THE VALUE OF NATIONAL PARKS

Forest and Bird, Issue 53, 1 August 1939, Page 14

THE VALUE OF NATIONAL PARKS

(Condensed from an address delivered in Pretoria on the 17th November, 1938, by Col. J. Stevenson-Hamilton, the noted Conservator of Kruger National Park.) AS some of you may know, I have been in charge of our own Kruger National Park for over thirty-six years, and, as may be surmised, I have during that considerable period of time devoted a good deal of thought to wild beasts in reference to habits, environments, and their influence upon one another and their surroundings. The Kruger National Park is designed to form a sanctuary from human foes for every kind of wild life without exception, and not alone for those embraced under the general title of “game.” In other places where protection exists it is usually directed towards the preservation of the latter only, with the accompanying destruction of all predatory creatures as “vermin”. The governing factors in such a policy are (1) that carnivorous animals are a menace to domesticated stock; (2) that for sporting reasons it is desirable to keep “game” so far as possible inviolate except from the operations of legitimate hunters. In closely settled overseas countries, the natural enemies of the ground and flying game are harried to the point of extermination by the gamekeepers that the sportsmen may each season find an otherwise unreduced stock at their disposal. The ideal embodied in a National Park is, however, of a totally different kind. In addition to its popular object of displaying unspoiled nature and giving the public some notion of how the country appeared before the

white man came to it, there are many deeply interesting and scientifically important questions which can hope for answers only in an area where all the species indigenous to it are allowed to live out their natural lives, unhampered by artificial aids and restrictions. But if untrammelled Nature is to be read with profit we have to realise that all animals great and small, of the earth or of the air, whether predatory or otherwise, have their full place with her. We must, in fact, rid ourselves of the “Gamekeeper” point of view, which regards every natural enemy of what

is termed “game” as “vermin” to be destroyed on every opportunity in order that the selected animals only may be preserved for the benefit of the arch slaughterer and enemy of all wild life—Man! Man, in fact, is the only exterminator, whether he is savage, armed with bows and arrows, or European, on a lorry with spot-light and repeating rifle, he is always wild life’s most ruthless enemy. The total elimination of one species by another, whether by a carnivorous type destroying a herbivorous one, or by one herbivorous type forcing out another, except as a final culminating factor after Man or some ecological cause such as starvation or disease has first played the principal part, is something unknown to Natural History throughout the ages, and would form a totally new departure in the process of Nature. To turn to the carnivora, and I will take Lions, as being not only the largest and best known to the public, but also those whose habits I have most closely studied. A lioness has young normally at intervals of from 2\ to 3 years under ordinary favourable conditions of food supply and produces from three to four cubs at a litter. When food conditions are poor, i.e., when game is scarce, two is the usual number, whereas under exceptional favourable surroundings it may rise to five, though this would be exceptional. Of the litter one or more always dies in infancy unless food conditions are exceptionally favourable, and in any case it is unusual for more than half the litter to attain full adult dignity. It is a fallacy to suppose that Nature does not keep a strict balance between hunters and hunted. The Ngorongoro Crater in Tanganyika forms a good instance. There, confined within the nearly precipitous sides of this huge crater with its diameter of many miles, roam thousands of Wildebeest and other game animals which share the retreat with a full complement of Lions. These Lions and the other animals must have shared the bed of the crater from time immemorial. The veld is rich clover grass, and so the game displays no constant urge to leave the crater, nor does it seem that it has ever either felt the need to get away