Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
to develop Africa's interior as Livingstone had hoped but was thwarted because of rapids and
seasonal summer water flow. The white English-German miners and Dutch farmer settlers took
over the interior Highveld and Lowveld land and in time fought two South African Boer wars
over gold and diamonds. Despite reaping rich rewards from the mines, this has had a profound
impact on the politics, habitat, water, and wildlife.
Wildlife Threats and Restoration:
Events at the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth conspired to decimate the
population of wild animals. This included the rinderpest outbreak after 1896, the Boer war at
the turn of the century, the need for meat, uncontrolled hunting and poaching, clearing of
wildlife for cattle farming on borderline soils, and extermination of wildlife near cattle farms
because of the fear of tsetse fly bourn Nagana spreading to the cattle. In 1881, Frederick
Selous had noted huge of herds of buffalo in the Zambezi Valley, but by 1908 they were all
gone as in eight years rinderpest had destroyed cloven-hoofed animal populations from Eretria
to the Cape.
Ironically, the rinderpest killing of millions of head of cattle probably was a major factor in
elimination of Nagana in the southern ranges of the disease.
Buffalo Charging
By the turn of the nineteenth century, the Lebombo Plain of the Lowveld was devoid of
elephants, with only 20 to 30 buffaloes, and the rhinos were gone except about 15 in the
Umfolozi area. Some 400 elephants were left in Zimbabwe. Only some 120 elephants were left
in South Africa in four populations in Knysna, Tembe, Addo, and maybe the Olifant's Gorge in
the Lebombo mountains - similar to what happened to bison in North America. North
American bison thrived on the western plains after the die off of the mega herbivores like their
grazing competitors the mammoths following the last ice age some 11,000 years ago.
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