When the heat subsided that evening they walked east to the boundary of the reserve and crawled through the wires of the fence. They could smell not only prey but also water. Ahead, cattle stirred uneasily inside a boma of felled thom branches. The lions silently stalked forward.
Suddenly a white-hot pain shot through Muffin’s leg. He roared and lunged against the trap, his foot twisting in its jaws. Biting at the steel, he rolled over and over, shredding the muscles of his leg as he pulled at the chain and the log to which he was bound. Moffet rushed to him and smelled the mangled foot and trap, but there was nothing he could do.
All night long Muffin fought to get away, panting and staggering as he hauled the heavy log in circles over the sand. Moffet watched nearby. In the morning, a native rancher on horseback rode up, lifted his rifle, and shot Muffin in the face and chest. Moffet turned and ran west toward the game reserve, the man and his pack of baying dogs tearing through the scrub after him. A rifle cracked repeatedly and bullets slapped into the sand around the fleeing lion.
Later that morning I flew over the spot where I had last found Muffin and Moffet, near the fence. They were no longer there and I could hear Muffin’s signal coming from far away in the east. With a heavy feeling growing in my chest, I banked the plane and headed out of the game reserve toward his transmitter. I kept thinking that maybe he’d gone to the river for water or followed a herd of antelope, but I knew by the unusual clarity of the radio signal that he was no longer wearing his collar.
Sixty-five miles east, the signal peaked over the village of Mopipi near Lake Xau. By flying low, back and forth over the thatched roofs of the huts, I pinpointed the one with the collar and transmitter. When I looked down, the skin of a large male lion was pegged out in the sand near a low shed. People were scurrying through the village, all pointing up at the plane.
I landed in a clearing nearby and was surrounded by a throng of natives clapping their hands, waving, and laughing. Scowling and silent, hurting inside for yet another dead friend, I made my way through the crowd and into the village to the hut I had singled out from the air. A middle-aged black woman came warily to the door and peered around its edge at me. “Someone from this house has shot a lion,” I said. “You must have the collar that was around its neck.”
Unable to understand what had led me to her rondavel, for a moment the woman seemed confused and frightened. I managed a weak smile to reassure her. Then I saw Muffin’s worn and blood-stained collar hanging behind her on a post, its transmitter still functioning. She gave it to me and I asked her how many lions had been shot. She said she didn’t know, but that her husband had brought only one skin to the village from the ranch. I told her I would be back in a few days to get the details of Muffin’s death from him.
Airborne again, I tuned in Moffet’s frequency, but I could not hear his signal. It was not easy to tell Delia that Muffin was dead and that I could not find Moffet.
For weeks I continued to search for Moffet from the air, but never heard his signal. I figured he must have been wounded and had wandered off to die. One of the bullets had probably smashed his transmitter.
23
Uranium
Delia
He rips earth open for her ancient veins
Of molten splendor; toppling floods give room
Faced by his dams; the lightning knows his chains . . .
He loves his handicraft and . . . scorns what doom?
—Gene Derwood
THE SMALL, ROUND water hole on Springbok Pan had been dry for months. Its cracked grey bottom was patterned with perfect footprints of those animals, large and small, who had come in search of water. There were old prints, made when the water was fresh: A brown hyena had knelt to drink, a lion had slid in the mud, a porcupine had swished its bristly tail. Then there were the deep spoor left by those who had plunged through the mud to the last stagnant puddles in the center and the desperate hoof marks of a gemsbok who had pawed deep into the sludge for the last few drops of seepage. Finally, there were the tracks of animals who had come, smelled around, and left, with only the memory of how it feels to drink.
The water hole was surrounded by large acacia bushes and small ziziphus trees, and kneeling beside it, we were well hidden. We had driven to Springbok Pan hoping to collect lion and brown hyena fecal samples. Analysis of the scats was important because it supplemented our direct observations of what the predators were eating during the drought.
Suddenly a loud whop, whop, whop drifted toward us. Startled, we looked up to see a helicopter circling the trees. We backed deeper into the bushes, hoping we wouldn’t be seen. We were confused, threatened, curious, annoyed. What was a helicopter doing here?
The chopper blew up a storm of dust as it landed. The rotor wound down, and three young men dressed in baggy jeans stepped onto the riverbed. Blue plastic bags full of soil samples were tied to metal trays mounted on the skids of the aircraft. We introduced ourselves, and they explained that they were field geologists on contract with an international mining company.
“What are you prospecting for?” Mark asked.
The chief geologist answered, his nervous glance dropping to Mark’s shoulder and then to the ground. “Uh—well, we’re really not supposed to say—but, uh—diamonds,” he stammered.
A heavy pressure filled my chest, and my palms began to sweat. The vision of a massive diamond mine, with its great open pit, mounds of tailings, conveyers, trucks, and shantytowns looming over the gutted ancient river valley, flashed into my head. Perhaps there would be a parking lot where the brown hyena den had once been.
“Do you have a permit to prospect here?” I asked.
The geologist answered too quickly, “We’re not operating in Deception Valley; we use it only for navigation. We’re prospecting in the southern part of the reserve.”
After a few stilted comments on how beautiful they thought the Kalahari was, the men walked to their helicopter and took off. Afterward we found sample holes and blue plastic bags littered at intervals all along Deception Valley.
A few weeks later a red-and-white Beaver—a single-engine bush plane of a type used in Alaska for years—circled our airstrip several times and landed. As it taxied to camp, I could feel that same tight feeling in my chest.
The pilot and his navigator introduced themselves as Hal and Caroline, mineral surveyors from Union Carbide. Caroline had sandy hair, a broad smile, and freckles. Hal, who was from Michigan, was tall, dark, and exceptionally polite. He explained that they were using a magnetometer to search for uranium in the Kalahari. We asked them into camp for tea, to discuss their operation. No one had notified us that they were coming or told us what they would be doing in the reserve.
The hornbills, flycatchers, and tit-babblers gathered in the trees above our heads, raising their usual cheerful ruckus. Our visitors were amazed at how tame the birds were and told us with great excitement that they had seen a lion from the plane that morning. How wonderful it was, they said, to be in a real, pristine wilderness among such wildlife. Pouring the tea, I quashed the urge to glare at them. How long did they think the Kalahari wilderness would last if they discovered minerals in Deception Valley?
They proudly explained that for the next several weeks they and others would be flying along the pans and dry river channels in the game reserve. The ancient riverbeds looked particularly promising for uranium deposits. If it were found in significant quantities, a drilling team would follow, to investigate the possibility of establishing an open-pit mine in Deception Valley—perhaps right where we were sitting.
We were horrified. After nearly six years of living alone in the Kalahari, suddenly we were being inundated by people in aircraft, who sat drinking their tea and cheerfully telling us how they hoped to contribute to the destruction of all that we had worked to protect.
“That’s quite an airstrip you’ve made for yourself,” Hal remarked. “We were wondering if we could use your camp area as a fuel station—the choppers and p
lanes could easily land here to refuel.”
“No,” I answered abruptly. “I’m sorry, but we’re working with sensitive animals here. That would cause too much disturbance.” “Oh, I see. Well, that’s too bad. It would have been a big help, but we understand your position.”
I thought to myself. The last thing we want to do is help you stripmine the Kalahari, you stupid SOB. Out loud, I asked, “Would you care for more tea?” and smiled far too sweetly.
After a few more minutes of small talk they said goodbye and took off again in their Beaver.
One of the most important considerations for the conservation of Kalahari wildlife was the critical need to preserve pans and ancient river channels like Deception Valley. During years of adequate rainfall, the old river bottoms were covered with nutritious grasses, primary food for plains antelope during calving. The woodlands surrounding the valleys were essential browse for giraffe, kudu, steenbok, and eland, and for grazing antelope, who must switch to browsing in dry season and drought. These ungulates attracted predators, most of whose ranges were centered along the dry river systems.
Fossil river channels meandering through the dunes represent only a tiny fraction of the entire range area, but they are one of the most crucial habitats in the desert. An open mine, with its associated development, in Deception Valley or any of the other fossil channels, would be a disaster for Kalahari wildlife.
And now, seemingly overnight, Deception Valley held great interest for the mining industry. Surface uranium deposits had been discovered in dry riverbeds in Australia; the same could be true of the Kalahari.
We could hear the planes and helicopters flying over the desert every day for several weeks. Our reports to the Botswana government, urgently requesting that the game reserve be spared mineral exploration, received no response. All we could do was wait. The skies finally quieted down, but we had no idea what the results of the mineral survey had been.
Then one morning a deep rumble sounded from beyond East Dune, and we saw a column of dust that stretched for miles above the savanna. Standing on the riverbed near camp, we watched a convoy of trucks, ten-ton trailers, and a twenty-five-ton drilling rig roll single file into the valley. Union Carbide had come to the Kalahari to drill test holes for uranium, to determine if a mine would be profitable. We met the convoy at Mid Pan and talked to the drillers about their plans.
Doug, the geologist in charge, a young man with a plump face and a hang-dog expression, scuffed at the ground with the toe of his boot as he spoke. He promised not to allow his truck drivers to speed along the riverbed, not to chase animals or to frighten any brown hyenas that came to their camps at night, and not to drive at night, when the lions and hyenas were on the move along the valley.
“I know how important your research is—the Wildlife Department has told me—and I’ll try not to interfere with your work.”
We were greatly relieved with his apparent concern and shook hands warmly before he climbed into his truck. But we soon learned that his offer to cooperate had only been an attempt to placate us.
For years we had tiptoed around the old river at five to ten miles per hour. Now, ignoring our pleas and protests, heavy vehicles roared up and down the valley at fifty miles per hour, day and night, along the same paths Pepper and Cocoa used. They chewed deep ruts in the fragile surface of the riverbeds, scars that will last at least 100 years. Over and over again we cajoled, begged, and finally threatened, until we were given assurances that the trucks would slow down and not drive at night. The promises were never kept. The few springbok and gemsbok that had come back to the valley to re-establish their territories galloped away from the riverbed.
Discarded drums, beer cans, and other litter were left at each campsite the drillers set up along the valley. Long strands of blue plastic ribbons marked sites worthy of further investigation at some later date. Fluttering from the limbs and branches of acacia trees, they were a driller’s trademark, a laying of claim to the valley.
We drove to the rig every afternoon, wherever it was operating, and asked anxiously about the results. Drawing lines in the sand with his boots, Doug assured us that they had not found uranium in significant quantities. He would not show us the official graphs.
Eleven days after they had come into the valley, the long convoy of heavy trucks pulled up next to camp. They had completed their tests, and they told us that they had not found significant amounts of uranium. We watched them disappear over East Dune, on their way to another fossil river for more drilling. We wondered if we could believe them.
Our research was beginning to show what it would take to conserve the Kalahari. But were we too late? Would it all be lost to man’s greed for more minerals and for cattle? We were a lobby of two against powerful forces of exploitation. We had learned a lot about this ecosystem, but that was not enough. Other people had to care. The Botswana government had to view the Kalahari as a precious natural heritage rather than just a tract of exploitable resources.
We would do whatever we could. For starters, we tore down as many of the blue plastic survey ribbons as we could find.
24
Blue
Delia
Green fields are gone now, parched by the sun;
Gone from the valleys where rivers used to run . . .
—Terry Gilkyson
BLUE STOOD on North Dune, the wind blowing into her face. The once sleek and powerful lioness was very thin, her waist drawn in, wasplike. Her hair had fallen out in several spots along her back, leaving circular grey splotches, and her gums were pale.
She lifted her head and called with a soft “coo”—to the east, to the south, to the west, her ears perked to catch an answer. For most of her seven years of life Blue had slept, hunted, fed, and bred flank to flank and nose to nose with at least some of the Blue Pride females. In other years her pride-mates would have answered her coo and sauntered from the bush to rub heads in greeting. But for a year and a half, during the same time that we had observed the brown hyena cubs develop, the drought had driven them apart. We had not seen her with another lioness for months.
Blue could not know that Chary and Sassy were over fifty miles away. With their seven small cubs struggling behind them, the two lionesses wandered the bleak plains east of the reserve. They occasionally met with strangers, both females and males, who accepted the cubs as if they were their own; the males even sharing food with the cubs, as Muffin and Moffet had done. Except for their faded ear tags, there was no way to know that Chary and Sassy had once belonged to the Blue Pride.
Now that the drought was in its eighteenth month, the pride had disintegrated; Blue was the only lioness left in its original territory. The others ranged over a huge tract of mixed woodland, bush, and grass savanna more than 1500 square miles in area, eating anything they could catch.
After losing her cubs through neglect, Gypsy had joined Liesa to wander far to the southeast of Deception Valley, preying on duiker, kudu, porcupines, and the smaller rodents. Happy, of the Springbok Pan Pride, and Spicy from the Blue Pride transferred back and forth among various prides, then formed an alliance of their own. Prowling in open bush and grass savanna due south of the valley, they preyed on springhare, steenbok, and other smaller mammals. In May 1979, each had given birth to two cubs within a few days of each other, as pride-mates often do. We could not possibly know who the fathers were, since the females had mated with males from three different prides.
The first time we saw Happy and Spicy nursing each other’s young, it was an exciting moment for us. Previously, communal suckling in lions had been seen only among closely related females of the same pride. Happy and Spicy could not be close relatives since they were from different prides. This and similar observations had important implications for the evolution and ecology of cooperative behavior among lions, which was the subject of Mark’s Ph.D. thesis.
We had not seen Moffet again, although whenever Mark flew, he turned the radio receiver to the lion’s frequency. Onc
e in a while there was a faint beep mingled with the static, giving some hope that Moffet still roamed somewhere in the desert. Yet when Mark turned the plane toward these phantom signals, they always vanished.
When we sat with Blue on North Dune I had the feeling she was grateful for our company. She slept in the shade of the truck, and with its doors open for the breeze, I could have nudged her with my foot. The tires still held a fascination for her, and lying on her back, legs in the air, she rolled her head to one side and gnawed gently on the rubber.
Ordinarily she would not have stirred until after sunset. But she was very hungry, and at four o’clock she began foraging north toward the dune woodlands. From the duneslope, she could see more than a mile north and south along the valley; not one prey animal was in sight.
She zigzagged in and out of bushes for more than two hours—stopping, listening, watching—but found nothing to eat. Panting heavily, she lay down to rest for a time, then continued toward West Dune at nightfall. Near an open sandy area, she stopped in mid stride, lowered her body slowly until her shoulder blades jutted above her back, and stalked toward a springhare hopping near its burrow. When she was fifteen yards away, she sprang forward. But her prey saw her coming. With dazzling speed and a series of quick turns, its bushy tail flicking deceptively behind, it dashed toward its hole. Blue gave chase, the sand showering off her feet. Her nose was at its tail when it shot into the opening of its burrow, but it did not make a clean entry, and in the second that it paused, Blue pinned the still exposed hindquarters with her paw. She seized the springhare with her jaws, pulled it from its hole and chewed slowly, rhythmically, her eyes half closed, as though savoring every morsel of her four-pound prey. Within five minutes, all that was left were a few drops of blood and tufts of hair on the sand. It wasn’t enough meat to sustain her for very long; she continued to hunt through the woodlands.
Cry of the Kalahari Page 35