Speke’s gazelle is a very rare small antelope that is similar in appearance to the Thomson’s gazelle encountered by tourists on the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania. It inhabits a 20-40 km wide grassy plain along much of Somalia’s coast. In the mid 80’s it also occurred in the northern Ogaden of eastern Ethiopia. cc-by-sa-2.0. FlickreviewR 2
This announces the availability of another batch of free downloads of hard-to-find documents on the rangelands of Somalia: Twenty-six reports on subjects ranging from the Trees of Somalia, a sand movement inventory, and the traditional Deegan ecological classification, to the Yeheb nut and Spekes gazelle. Publication dates range from 1907-2013. Several reports, originally published between 1954 and 1976, are translations of articles in Italian journals (1954-1976).
Tanzania’s Chief Geologist, Alec McKinley, regarded me skeptically from behind his large wooden desk. “You’ll niver go into the field,” he announced in his Scots brogue.
It was 1964 and I, a Peace Corps volunteer (and newly minted geologist c/o Ohio State University) had just arrived in Dodoma, the headquarters of the Geological Survey of Tanzania (GST), to learn my duties. I had expected them to include fieldwork, so, naturally, I was disappointed. Just like every other geologist on Earth, I looked forward to working in the field. But I was a woman, and in those days female geologists everywhere faced uphill battles for acceptance.
Office of the Geological Survey of Tanzania (or Tanganyika as it was in 1964) in Dodoma.
Photo: Eleanora Robbins
Instead, I was given the task of assessing data in notebooks, obtained from Williamson’s Diamond Mines, containing spectrographic trace chemical data. And when I say notebooks, I mean piles of them, containing data from 60% of the country. Williamson’s Diamond Mines had removed all the gold and silver analyses but left the data on the other 15 chemical elements.
Norrie, GST Director, John Pallister and Chief Geologist, Alec McKinley. 1964.
Photo: Eleanora Robbins
In 1961, Tanzania had too few educated people to man top-level government positions. Therefore, many British colonial personnel stayed on until Tanzanian’s could be trained to take their places.
But fate later smiled on me. Alec McKinley took home leave. Officials posted to the far reaches of the British Empire typically did this once every several years but then did not resume their duties for up to a year. Therefore, Alec would be gone for some time. Fortunately for me, his replacement, Gerald Carter, had a different approach. For one thing, he wanted to “ground truth” the sites reported in the notebooks. Secondly, as the proud and often harried parent of two daughters, he was fully aware of the inherent capabilities of females. He was, in other words, a breath of fresh air. “I’m sending you into the field,” he announced. Thus was my place sealed forever as the first female field geologist with GST.
Gerald Carter Photo: Eleanora Robbins. 1965
He did put one restriction on me—I had to stay in someone’s house. To determine where this would be, I prepared a new map. On it I plotted the locations of my anomalies (ground-truthing sites), Peace Corps volunteers, schools, and missions. One anomaly was not too far from where another member of my Peace Corps group, a nurse, Diane Schultz, was posted in Kondoa, central Tanzania. I wrote to her, and she replied, “Come.” Therefore, my field crew and I stayed at her place. They camped out in her yard. It was a win-win situation for everyone, too, as Diane and I discovered the first morning when we peaked out the window and saw prostitutes / girlfriends leaving the camp. Camp in a city? Enjoy city life!
Dodoma, near the center of Tanzania. Kondoa is 95 miles north, on the road to Arusha.Map by Shakki. GNU Free Documentation license 1.2.
Norrie with her field crew. Dodoma, Tanzania.
Photo: Eleanora Robbins
My crew and I spent three weeks working out of Kondoa, prospecting for mineral deposits by taking stream sediment samples from dry stream beds (it was the dry season). Going to a previously sampled area, we walked up the principal stream until we reached the mouth of a tributary, then walked a short distance up that to take a sample. Samples were analyzed in the lab using a spectrograph. And that was it: field work that was simple, straight forward, and routine. Nevertheless, we had to keep alert. I discovered this on my very first day in the field, when, somehow, we walked right into a herd of elephants and had to crawl away on hands and knees through sparse grass to escape. On the second field trip, a charging rhino caught us off guard and I was saved from being gored and trampled when one of my crew yanked me up a steep stream bank just before the heavy beast (they can weigh over a ton), trotted by, huffing like a steam engine.
Sampling sediments in a dry stream bed in Central Tanzania.(If spectrographic analysis in the lab found significant amounts of an important mineral in the sample, prospecting would continue up the tributary to locate its source.)
Photo: Eleanora Robbins
However, the encounter that’s most seared into my memory happened when, walking upstream in a wide, dry riverbed, we suddenly disturbed two cape buffaloes resting in the deep shade of an overhanging tree. One of them charged. Pandemonium ensued, with everyone but me rushing for the nearest tree and climbing as high as they could. “Panda mti!” my crew screamed at me, “Climb a tree!” Unfortunately, I couldn’t. Having had polio as a child, my stomach muscles aren’t strong enough. So, here I was, the only person still on the ground, the sole focus of a rapidly approaching beast with wicked-looking horns. What to do? Whatever adrenaline says! Remembering a knoll about a quarter mile back, I ran for it.
Cape buffaloes: Even lions are wary.
Photo: David Bygott
This put my field crew in an existential bind. As I learned later, they had been told their main job was to bring me back alive; samples were secondary. So, they climbed out of the trees. I have no idea what happened behind me. I know we had two big rifles but heard no shots. I know the men put themselves in danger for me. I ran in circles around the knoll trying to escape that buffalo before someone somehow diverted it, causing both animals to run away.
I sat down and started to cry. My field tracker, Issa Laibu, caught up to me and asked, “U mzima? (“Are you alive?”). I said, “Ndiyo” (“Yes”). “Kwahiyo kwanini unelia, mama?” Issa asked, “So why are you crying?”. I couldn’t think of a reason, so I stopped, got up and we went back to work. Of course, we were skittish for the rest of the day.
After all the samples were taken in the field, I spent the rest of my time at Dodoma, plotting more data onto maps (analyses were done by others). And I admit, it was fun being young and female, surrounded mostly by single men. Social life in Dodoma was good, plenty of parties given by my European and Asian colleagues, an ever-changing stream of visiting Peace Corps volunteers, trips to Arusha for milkshakes, and travel to Dar es Salaam to swim in the ocean.
Norrie and her assistant, Tony Petro, plotting data from the notebooks onto maps.
Photo: Eleanora Robbins
I also met Mary Cibaya, the health care worker at the GST there in Dodoma. She first sought me out to teach her English, then later invited me to visit her and the children of her Wagogo village outside Dodoma. (The Wagogo tribe occupies a large area around Dodoma in central Tanzania.) About once a week over the next two years, I strapped my guitar over my shoulder, jumped on my blue Peace Corps bike and pedaled out of town to her village.
It was fun! The village children taught me Tanzanian songs, bits and pieces of which I still remember. In fact, even now, many years later, I still sometimes find myself crooning “Malaika, na kupenda maliaka–Angel, I love you, angel,” a love song that was popular at the time, or “Baba na mama . . . Sita rudi—Father and mother . . . They won’t return,” a beautiful melody about remembering dead parents. In return, I taught them American folk songs, just as I did at birthday parties for my European and Asian colleagues’ kids. Soon all the kids in the village and Dodoma were singing American songs like Kumbaya, only with different accents: The African children singing Kum “ba” ya, (in Swahilli, the accent is on the middle syllable), and the other kids singing Kumba “ya.”
Wagogo children
Photo: Eleanora Robbins
Mary became my best friend in Tanzania. She taught me the first lesson I needed when working with kids—that mothers and grandmothers will do their best to attract anyone who will give their children a leg up in this world. Mary had six at the time but eventually nine over the years. She always told me, “Norrie, I’m going to send my children to you one day.” I was to learn that she meant it.
Norrie and Mary Cibaya
Photo: Eleanora Robbins
Almost 30 years later, in 1996, my husband, Brian, and I welcomed Mary’s 26-year-old son, Isaac, at Dulles Airport near Washington DC where we lived. After a few months with us, he moved to the Los Angeles area where there is a large Tanzanian community. We kept in touch. Isaac subsequently became a building contractor. He also married and, together with his wife, produced two bright children, a daughter who is presently interested in black holes, and a son in videography.
Then, 27 years after coming to the USA, Isaac asked me, now a widow living in San Diego, California, to formally adopt him. “My mother, Mary, always told us, her children, that we had two mothers—her in Tanzania and you in America,” he explained. I was intrigued. Having given Mary the money to build the house in which she raised Isaac and his siblings and having kept up with her and them over the years, I already regarded them as “family.” Also, Brian and I had never had children. Therefore, by adopting Isaac I would automatically gain some. On March 17, 2023, we legally became mother and son.
Gaining a ready-made family was a decided benefit of my working in Tanzania. I also benefitted in that my Peace Corps experience there gave me non-competitive eligibility for a 34-year-long government career with the U.S. Geological Survey. And an interesting career it was, too, especially in that, focused as it was on rocks and minerals of the world, it allowed contacts made so many years ago to become lifelong friendships which, thanks to the internet, are still intact.
No complaints!
This post is adapted from Warner, D. (Editor). 2024. We Came, We Saw, We Changed: Creating a Peace Corps Legacy in Tanzania 1964-1966. Library of Congress Control Number 2024907333 (with additional input from Eleanora Robbins).
Outside the house a prowling hyena whooped mournfully, waking me from my reverie. The fire which, last time I noticed, had been burning merrily away in the fireplace, was now.a bed of glowing coals. The short wave radio, having wandered off frequency, was whining and crackling with static. The feeble, slowly pulsating light from the Petromax lantern showed that it needed pumping. Again, the hyena whooped, but farther away this time. I looked at my watch and realized the lateness of the hour . . .
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
Many years later, when I think about my nights at Ngorongoro, whether in the Crater Highlands, on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater, or somewhere on the Serengeti Plains, the first thing that comes to mind is the querulous oooo-WHUP (I am here) of a prowling spotted hyena.
The spotted hyena only occurs in Africa. (Graphic: Ngorongoro Hyena Project)
At the time I gave this little thought. But now, having investigated the matter, I know it was because the spotted hyena is not only Africa’s most abundant large carnivore, but also mostly hunts at night.
Something I did know, however, even then, was that the spotted hyena had an image problem. Less than handsome (although its small black cubs are cute), it has long been regarded as a skulking, slinking, nocturnal, weird-sounding, odd-looking, unclean scavenger too cowardly to prey on any but the weak and young. Furthermore, its role in disposing of human corpses encouraged the feeling that the animal is something of a living mausoleum. (Many East African tribes placed their dead, and in some cases, near-dead, in the bush for just this purpose.) Thus, it’s not surprising that the spotted hyena, whose behavior sometimes seems to verge on the demonic, also is associated with death and witchcraft. Consequently, it plays a more important role in African witchcraft than any other animal. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_spotted_hyenas#:~:text=In%20the%20culture%20of%20the,branded%20with%20an%20invisible%20mark.)
“Where’s my public relations person?“
(Photo: David Bygott)
That said, any spotted hyenas worried about their poor fan base can take heart from the fact that scientific research is casting them in a more positive light. Two attributes stand out: (a) high intelligence, and (b) speed and efficiency in utilizing prey carcasses. Together, these traits have made the spotted hyena a very successful carnivore. Details follow.
But first, two interesting spotted hyena facts.
Spotted hyenas look like dogs but are taxonomically more closely related to cats (most closely to genets and mongooses).
Hyenas are more closely related to mongooses than foxes, which, like dogs, are in the Suborder Caniformia.
(Graphic: Ngorongoro Hyena Project)
Dwarf mongooses.
(Photo: David Bygott)
Also interesting, and rather strange, is that males and females look so alike (females have a pseudopenis and false scrotum), that spotted hyenas were long thought to be hermaphrodites.
Female? Male?
(Photo by David Bygott)
Now, down to business:
Contrary to their reputation, spotted hyenas are highly intelligent, capable of outsmarting chimpanzees in laboratory problem-solving tests. Some everyday examples of this intelligence include (a) exceedingly cunning and suspicious behavior after escaping from traps, (b) use of deceptive behavior, and (c) an ability to plan for hunts of certain prey species in advance.
Regarding (b) and (c) above, Hans Kruuk, who studied spotted hyenas in Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti in the 1960’s, once observed a spotted hyena which upon finding a carcass, sounded the alarm call to keep other hyenas away, allowing it to keep the carcass for itself (Spotted hyena mothers sometimes show similar behavior by sounding alarm calls when other hyenas attempt ro kill their cubs). Hans also could often tell, from their behavior, when a group of hyenas had decided to hunt zebras, even when none were in sight and other prey were more easily available.
Other examples of spotted hyena intelligence occur throughout this report.
Complex behaviors reflect high intelligence, and spotted hyena behavior is the most complex of all African carnivores. An aspect to this is a high degree of behavioral flexibility. For instance, hyenas don’t always stick together, They may act communally, as when hunting dangerous prey, and defending clan territories, or individualistically (and highly competitively) as when caring for their young, foraging, and hunting smaller prey. This allows the species to exploit many different resources efficiently.
The spotted hyena social system differs from other social carnivores in that there is no communal sharing of food (or care of the young, each female caring only for her own).
(Photo: Bernard Dupont. CCAS 2.0 A license*)
Females rule. Larger than males (unusual in mammals), they take the lead in territorial marking exercises, group hunts, and battles with other packs. Females also remain in the clan / pack while males emigrate (at about two years of age). Males not only defer to females, but also play no parental role, and are often not even allowed near the otherwise communal dens, Less closely knit than wild dogs, spotted hyenas more often forage and hunt alone.
“Darn females won’t let me in the house! “
(Photo: David Bygott.)
Complex behavior requires good communication. Spotted hyenas are excellent communicators. This is because every individual is, to another hyena, a potential competitor (even dangerous enemy) or collaborator, which makes the signaling of moods and intentions very important. Thus, the spotted hyena has an enormous array of calls (whoops, moans, grunts, giggles, whines, yells, growls), expressions, postures, and attitudes. This can lead to a massive amount of noise when they compete with one another over a carcass. Consequently,the spotted hyena is one of Africa’s noisiest animals.
Highly gregarious, the spotted hyena is the most social of all carnivore species, with the largest social groups. For instance, a spotted hyena clan may comprise 35 to 80 adults. (In contrast, the largest recorded pride of lions, the other major social large carnivore, is 30 animals, including cubs.)
Social group size, however, varies with the availability of food, as does the size of spotted hyena territories, and the degree to which the group (clan / pack) defends them. For instance, in the Kalahari Desert spotted hyena densities are so low that they forage and hunt within territories too large (500-2,000 sq. km / 193-772 sq. miles) to defend against other hyenas. In contrast, where wild ungulate prey is most abundant, as in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater, hyenas are numerous, forming large social groups and aggressively defending territories less than 40 sq. km (15 sq. miles) in area. (The much larger Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, which includes the crater, is home to 7,200-7,000 animals, the largest spotted hyena population in Africa.)
Ngorongoro Crater’s large resident population of 25,000 ungulates supports high densities of from 380-470 spotted hyenas.
(Photo: David Bygott.)
One night in the Serengeti, two friends of mine, staying in a guest house, experienced at close hand the aggressive defense of a spotted hyena clan territory. Hearing hyenas, they went outside and played a recording of spotted hyena calls from another area. Minutes later they had to scramble atop a nearby Land Rover to escape a crowd of angry spotted hyenas. Hearing hyenas from another clan in their territory, they had rushed over to expel them.
Another example of the spotted hyena’s complex behavior is a greater plasticity in foraging and hunting behavior than exhibited by other African carnivores. for instance, spotted hyenas both scavenge and hunt, the former usually during the day because they use vultures as indicators of kills, and the vultures only fly during the day.
A spotted hyena waits for lions to finish eating before scavenging the remains.
(Photo: David Bygott)
However, when carcasses are scarce, spotted hyenas also hunt, usually at night, and, depending on the circumstances, either alone, in small parties, or in large groups. A common technique is to lope toward a herd or flock, forcing its members to flee, revealing easy to catch stragglers (weak, young, sick).
Wildebeest calves in Ngorongoro Crater and on the Serengeti Plains are a favorite prey of spotted hyenas. As they are easy to catch, they are hunted by single hyenas.
(Photo: David Bygott)
Like wild dogs, spotted hyenas simply run their prey to exhaustion, usually within 1.5-5 km (1-3 miles). A single hyena can catch and kill healthy prey the size of a bull gnu, but only as a last resort. When hyenas are numerous, other pack members may join in near the end of a chase to help pull down larger animals like wildebeests. However, usually led by a female, they also stage deliberate pack hunts of dangerous prey, such as zebra families guarded by sharp-hoofed stallions.
Zebras fight back, so spotted hyenas must hunt them in groups.
(Photo: David Bygott)
Often eating their prey alive, spotted hyenas, unlike wild dogs (https://storiesofeastafrica.com/2023/09/13/wild-dogs-wildlife-of-ngorongoro/), compete with other pack members by eating as much and as fast as they can, with individuals swallowing up to a third of their weight (A lion can only swallow a fourth of its weight). Twenty hyenas, and another group of 35, were recorded finishing off carcasses weighing 100 kg (220 lbs.) and 220 kg (485 lbs.) respectively, in 13 minutes. And they do this with remarkably little fighting. Instead, there’s lots of noise, which attracts other clan members (up to 65 seen on a kill in Ngorongoro Crater). Only then do all clan members ever come together. (These competitive scrambles are less common in the Serengeti where there is a better ratio of prey to hyena.)
When many spotted hyenas are on a kill, some quickly eat what they can before taking a chunk of meat and bone elsewhere for a quiet meal.
(Photo: David Bygott)
Spotted hyenas also excel in that they eat almost the entire carcass of their prey. They can, for instance, crack quite large bones, such as those of buffaloes and giraffes, noisily splintering them before they are swallowed. Furthermore, their digestive system can dissolve bones, and even teeth, within hours. (Dry hyena scats, composed of ground up bones, are a chalky white.). Thus, virtually everything is eaten except the rumen contents (Grass! Yuck!), and horn bosses of larger antelopes. The hair, and hooves, which cannot be digested, are disgorged. Probably no other carnivore utilizes vertebrate prey so efficiently. Other species waste up to 40% of their kills.
“The good stuff’s finished; time to eat the hide.”
(Photo: David Bygott)
Hans Kruuk found the spotted hyena to be a formidable predator. This to the extent that lions often scavenge hyena kills. Direct competitors with lions for food, spotted hyenas, unless present in large groups, generally give way to the larger carnivores, allowing them to appropriate their kills. In turn, spotted hyenas frequently steal kills made by cheetahs and wild dogs (although the latter, being more socially cooperative, are sometimes able to successfully defend themselves) and, given the opportunity, also kill their cubs, as do lions. In the Serengeti, lions and hyenas have exerted such pressure on wild dogs that they have pushed them into outlying parts of the greater Serengeti ecosystem.
A single hyena being harassed by a pack of wild dogs.
(Photo: Kruger sightings HD. CCA 3.0 U**)
Furthermore, spotted hyenas can be dangerous to livestock and people, especially when other food is scarce, but also when an opportunity arises for an easy meal, such as encountering an unattended child, or someone sleeping in the open. A relevant example (see below) recently appeared in my local newspaper.
Furthermore, spotted hyenas are easily kept and trained. Witch doctors sometimes add to their persona by keep them as pets. Hans Kruuk and his wife, Jane, successfully raised a young hyena as a family pet in the Serengeti National Park, although they eventually put it in a zoo when it learned how to open doors and steal bacon from the chief park warden’s breakfast table.
Spotted hyenas: Complicated creatures. Just like us.
REFERENCES
Estes, R.D. 1992. 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.J. 2009. Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika. iUniverse.
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.
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.
“Tembo!” exclaimed one of the men. A large elephant had unexpectedly materialized from the bamboo a few hundred feet away. Like a spirit, it moved silently across an arm of the glade and vaporized into the thicket on the other side. If the laborer hadn’t happened to look up when he did, we would have missed it completely.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
Elephants in a glade of manyatta grass.
It was 1964. My African crew and I were scouting a route for a track that would allow tourists to view wildlife on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. The proposed route ran through light green bamboo thicket, spotted by dark-leaved pillar wood trees, and punctuated by sun-filled glades of tall manyatta grass. That this was buffalo and elephant habitat was evident from the abundance of their dung, tree trunks worn smooth by the rubbing of large bodies, trails forced through the dense bamboo, and mud wallows. (Refer to last page of blog for maps of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and of the vegetation of Ngorongoro Crater.)
Smoothing a stump while easing an itch.Photo by David Bygott.
Sometimes we heard them, especially elephants: snapping branches as they browsed, the low rumbles of their stomachs, an occasional sharp, thrilling trumpet. . . But we also saw them, and not just the elephant in the first paragraph, but also buffaloes.
Three times, while sticking tall lengths of bamboo into the ground to mark where the new track would go, we jumped buffalo herds of forty to fifty animals. Luckily however, we scared them more than they scared us. What a noise they made as they blundered away, grunting and snorting, heavy hooves rumbling across the ground–they were big animals. They always paused at the edge of the bamboo to look back at us. We could see the sun glinting off their horns. They were mean-looking critters!
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
Mean-looking critters.
Elephants and buffaloes also used open, grassy habitats. For instance it was not unusual to see elephants grazing the grasses, sedges, and herbs of Munge and Gorgor swamps on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. However, most of my encounters with the two species were either in or near forest.
Gorgor Swamp. The large plants are Cyperus immensus, a species of sedge.
Elephant in Ngorongoro Crater’s Lerai Forest. Fed by a stream flowing down the crater wall, the forest is dominated by yellow barked fever trees (Acacia xanthophloea).
For instance, there was that cool sunny afternoon, following a rainstorm, when several elephants on the crater rim, seemingly stimulated by the rain, became amusingly animated: trumpeting, and pushing one another about. I could hear the click of their tusks–ivory on ivory–as the large animals playfully sparred. The dry season was coming to an end and they were happy to see the rain.
Elephant near my house on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater.
“In or near forest” included my small house, around which buffaloes often grazed at night.
The rooms of the house (a main room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom) didn’t interconnect. Instead, each opened directly onto the yard. On foggy mornings, after carefully checking for the presence of buffaloes, I groped my way to the bathroom through heavy mist. At night, I checked again with a flashlight before going to bed.
Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika
My “yard” was mown at night by grazing buffaloes.
Not what one wants to meet while groping through fog to the privy. Photo by David Bygott.
At night, buffaloes also grazed the grounds of the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge. To prevent mishaps, the lodge hired Maasai warriors, armed with spears, to escort guests to their scattered cabins, following the evening meal in the main building.
Tourist cabins on the grounds of the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge. The main building, which included the dining room and bar, is at the far right.
While I commonly saw elephants in the swamps on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater, there were few buffaloes there in the 1960’s. In contrast, in terms of biomass, they are now the dominant herbivore, and for a very interesting reason. This significant change probably resulted from the removal of Maasai from the crater in 1974. With the Maasai went their traditional grassland management in which grazing and controlled burning kept grasslands short, palatable, and suited to small and medium sized grazers, such as wildebeests. Subsequently, grasses on the crater floor became longer, less palatable, and more suited to less selective grazers, such as buffaloes. Consequently, buffaloes became more abundant while the numbers of wildebeests, once the crater’s dominant herbivore, significantly declined. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority has since returned grass fires to the crater ecosystem through a program of controlled burning. (Also see https://storiesofeastafrica.com/2022/09/27/maasai-pastoralists-of-ngorongoro-as-they-are-now/)
Buffaloes are more difficult prey than wildebeests. Will this cause lions to prey more heavily on the latter? Photo by David Bygott.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is thought to contain over 300 elephants. However, much of the habitat of Ngorongoro’s elephants is dense forest. This makes them hard to count. Thus, their true number is unknown. Although elephants are endangered throughout Africa by loss of habitat, and by poaching for ivory, little elephant poaching has been recorded in the NCA over the past several years. That said, on my last visit to Ngorongoro, in 2004, I was startled to see a tuskless adult elephant, something I had never encountered before.
Notice something missing ?
In well-protected areas, elephants without tusks may comprise as little as 2% of a population. This may be the case in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Let us hope so, anyway, because populations with significantly higher amounts of tuskless elephants (especially if the amounts are increasing), reflect heavy, unrelenting poaching. Simply speaking, elephants without tusks are less apt to be killed by poachers. Over time, therefore, their genes will dominate the population. Even thirty years ago, up to 25-38% of some African elephant populations were without tusks. A more recent study in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park reported over half of all female elephants in to be tuskless. For more information on this subject, check out the on-line articles by Garrigan, Preston, and Associated Press in the reference section.
MAPS
Ngorongoro Crater is in the Crater Highlands, east of Tanzania’s famous Serengeti Plains. Graphic by David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.
Ngorongoro Crater vegetation. Light blue (wet meadows), dark blue (reed swamp), yellow (medium grassland), light yellow (short grassland), light brown (bushland), dark brown (high woodland), green (forest). ( Herlocker, D.J. & H.J. Dirschl. 1972.)
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.
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.
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.
