Big Game in Africa: Theory and practice

The theme of African conservation is seen in the large game fences that separate the main contestants in the battle for land: local farmers and wildlife conservation. All photos: David Bowman

The opportunity to see large African herbivores in the landscape in which they evolved is a truly remarkable experience for an Australian ecologist writes David Bowman.

Here, David contrasts some of the conservation challenges between Africa and Australia.

Contradictions of a tourist attraction | Conservation challenges | Lessons for Australia | Contact details | New book on Kruger land management |

In Australian there is nothing quite like rhino, giraffe, elephant, buffalo and antelope ‘just there’ doing their thing. African megafauna have survived almost certainly because these animals evolved in tandem with humans. By contrast, nearly all the large Australian mammals became extinct immediately following the arrival of humans some 40,000 years ago, most probably because of hunting and increased frequency of burning of vegetation.

Africa exercises the mind because the choice between economic human development and conservation is much starker than in comparatively affluent Australia which has a population of 20 million compared to 45 million in South Africa alone—and South Africa is only about the size of Queensland.

Indeed the theme of African conservation is seen in the large game fences that separate the main contestants in the battle for land: local farmers and wildlife conservation. The survival of the big game behind those fences is far from certain and the search for their preservation raises unsettling philosophical questions concerning the broader aims and objectives of nature conservation.

Contradictions of a tourist attraction

While game parks clearly protect big animals and provide invaluable opportunities for researchers it must be accepted that their existence depends upon ecotourism. This can constrain conservation research. A good example of this is the reluctance of wildlife managers to tag big animals as it is considered to diminish the safari experience of tourists. Yet such a prohibition limits the capacity of researchers to understand the population dynamics of large animals and therefore underpin their conservation with scientific knowledge. Paradoxically, tourists are oblivious to the paved roads that snake through game parks providing all-weather access for ‘game drives’.

Researchers and managers can argue over the relevance of research programs in addressing the immediate needs of park management. Nonetheless, the results of scientific research can greatly add to the tourist experience, provide a context to understand the dynamics of the wildlife populations and landscapes and reiterate the global significance of the conservation of large animals.

There can be no doubt the long-term survival of big game will remain uncertain until social and economic tumult associated with poverty and population growth subsides. In the meantime, management interventions will be required that have uncertain longer-term implications. For example, some game species have been ‘introduced’ into parks from outside their past known geographical range or have been re-introduced, often by happenstance and thus without clear objectives. It is an open question among African wildlife biologists whether the presence of these introduced animals adds or detracts from the natural qualities of a game park.

Conservation challenges

Park managers and researchers agree on one thing: game parks are facing an emerging challenge in landscape change. African landscapes are highly dynamic and are responding to prehistoric and historic impacts of humans, the most obvious example being the widespread expansion of woody vegetation which is creating forests where once there was savanna.

However, little is known about the rate and magnitude of such landscape change, particularly whether it is a consequence of the halt to intentional landscape burning by indigenous people—the idea being that indigenous fire practices may have kept the growth of trees in check and maintained the savanna. If this idea is accepted, then it opens the door for managers to use fire once again to expand the savanna wildlife habitat at the expense of encroaching forests. Yet the destruction of forests will impact on biodiversity, causing the loss of a great diversity of plants and animals, particularly invertebrate species.

Given these conundrums what should be the core objectives of an African game park? One widely stated objective in South Africa is the maintenance of ‘biodiversity’ and ‘ecological processes’ but from my vantage point this is an unnecessary complication. I believe the primary purpose is the conservation of big African animals in a landscape that supports vegetation which co-evolved with these animals. This more modest objective provides an ‘authentic’, albeit contrived, tourist experience and provides ecologists with an extraordinary natural laboratory. Equally it presents land managers with the tough decisions that are associated with all rangeland systems where native vegetation is exploited for a set of explicit objectives. But such challenges are more achievable than the easily espoused ‘feel good’ objectives such as the preservation of ‘biodiversity’ and all possible ecological states.

Park management is a pragmatic art where there is a constant danger that losing focus of core objectives can result in a loss of globally invaluable biological heritage. I assert that to sustain the extraordinary achievement of the conservation of big African animals then the managers must avoid being deflected by intractable philosophical questions associated with unachievable objectives and keep their eye on the main game: the big game.

Lessons for Australia

The thorny philosophical questions of Africa game management are instructive for Australian managers where aims and objectives are different. A core reason for these differences is our lack of charismatic megafauna with obvious economic and cultural value that people fly half way across the world to behold. For example, the fencing off of larger areas, like that practised in Africa, with the active removal of introduced animals to preserve native mammals remains uncommon in Australian conservation and has not been embraced by government land management agencies. Australian native animals and plants tend to be valued in a less-focused way and are largely lumped together as ‘biodiversity’ that inhabits a vast ‘outback’ where it is threatened by cattle, feral animals and land clearance.

This ‘whole landscape’ focus has influenced conservation management policy in Australia within the relatively small proportion of the outback set aside as conservation reserves. Typically the core objective is the preservation of entire ecosystems thereby protecting all their native species and maintaining ecological processes. Just how successful this approach will be in the face of landscape change due to woody thickening, global climate change and feral invasion remains to be seen.

The less than perfect objective of ‘off-reserve’ conservation in which highly valued components of ecosystems such as riverside vegetation are protected within areas such as cattle stations, or a balance is struck between native plants and animals and pastoralism that eschews lands clearance has had only a belated serious consideration. Perhaps the key to the sustainable management of many northern landscapes may also lie with the management of our big animals—cattle.