Cry of the Kalahari

by Mark James Owens

  “Anyway,” he continued, “I’m glad to meet you. Please have your lovely wife sit here next to me.”

  During dinner he said casually, but with an unmistakable glimmer of anticipation, that he would be quite happy to fly to our camp in Echo Whisky Golf. Unfortunately, he would be able to stay only one day.

  The next morning at six-thirty we met him and his secretary on the airstrip. At the dinner table the night before, the prince had given animated accounts of his old flying days: Gypsy Moths, short landing fields with hedges, and all. Now, as we took off, he looked at me and asked with a smile, “Do you mind?” I told him the heading for camp and gave him the controls. If he’d forgotten anything about flying he didn’t show it, for he took us straight to camp.

  After a quick cup of tea, we took to the air again and followed the route of the migration north to the Kuki fence. Dodging columns of vultures arriving for the day’s feed on the carcasses, we followed the fence to its comer, and turned south. Miles away to the east, clouds of dust rose from the Lake Xau plains; thousands of wildebeest were returning to the trees after their long trek for water. The prince just shook his head, his jaw set grimly while we flew low over the black masses that speckled the plain as far as the eye could see. It was much hotter than it had been even ten days before, and the animals were dying at a much faster rate. We flew over a pall of destruction, death, and suffering. We hardly spoke on the way back to camp.

  As we walked into camp after our depressing flight, Chief, one of our friendly hornbills, sailed from his perch and glided straight for a landing on the prince’s pate. Over another cup of tea, Bernhard promised to help raise additional money for our research, and to inform the right people in Europe about the wildebeest crisis.

  I dug the wine from beneath the ziziphus tree while Delia served up fresh bread from the bucket oven. Together with the hornbills, tit-babblers, and marico flycatchers, who hopped around the table, we had our lunch.

  That afternoon Prince Bernhard met some of the lions, the brown hyena cubs, and the Pink Panther—who crawled into a hole and refused to come out. Just before dark, we touched down back at Khwaii Lodge. We gave our slide show that night, and went home the next morning to get ready to receive Dr. Faust.

  Dr. Richard Faust is a man of phenomenal energy. He works all day seven days a week: from five to eight o’clock each morning as director of the Frankfurt Zoological Society; from eight to five directing the affairs of the Frankfurt Zoo; and from five to ten at night as director of the zoological society again. His trip to Africa was his first time off in seven years, and even then he was leading a party of the society’s sponsors.

  Now he stood on the truck’s running board, his hair tossed by the wind, his face powdered with dust. We were driving from one wildebeest carcass to the next, counting, sexing, and determining the age of dead animals along the Lake Xau shoreline and salt pan. In the evening, we spread our bedrolls in the open just a few yards up from the water, and sat around our campfire. At sunset we had watched a young wildebeest standing in the dying heat waves on the bank above us, afraid to descend to the water to drink. Now the darkness was heavy with the stench of carcasses and the keening of night birds. No one spoke for a long time.

  By ten-thirty our fire had burned down to embers. A subtle vibration began to fill the air. “Listen . . . do you hear something? There . . . like water rushing over rocks.” The minutes passed and the sound became a rumble; a low moaning rose from the plains. “The wildebeest are coming!”

  Black forms marched over the ridge above and a cloud of dust swept over us. I moved quietly to the truck and switched on the spotlight. A sea of antelope, their brilliant emerald eyes like spots of phosphor, was pouring over the bank, flowing around our campsite.

  The legions passed us and entered the water, slurping and splashing as they drank. But each animal stayed in the lake for only two or three minutes. Then it was drawn into the black current of bodies eddying shoreward and then westward toward the plain. The return trek had begun almost immediately. All that way for a few gulps of water! They had but a few hours to find shade before the sun began sapping the life from them again.

  As I watched the antelope surge desperately into the lake and then out of it, I thought about the significance of the migration for the conservation of all wildlife in the Kalahari. The wildebeest, lions, and hyenas had taught us much: For all its great size, the Central Reserve does not provide adequate habitat for most of its highly mobile populations, both predator and prey. Without any permanent water holes in the reserve, and restricted by fences and human settlements from the country’s only lakes and rivers, the antelope populations have almost no place to get water in severe drought. Though lions, leopards, brown hyenas, and other Kalahari predators can live indefinitely without drinking, they can do so only as long as there is prey available to provide them with enough food and moisture. We were convinced that if something wasn’t done soon to allow these animals greater access to the Boteti River and Lake Xau, to stop the harassment by poachers, or to devise some other solution, much of the Kalahari’s wildlife would disappear.

  In the short term, the only hope for the antelope was rain—rain to grow green grass in the desert and to draw them away from Lake Xau. The only long-term solution was to designate the area between the reserve and Lake Xau as part of an even larger game reserve or, at least, as a protected corridor of access to the lake for the herds. The catch, of course, was that this would mean freezing the development of settlements and ranching in that area.

  We were convinced that if tourism and other wildlife industries could be developed as a substitute for raising cattle, the overall living standard of local tribal people would be raised. At the same time a great natural resource would be conserved. But even while we were suggesting this to government departments in Gaborone, we knew there was little chance that they would accept the idea—too many important people have cattle interests in the Lake Xau area.

  Dr. Faust was greatly moved by the wildebeest situation and pledged his continued support of our research. In the months following his and Prince Bernhard’s visits, we spent many hours hammering away at the typewriter in our tent or working under the ziziphus tree, with the hornbills pecking our pencils. We drafted articles for magazines all over the world. We sent reports and circulars to other influential people, hoping that someone could convince Botswana to do something for the conservation of the wildebeest; or to convince the EEC, who insist upon the fences, to review their impact on wildlife.

  We hardly dared hope that any of this would help change the attitudes of import-export businessmen or government officials. But we had done our best. Meanwhile we watched the bleak and smoky skies for clouds. There were none.

  26

  Kalahari High

  Mark

  You could feel the rain

  before it came,

  the signals were that good.

  —Rod McKuen

  ONE AFTERNOON in mid-October 1980, over two and a half years after the drought had begun, there was a cloud. After months and months of searing desert sky, a single pillow of water vapor stood alone above the Kalahari, teasing us. Several hours later, others appeared. They were scattered, but each grew darker and heavier in the sky to the east, between the valley and Lake Xau.

  When rain began streaking the sky beneath one of the clouds, Delia and I ran to the plane. At 1500 feet, we flew beneath the soft, grey belly of vapor, the rain splattering against the windshield and streaming along the skin of the plane. We opened the windows and let our arms trail outside. The cool wetness coursed down and off our fingertips and the fresh smell rushed into the cabin. It was a Kalahari high.

  We flew toward Lake Xau as other storm cells feathered the sky with moisture. Over the lake plain there were no clouds, but below, the black masses of wildebeest were bunching, looking west toward the desert sky. Then the whole surface of the plain seemed to move, as thousands upon thousands of antelope began galloping westward
. Some natural sense of order prevailed, and they began forming several lines, some more than a mile long, each headed straight for a cloud and its veil of rain.

  It must have been the mist and spray around the airplane, or our excitement, that kept us from noticing at first, but, with a pang of despair, I realized that the ground was still grey with drought. We had been flying in “virga”—rain that evaporates in the hot desert air before it reaches the earth. Some of the wildebeest nearest the clouds, where the rain should have been, had slowed to a plodding walk with their heads lowered. Others had come to a standstill. Could a wildebeest feel utter dejection?

  I throttled back, put down some flap, and for half an hour we dawdled from one cloud to another, watching the herds below. Finally, with the falling temperature in late afternoon, dense white columns of water began to reach the ground. Circles of savanna turned dark and wet. Puddles formed. The wildebeest gathered to drink and to eat what soppy grasses they could find.

  Three days later it rained again, then again a week after that. Green grass shot up everywhere; the wildebeest quickly began eating their way back into the Kalahari and the game reserve. They were, of course, only the survivors of a much larger number that had migrated, but at least the rain bought us time—another year to convince Botswana’s government and the rest of the world that Kalahari antelope are worth saving.

  The sky was still stacked with cumulonimbus the morning after the first rain, and we took off in the plane to find the lions. Just as Sassy’s signal sounded loud in our headphones, big drops began spiking against the fuselage. We passed the signal’s peak, our foreheads pressed against the side windows, squinting through the mist at the trees flashing underneath. I banked steeply and came around again. When I saw Sassy she was standing near a big acacia with Chary and all seven of their adolescent offspring. Preying on wildebeest far outside the game reserve, often within a few hundred yards of cattleposts, the two females had brought all of their young through the drought. By any standard they had been good mothers. Now they all stood near Hartebeest Pan, licking the water from one another’s backs and faces under the pelting rain. When we banked away the youngsters were stalking and chasing one another, and we could see their paw prints in the wet sand.

  Blue and Bimbo were drinking at a water hole west of Crocodile Pan when we found them. We made notes on their position. I had just turned to fly back to camp when I spotted a large male lion resting near Blue and Bimbo at the edge of a grove of acacia bushes. He was nearly under the plane and just a blur, so I hauled EWG around for another look. But the aircraft was drifting heavily in the wind and there were dozens of thickets. We could not find him again.

  It was just after sunset when the rains finally arrived in Deception Valley. Pepper was smelling a scent mark near the communal den while Cocoa rested under a bush nearby. The two brown hyena cubs stood, their ears perked, as the first rain they had ever seen began kicking up puffs of dust on the mound all around them. They began licking moisture from twigs, old bones, and the ends of their noses, and finally, lapping it from puddles on the ground. At two years of age, at last they had their first drink of water.

  The next morning Blue and Bimbo were near Dog’s Leg, in the upper end of Deception Valley. As I flew past I could see them lying with a big blond male, probably the same lion we had seen them with the day before. I was glad to see that, after almost two years on their own, they had found another companion. Perhaps when the rains were well under way and the antelope came back to the valley, the lions would walk the riverbed again. The nights and early mornings seemed empty without their roars rolling from dune to dune. I flew to camp and plotted their position on our aerial photographs. Then, we set out in the truck to have a better look at the three of them.

  We found them in an opening between two dense thorn thickets. The male was lying on his side and didn’t even turn as I stopped the truck.

  “I can’t believe how relaxed he seems,” Delia remarked. But then he swung his head around.

  Delia raised the binoculars to her eyes. I heard her catch her breath.

  “Mark! It’s Moffet! He’s alive! I can see the mark on his hip!” Though his collar and transmitter were gone, in his right ear were the remains of a red tag. He had seen Muffin trapped and shot and had himself been chased by a man on horseback with a pack of dogs; he may even have been wounded. But he had survived all that, and the drought, too.

  After a time, Delia and I eased out of the truck. Cooing softly, mimicking the social call we had used for so long to reassure lions, we crept forward. Lying apart from Bimbo and Blue, Moffet was feeding on a porcupine clamped between his broad forepaws. He watched us intently, and then sighed and continued feeding. We settled beneath a bush about five yards away. It was like old times with him again.

  Bimbo, now nearly two years old, still had a youngster’s curiosity, even though he was a 200-pound subadult with the ragged beginnings of a mane. He slowly stood up and walked toward us. When he was five feet from us, he stopped and looked away. He licked his forepaw and smelled the ground and then took another tentative step forward, placing his paw carefully on the ground as if he were walking on eggshells. More than anything I wanted him to accept us totally, to show that his curiosity outweighed his uncertainty. If he touched us it would be a sign.

  Another step. He leaned toward me, his nose and whiskers only three feet away from my face. He came still nearer, and I could see the reflection of the desert in his eyes, the flecks of golden brown in his irises as they adjusted to the changing light. Again and again, he pushed his muzzle forward, and then stood back, turning his ears slightly. After a last, clumsy attempt, he hastily put his nose into some leafy branches near my head and sniffed loudly, as if that had been his intention all along. Then he walked away. He had almost touched me, but something held us apart. The last barrier still remained.

  We sat for a long time and watched Moffet slowly finish his meal. Then he rubbed the quills from his face and shoulders and licked his paws. When he had finished cleaning himself, he got to his feet and walked toward us, his mane swinging, his pink tongue sliding along his muzzle. He stopped near our feet, his soft eyes on us, then walked on to lie down with Blue beneath their shade tree.

  In the midst of thousands of square miles of wilderness Moffet, Blue, and Bimbo were at least somewhat buffered from man’s careless exploitation of the wilderness. Perhaps they, Pepper, Cocoa, and the others would be allowed to retain a part of the earth, to survive and endure.

  But then my attention was drawn to something in a nearby tree that neither of us had noticed before. Tied in the branches were blue plastic survey ribbons, fluttering in the breeze.

  Epilogue

  Delia and Mark

  The ecologist cannot remain a voice crying in the wilderness—if he is to be heard and understood.

  —M. W. Hold gate

  BLUE, BIMBO, AND MOFFET are all that is left of the Blue Pride dynasty that once ruled a long stretch of Deception Valley. When we last saw him, Bimbo was a hefty young male with a scruffy new mane and a wanderlust. He would soon become a nomad, roaming far from Deception Valley in search of a territory and a pride of his own. In the meantime, he and his mother stay together in the pride’s old home range, stalking through bushveld and woodlands to the east of the valley near Crocodile Pan. Now and then they meet Moffet, and the three of them hunt or rest together under a shade tree.

  Moffet usually stays alone, preying on small animals and birds. He rarely roars, for he has no territory, but now and then he coos softly into the wind—perhaps listening for an answer from his old friend Muffin.

  At the end of 1980 old Chary gave birth to three more young, probably sired by a male of the East Side Pride near the game reserve boundary. She and Sassy and their cubs range from twenty to fifty miles east of Deception, near Hartebeest Pans and beyond. In this picturesque area, where dense terminalia and combretum woodlands open out to parkland and rolling grass savanna, the lionesses prey on oc
casional kudu, duiker, hartebeest, and migrating wildebeest. Now that they have formed new associations with other males and females in these areas, they will probably never return to their old Blue Pride territory near Deception Camp.

  Liesa and Gypsy are together near Paradise Pan, where, in 1980 Gypsy gave birth to three cubs. She was a much better mother the second time around, and by the time we left the Kalahari, her new cubs were healthy and growing quickly.

  Spicy and Spooky, of the original Blue Pride, joined the Springbok Pan Pride, where Spicy reared her cubs with Happy’s family.

  Both Rascal and Hombre, who were young male cubs with the Blue Pride when we first met them, were later shot by ranchers near cattle posts just outside the reserve boundary. More than a third of all the lions we tagged or collared were shot by professional hunters, poachers, or ranchers before we left. We believe this mortality, directed mostly at males, is detrimental to the long-term welfare of the population. (See Appendix B for our recommendations concerning the conservation of Kalahari lions.)