (at least for cattle) in parts of the Serengeti Plains because of declining grass and increasing shrub cover associated with a ban on setting grass fires imposed by the NCAA. (Pastoralists typically burn grasslands to kill ticks, remove dry grass, suppress woody plants, and induce greening of the vegetation.) Increasing abundance of unpalatable grass species in the highlands probably reflects overgrazing.

Grass fire on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. A decrease in fires following removal of Maasai and their livestock from the crater in the 1970’s resulted in taller grasses and lower grassland species diversity. (Also, as I can personally attest from having to pick them off my pants in 2004, more ticks.)

Livestock deaths, especially of cattle, increased when herders, unable to use wet season pastures on the eastern Serengeti Plains, were forced to keep their animals for extended periods on traditional dry season pastures in the highlands. This increased the exposure of cattle to ticks, vectors for East Coast fever (ECF). Major die-offs occurred. A good example is provided by Andrew Clark, who in 1967, described the results of a virulent outbreak of ECF in Loliondo, north of the NCA: “Hundreds of cattle died in a few weeks. The whole area stunk of rotting carcasses. Hyenas, bellies pendulous from gorging, could barely walk. Vultures were so stuffed they could hardly get off the ground.”

Ticks, carriers of East Coast fever (ECF). They become abundant on rangelands which are seldom burned and/or are used for extended periods by livestock. Photo by Dr. Alexey Yakovlev. CC Attribution-SA 2.0 G.L.

Veterinary staff with bones of Maasai cattle killed by East Coast fever in Loliondo, Photo by Andrew Clark.

As a result, Maasai pastoralists were forced to reduce the proportion of cattle in their herds and increase that of goats. This is because goats are less susceptible to disease than cattle.

A mixed herd of goats and sheep. Goats also reproduce more quickly, produce milk throughout the year, utilize a variety of habitats (Cattle are restricted to grasslands), are drought-resistant, and easy to sell and slaughter. Thus, they are the fallback livestock for impoverished pastoralists.

Finally, droughts are becoming more frequent, and lengthy. Consequently, the grasses that provide forage for cattle are less able to recover their vigor between droughts, making them less productive. Thus, they support fewer animals, which tend to be weaker, in poorer condition, and more apt to die during the next drought. The drought ending in 2009, one of the most serious in recent memory, killed 35-40% of all cattle in Ngorongoro District, which includes the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) and, to the north, Loliondo.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CHANGE

The result of all this is that, even though animal numbers have increased, the livestock population, especially of cattle, has not grown in accordance with the human population. Livestock biomass per pastoralist, well above subsistence level in 1966, is now below subsistence level.

This has caused the Ngorongoro Maasai, with too few livestock to support themselves, to become so impoverished that they must find other ways to supplement their livestock-based subsistence economy. Presently, they cultivate. Unfortunately, most are still too poorly educated to be employed in the region’s burgeoning wildlife-viewing tourist industry (six tourist lodges in the NCA alone). Those migrating to cities generally only find work as low-paid security guards.

This 2004 scene of Maasai bomas shows two examples of change since the 1960s: (a) cultivation , and (b) huts unprotected by fences (Predators may no longer be a problem, or the Maasai now know how unhealthy it is to live at close quarters with livestock inside the stockades).

Maasai security guards in Zanzibar. Photo by Jack Meyers.

Nonetheless, despite there being too few livestock to adequately support resident pastoralists, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) is still concerned that there are too many for the land to support. It is especially worried about the ecological impact of overgrazing (as well as that of settlements and cultivation) on wildlife-based tourism, a major source of foreign currency (in 2017, 650,000 tourists visited the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, generating about 65 million $ U.S.) https://africasacountry.com/2022/04/people-live-here).

And the government is worried, too: The National assembly recently debated whether the Maasai even have a right, guaranteed in laws as far back as 1959, to live in the NCA. Also, recent reports in the media (denied by the government), state that it is considering relocating 80,000 Ngorongoro Maasai–much, if not most of the total population–outside the NCA. Whether or not this eventually happens, the NCAA/Tanzania government are “encouraging” impoverished herders to go elsewhere. Furthermore, a few hundred Maasai recently have, moving 210 miles (340 km) to Handeni in eastern Tanzania https://www.kbc.co.ke/hundreds-of-masai-ready-to-leave-conservation-area/.

Is this the future of Ngorongoro’s Maasai?

To best secure their future, the Maasai of Ngorongoro must become better educated. Photo by Christopher Michel. CC Attribution 2.0 GL.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Amiyo, T.A. 2006. Ngorongoro Crater rangelands: condition, management, and monitoring. MS thesis, School of Biological and Conservation Sciences, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.

Borges, J. et al. 2022. Landsat time series reveal forest loss and woody encroachment in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. Open Access https://doi.org/10.1002/rse2.277.

Galvin.. et al. 2015. Transitions in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area: The story of land use, human well-being, and conservation. Pages 483-512 in Serengeti IV: Sustaining biodiversity in a coupled human-natural ecosystem. The University of Chicago Press.

Homewood, K.M. & W.A. Rodgers. 1991. Maasailand ecology: Pastoralist development and wildlife conservation in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. Cambridge University Press.

Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. 1966. General Management Plan. Tanzania Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism.

THE FORESTS OF NGORONGORO

THE FORESTS OF NGORONGORO

1965: Northern Highlands Forest Reserve, Tanzania

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.

NGORONGORO SCENERY

NGORONGORO SCENERY

Tanganyika, East Africa. 1964.

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).

For instance:

Zebra and wildebeest on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. At 2,000 ft (609 m) deep and 100 sq. miles (260 sq. km) in area, the crater, home to 25,000 large animals, and one of Africa’s densest populations of lions, is considered one of the seven natural wonders of Africa.
(Don’t know them? Check out https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-seven-natural-wonders-of-africa-unique-and-mesmerizing-travel-destinations.html.)
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/

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO:PART V, KARATU-NGORONGORO

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO:PART V, KARATU-NGORONGORO

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”

My house on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater.

Double wow!

Did I mention the view?

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO: PART III (ELEPHANTS AND TREE-CLIMBING LIONS)

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO: PART III (ELEPHANTS AND TREE-CLIMBING LIONS)

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 to its 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.

Iain’s Land Rover did not get bashed in vain.

MT. KILIMANJARO

MT. KILIMANJARO

September 1964, northern Tanganyika

It was after dark when the bus we were taking upcountry from Dar es Salaam to the Tengeru Agricultural School (see previous post) passed just south of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Therefore, we missed seeing it. Subsequently, however, whenever it wasn’t obscured by clouds, I saw the great mountain a number of times, first from near Tengeru and then, its snowy summit gleaming on the eastern horizon 120 miles away, from various hill tops and mountain slopes in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Prior to joining the Peace Corps, my most vivid images of Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania) were of dense herds of ungulates on the Serengeti Plains, the yawning expanse of Ngorongoro Crater, and of Mt. Kilimanjaro rising majestically above herds of exotic looking wildlife, its snow-capped peak sometimes taking on an ethereal quality, floating in the sky.  Therefore, whenever possible at Ngorongoro I looked for it and sometimes, weather permitting, there it was: Tanganyika’s shining mountain (the meaning of Kilimanjaro in Swahili). And it never failed to impress.

Kikimanjaro
Mt. Kilimanjaro backdropping a herd of wildebeests in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. The main peak is Kibo, the smaller one Mawenzi. Kibo, “spotted one” in the language of the Chagga people, refers to a large rock projecting from the otherwise snowy summit. Mawenzi is the Swahili word for “companion.”

Kilimanjaro is a mountain of superlatives. At 19,340 ft, it’s the highest in Africa, higher than anything in Europe and, except for Denali in Alaska and Logan in Canada, any peak in North America. Fifty-five miles long by thirty-five wide and with two widely separated peaks, Kibo and Mawenzi, it’s almost a small mountain range in itself. Kilimanjaro’s visual presence is further emphasized by its rising, not from a jumble of other mountains but from an extensive plain. It’s the highest free-standing mountain in the world.

Thus, it’s unsurprising that Mt. Kilimanjaro had a place  on Tanganyika’s (and now Tanzania’s) official coat of arms.

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Tanganyika’s coat of arms displayed on a government building in Arusha. Mt. Kilimanjaro is shown supporting a heraldic shield and two wananchi, people of the land, each holding an elephant tusk. The slogan Uhuru na Umoja means freedom and unity.

However, there is more to Kilimanjaro than rugged good looks. In addition to its great height and sheer mass, it lies within a favorable climatological region with two rainy seasons a year (compared to only one season in the south of the country), and is composed of volcanic rocks rich in minerals (compared to, say, the sedimentary and metamorphic materials of the Usambara and Pare mountains to its east). These four factors have combined to make the mountain economically extremely important. Indeed, some (Gunther. Inside Africa. Harper & Brothers. 1955) have suggested it might be the most useful mountain in the world.

Breasting moisture-laden monsoon winds blowing in from the Indian Ocean, Kilimanjaro forces them to rise, cool and condense into rain which, falling throughout the year on the mountain’s highly fertile volcanic soils, supports dense forest, intensive, highly productive, agriculture and one of the densest human populations in the country.

Consequently, the Chagga people who live on Kilimanjaro’s slopes have become the country’s third largest ethnic group. They also are one of the most influential. Early to convert to Christianity and become educated and westernized, they were, by 1964, when our Peace Corps group arrived, Tanganyika’s wealthiest and most organized people. Much of their wealth came from coffee, which, following its introduction by the German colonial government before the First World War, the Chagga grew and marketed with such zeal that by 1955 they owned 12,000,000 coffee trees and belonged to probably the most successful co-operative in East Africa, the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union (KACU) which, by the way, is still in operation.

And that was before tourism took off.  These days Mt. Kilimanjaro also generates considerable revenue from people who want to climb or just visit the mountain. The climb (which I admit to never having done) requires no technical expertise but rather is a long, hard slog, three days up and two back, its primary risk being the chance of succumbing to altitude sickness. Still, so many people visit the mountain, the upper half of which is now a national park, that Kilimanjaro is now Tanzania National Park’s second highest revenue earner (after the Serengeti of course).

I meant to end this post with an amusing explanation for the positioning of the international boundary in relation to Mt. Kilimanjaro (see map below). In the late 1800’s when the colonial powers were carving up Africa, with Britain and Germany respectively claiming Kenya and Tanzania, Kaiser Wilhelm II complained to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, that she had (in Kenya) two snow-clad mountains (Kenya and Kilimanjaro), while he had none in Tanganyika. So, she gave him Mt. Kilimanjaro as a birthday present. And that, the story goes, explains why the international boundary which supposedly once ran in a straight line northwest from the coast to Lake Victoria,  passing south of Kilimanjaro along the way, now passes around its eastern and northern flanks.

Map of East Africa

Now, I’ve treasured this story of family relationships in a geopolitical setting for over half a century; just imagining the expressions on the faces of Queen Victoria’s councilors’ upon hearing  she’d given away a sizable chunk of her Kenya dominion always induced a grin., Unfortunately (for me at least), I’ve since learned the story is mere myth. Apparently, Kilimanjaro had always been recognized as being within Germany’s sphere of interest, as was the coast of Tanganyika. The eastern part of the international boundary actually reflects the southernmost extent of Great Britain’s control of the Kenya coast.

It’s sad, actually.  I really liked that story.