Wild Things, Wild Places

by Jane Alexander

  Márcio sought to protect these unique animals from hunters who were driving them to extinction. At that time his own body was ravaged by cancer, but he lived to see the Brazilian government establish the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve for the animals and the people who live there. It is protected by the International Ramsar Convention of the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), the group of scientists that determine the most vulnerable species annually through its Red List.

  The Brazilian tribesmen who first populated the area more than a hundred years ago for rubber extracting have adapted like the animals to the flooded forest, lashing their homes to pontoons and making a living from sustainable fishing practices and handicrafts. There are about six thousand of them in the twenty-two-square-mile reserve; they are guardians of the forest and river, keeping alive the legacy of Márcio Ayres, who died in 2003.

  Not all stories of rivers on earth have a happy ending. Most of the great rivers are stressed from pollution, overdevelopment of their shores, damming, and global warming. The Amazon, the greatest river on earth because of its sheer volume, is in no danger of drying up in the near future, although climate change will reduce the number of its feeder streams as drought prevails. The river itself will increase its volume as rising sea levels push more water inland hundreds of miles west from the Atlantic Ocean, flooding the city of Manaus and beyond. Forests will be wiped out in its wake, increasing carbon emissions by default. Trees are the number-one mitigation of the acceleration of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, and Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has most of them. Despite Brazil’s commitment to protection of Amazonia, holding it together is one of the greatest challenges of our time.

  16

  East Africa

  I keep a primitively carved ivory chain necklace in my bureau drawer. It is something I inherited from my Nova Scotia grandmother. It looks old, perhaps from the 1700s, when my family settled there. I think it is Elephant ivory and was worn by one of my French ancestors before she traveled across the ocean to become a farming Acadian; but for all I know it could be made from whalebone or even Walrus, a piece of scrimshaw from the seafaring maritimers of my family. In any case it would not get through customs today…if they found it.

  In 1989, Richard Leakey, who headed the Kenyan Wildlife Conservation and Management Department, had the idea of burning the country’s confiscated Elephant ivory to bring the plight of poaching to the world stage. Twelve tons, artfully piled by a Hollywood pyro technician and lit by Kenya’s president, Daniel Arap Moi, went up in flames, representing two thousand dead Elephants and worth $3 million on the black market. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who has dedicated his life to saving Elephants, said it was “a tiny fraction of what was killed.” President Moi said, “To stop the poacher, the trader must also be stopped, and to stop the trader, the final buyer must be convinced not to buy ivory.” It reminded me of Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no,” her charge to users during the drug wars of the 1980s.

  The poaching did not stop. The trading did not stop. The demand did not stop. The desire did not stop.

  In 1995 another fraction was ignited in Nairobi National Park—the gray ashes of another few thousand tusks, the bloody carcasses long reduced to bones following the gorge of jackals and vultures. These same bones lay on the vast plains and were sometimes found by Elephant families, recognized as one of their own, and fondled in a ceremony of grief. How do they know this architecture of the body? Elephants may never forget, but their embrace of bones is uncanny.

  This majestic mammal has suffered greatly at the hand of man: killed, enslaved, their ancient paths obliterated. I watched a lone bull elephant stare at the chain link fence butting up against the city of Nairobi along his ancestral migratory route, a skyscraper jutting into the blue a mere one hundred feet distant.

  Poaching and loss of habitat have reduced the current African Elephant population by thirty thousand annually since 2010, about ninety-six Elephants every single day. A continent-wide aerial census estimates about 500,000 animals out of many millions are left, but no one really knows how many still roam the forests and plains.

  It is not possible to comprehend the loss of Africa without knowing what was Africa, and in many places still is. The continent blessed with the greatest number of megafauna on earth is experiencing unprecedented threats to those animals today from many sources. It is a war on wildlife, and there are warriors in the battle fighting to keep what is left and restore what was. The glory still exists in places, and the resilience of animal life coupled with the will of people make the dream possible.

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  Our twin-engine plane broke through the fog and rain, scattering a herd of zebras, and landed on a patch of earth on the Serengeti. Nothing in my life experience prepared me for the great plains of East Africa—not all the reading I had done, the pictures I’d pored over, or the dozens of movies and TV shows I’d seen about wildlife. I stood on that plain that stretched for hundreds of miles—in any direction that I turned it just kept going, to the horizon and beyond—and saw thousands of animals everywhere. There were Lions and Zebras cheek by jowl, Wildebeests, Ostriches, Buffalos, Hyenas, and Gazelles. Grazing in the branches of nearby acacia were Giraffes, and Elephants walked in stately procession toward a mudhole. It was the vastness and abundance I could not comprehend.

  It came to me that my entire understanding of the Serengeti until that point had been circumscribed by the rectangles of screens or books or photographs, that my vision had literally been narrowed about three hundred degrees. Here the gentle curvature of the earth extended to the horizon and I at its center circled slowly in place as the magnitude of the experience homed in on me.

  It was here in this part of the Great Rift Valley that early man evolved and eventually walked out of Africa to people the earth. His life was inextricably linked to the animals that thrived here, many of them the same species seen today. He must have followed the northward migration of the herds across the plains and back again south to the Ngorongoro Crater in the June winter of the Southern Hemisphere. He made killing tools out of stone and flaked the stone for scraping hides. These tribal families lived like the mammals they hunted and scavenged, as another mammal wandering the land in search of food and shelter.

  Our band of wanderers in 1996 traveled by jeep along the same routes and captured animals on celluloid when we found them. The Wildlife Conservation Society was one hundred years old; trustees and staff made “Footsteps Across Africa” in a centennial safari. There were so many of us that we broke into pods of fourteen with a guide, several drivers, and a WCS biologist as our leader. Our pod included Howard Phipps, chairman of the board, and President William Conway.

  Bill Conway specialized in flamingos and penguins, traveling annually to Patagonia to tag penguins and encouraging many to join him. His ardent conservation ethic invigorated trustees like me. The society had a long history of advancing wildlife conservation, beginning with a small herd of American Bison brought to a meadow near the Bronx Zoo in 1905 on what today is Pelham Parkway, a main artery into New York City. This act probably saved the Buffalo from extinction. The most prevalent hoofed animal on the western plains, gunned down to a handful, successfully bred in the Bronx and was reintroduced to protected areas in western states in ensuing years.

  As president of WCS, Bill Conway expanded on the mission of those early years by envisioning zoos primarily as conservation organizations and breeders of endangered species, not solely collectors. The name change in 1993 from the New York Zoological Society was consonant with the mission.

  On the Serengeti trip in 1996, we tented on the plains, not in the little pop-up numbers I was used to back home on family hikes but in luxurious, canvas-roofed rooms with bona fide beds to fall into. An Elephant could have flipped the entrance flap and stood full height in our tent, it was that big.

  An even larger tent was the gathering spot for meals, the long table draped in white cotton and laid with cutlery,
stemware, and candles in the evening. We lived like sultans, engaging in glorious adventures during the day and in stimulating conversation at night, like-minded men and women eager to find ways to preserve the natural wonders we were privileged enough to see. The scientists accompanying us knew how to do it.

  We set out at dawn, three or four to an open jeep, riding along worn dirt paths on the plains. The biologist Patricia Moehlman pointed out a Golden Jackal couple, mated for life, with two small pups playing in the early morning light, their prominent ears tipped with gold. One had a run-in with a Wildcat, which arched and hissed as any house cat might before slipping down a hole. Zebras, Wildebeests, and Thomson’s and Grant’s Gazelles grazed on grasses nearby in a scene as bucolic as an Iowa farm.

  A Brit named Marian studying Spotted Hyenas said she hated The Lion King’s depiction of them as skulking and malicious. In fact, said Marian, as we watched a mud-splattered clan of them on their scrapes, they were fascinating animals dominated by a complex matriarchy. Male Hyenas are subservient not only to the matriarch but also to all the other females of the large clan. The female even has genitalia that resembles a penis but is actually the birth canal for her cubs. The most common and opportunistic carnivore in Africa, the Hyena devours 95 percent of any prey it scavenges or kills, crushing bones and digesting hair with ease. The Maasai people even leave their dead to be consumed by Hyenas, they are so efficient.

  The Wildebeests were calving in late February, stopping briefly to give birth and waiting just a few minutes for the baby to rise to its wobbly feet before moving on—a precarious moment that predators knew was opportune. A little one struggled to rise, the silvery slime of its mother’s womb still clinging to its matted hide. The immense herd moved on, maybe a thousand animals following the grass newly sprouted with the day’s rain. A gap of fifty feet soon separated the mother and her calf, exposing his vulnerability, and within minutes three Hyenas began to circle the helpless baby. The mother moved next to him but did not nudge him or make any sound we could hear. The calf tucked its spindly hind legs underneath and attempted again to stand but fell back on its haunches for perhaps the fifth time. His mother looked toward the retreating herd, seeming to deliberate the odds. She went a few steps toward them before she turned suddenly and raced toward the encroaching Hyenas, striking out at them with her front hooves. This stopped them momentarily, and just as it looked like it might be the end for the newborn, he staggered to his tiny hooves and trotted to the herd as if he were an old hand at the game. Instinct made sure he was. He and his mother were soon safely enveloped in the mass of grazing dark bodies.

  Large birds strutted the plains: Ostriches, bustards, storks, and the tall Secretary Birds, looking like prim clerks out of Dickens, stepped with halting gaits across the expanse, while several kinds of vultures swooped in on carrion. The big Griffon, or White-headed Vulture, was the cutter, with a sharp-edged beak made for severing flesh from bone, the others benefiting from his work.

  An amorous Kori Bustard, the largest flying bird in the world, took a shine to Conway, flagrantly fanning his tail, pooching his white neck feathers, and strutting toward Bill with a come-hither look. He emitted a low booming noise when especially excited and Bill responded with a sexy growl, drawing the five-foot bird so close we thought he would hop into the Rover.

  Me, Bill Conway, and WCS biologist Sebastian Chuwa have just had the thrill of seeing a Lammergeier, a huge Bearded Vulture, soar through a mountain canyon, Tanzania, Africa, 1996. Credit 7

  Bill was a fine companion. We shared a passion for birds and counted 250 species on this African trip, from colorful Lovebirds draped on branches like a Mexican candlestick to the Saddle-billed Stork, its spectacular red and black bill glowing in the sun shaft of a forest pool.

  There are places in the world where more birds live, but nowhere on earth is there such a concentration of large mammals. Hippopotomi lay submerged in large ponds, Oxpeckers gleaning insects from their hides before water lapped at their feathers. Lions lolled on their backs in amber grass, paws dangling insouciantly in the air, while cubs tussled around them. A troop of Olive Baboons, bucolic in the shade of a tree, made a pecking order of grooming females lined up behind a big male who was looking vacantly at his toes propped on a log. A baby plopped into his lap and he gently stroked it before it scampered off. Two Giraffes swung their long necks wide to butt each other in the breast, a fight choreographed like slow-motion Kabuki theater. Seven East African Oryx, their straight black horns three times the length of their heads, grazed beneath an acacia tree.

  Two Cheetahs were being harassed by a spunky gang of five Plains Zebras. The cats flattened themselves in the grass as the Zebras raced toward them, then popped up again and tore after the Zebras, which galloped off, only to turn around and repeat the sequence three times before the Zebras were satisfied they’d made their point and trotted off. It was a deadly game made tolerable by the element of play.

  The rock outcroppings called kopjes where the Cheetahs hung out reminded me of a spot in southwestern Oklahoma called Quartz Mountain where Ed and I taught acting to talented teenagers at a program of the Summer Arts Institute. Impervious granite hills rose from an ancient seabed. There was a severe drought one year and the lake disappeared, exposing a blanket of red-cracked mud from shore to shore. We were walking across the bare expanse when a lone smooth rock caught my eye. It fitted comfortably in my hand. One side was sharp as an adze, and the park’s naturalist said it was a scraping tool from ten thousand years ago, probably dropped by its maker in a deadly chase, because the tool was not finished. The migration of Bison and Antelope then, before they were decimated 150 years ago, was as extensive as that of Wildebeests and gazelles in East Africa, the largest mammal migration on earth today.

  On the Serengeti it was not hard to conjure our ancestors seventy-five thousand years ago also migrating north to settle Europe and the Fertile Crescent, taking with them the story of East Africa’s bounteous plains—the progenitor, perhaps, of the story of Eden.

  “Serengeti” is the Maasai word for “the place where the land runs on forever.” These nomadic tribesmen began pasturing their cattle on the great savannah only two hundred years ago. Earlier tribal peoples had traversed routes from the coast to Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika for thousands of years, later joined by Arab traders seeking slaves and ivory.

  During the 1800s colonial hunters came to shoot the big five: Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Cape Buffalo, and Rhinoceros. They did such a thorough job of it that by the 1920s parts of the Serengeti were established as game reserves, regulating limits. Finally, in 1951, all killing was outlawed with the realization of how special the area was. Serengeti National Park was established, adjoining the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and comprises 5,700 square miles of northern Tanzania. Three hundred fifty thousand tourists visit it and thirteen other parks annually, contributing 25 percent of the country’s economy. The animals are clearly worth more to the government alive than dead.

  Ngorongoro Crater is almost perfectly round, twelve miles across, with lush green grasses, forest outcroppings, and small lakes. It may be one of the most beautiful places to see wildlife in the world. We stayed in a lodge perched on the rim of the two-million-year-old volcano with a breathtaking view.

  Out scouting for Leopards on the ridge rocks, our guide, Bjorn, took three of us to see a giant dead baobab tree for the owls. It was hollow inside and had been occupied by poachers in the past. Bjorn and I crouched down to slip through the small two-by-two-foot entrance while Ed and our friend Barbara lay on the ground to take a picture of us inside. The circular room was about twelve feet in diameter and dimly lit from above by the hollowed trunk open to the sky. There were no owls.

  Ed urged me to move back against the far wall for a better picture. I pressed my back into the clammy bark, and suddenly the weight of a heavy body landed on my right shoulder. A large dark snake quickly slithered down my chest onto the earth
y floor, beating a path for the entrance hole. “Black Mamba!” I cried, that being the only African snake I knew. Ed leapt to his feet, Barbara screamed and ran away, and Bjorn watched as the scared reptile disappeared into the grass. It was indigo blue, not black, with a light blue iridescence, and about five feet long—not a deadly Black Mamba at all. Even the Black Mamba is not all black, only on the inside of its mouth. But it made a good story. At dinner Conway quipped that I could have been lost to a snake, and a few days later I overheard a stranger speak of the “twelve-footer in the hollow baobab that almost got her.”

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  Modern Elephants evolved around 500,000 years ago. They missed dinosaurs by about 64 million years, but as the largest land mammal on earth the Elephant awe factor is considerable. We saw them daily in Ngorongoro. One herd descended the crater rim at dawn in single file through alpine flowers and a stand of cactus, silhouetted against the rising sun, looking like a calendar shot, except there was no frame. A nervous male confronted us another time. He was twelve feet tall at the shoulder with big tusks, and wanted to pass our Land Rover on a wooded road. He flapped his ears and trumpeted and just when we thought he might charge, he dashed by into the brush.

  One evening we saw more than a hundred Elephants in two herds, some with little babies—at least three newborns, one or two days old, who barely came to their mothers’ knees and were tenderly watched over by aunties and siblings. Older ones were frolicking in the mudholes and chasing and squirting water all around. We watched for more than an hour before a nervous guardian edged toward us with ears flapping. Two others began running in our direction. It didn’t look good, but they passed by us at a healthy clip and we noted the pursuer’s giant semi-erect penis as he chased the pretty little female.