Kenya National Parks in Trouble

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I’m back in harness, although not yet pulling any heavy weights as I have just completed the first week of my post knee-replacement surgery. Of course this gives me plenty of opportunity to catch up on reading and to think about the trip that my family and I completed just before Christmas. We took our daughter, her husband and their two daughters to Kenya for three weeks and combined visits to a long list of old friends with trips to several game parks.

Like many visits it was mostly great, but there was one very sad thing we found out and another that I learned as soon as we got home. Both concern the destruction of game parks by massive and indiscriminate grazing of livestock.

One of our oldest friends had not long returned from a trip to Meru Game Park, a place that is dear to me for many reasons. I have written about it and its future in both of my Africa books because it was there that I launched my career as a wildlife veterinarian when I treated my first white rhino.

I even managed to scan a section of the old map of this park in Wrestling With Rhinos and share it here - or had intnded to until I discovered that my entire blog program has suffered some sort of major health attack, or maybe it has bene hacked. I had other pictures I wanted to share, but they too would not upload.

Nigel and his wife had not only visited the park’s most western areas, but had gone all the way to the Tana River and been at first confused and then horrified at what they saw. The first impression was that the maze of footprints they had seen were those of cattle, but when they came across a massive herd of about a thousand buffalo they felt better.

The situation was temporary. As they approached the river, and left the more heavily patrolled and “popular” areas of the park near the very upmarket lodge Elsa’s Kopje, which lies within a long stone’s throw of George Adamson’s old camp, they realized that things were in bad way. Much of the bush had been cut with pangas and laid on the ground, where goats had consumed all the greenery. Many of the vehicle tracks were littered with brush and the huge fig tree at Adamson’s Falls had been shorn of almost all of its greenery. Nigel took a different route out of the park through the Ura gate and the destruction changed not one whit. The eastern half of the park was completely overrun with domestic livestock.

This is simply an escalation of the situation that warden Mark Jenkins had faced in the last days of his tenancy as the park warden. In The Trouble With Lions I predicted that Meru might not last as a park. Is this the beginning of the end?

I had hoped that this might be an isolated case, but I was quite wrong. Among the pile of magazines waiting for us at home was the October-December 2011 issue of Swara, the public face of the East African Wildlife Society. There are numerous conservation articles in its 68 pages, but the first thing I read was a long four-column letter from Dave Mckelvie about an experience he had in the Masai Mara that almost matched that of Nigel in Meru. The local Masai herdsmen are taking their cattle into the reserve at night. He confirmed this by leaving camp one night and seeing “hundreds and hundreds of LED torches twinkling in the dark.” As Dave further wrote:

“The migration will come to the Marsh [the area Dave visited] expecting a feast and will leave disappointed and be pushed out by cattle. The tourists will be and are completely in the dark and oblivious to the devastation this overgrazing will bring.”

In both cases the human population explosion continues to exert relentless pressure on the whole of East Africa. Traffic is an utter shambles in Nairobi, more and more people crowd into less and less free space and national parks are bound to feel the pressure. Sad but true.

Rhino poaching

More on rhino horn and the poaching issue

Last week we stopped over with an old friend and veterinary colleague who has worked in South Africa. We were amazed to hear that she had done a one-week locum in a veterinary practice when the principals had needed a stand-in because they were in the process of exporting 13 white rhino to China. She was horrified to learn that they were doing no such thing and had been caught in the act of darting and dehorning rhino. One of them committed suicide soon after his arrest. Apparently they were part of a large gang who have been involved in the rhino poaching “business” for quite some time and were somehow linked to the Thai man, Chumlong Lemtongthai who is in custody in South Africa. At his arrest the Thai kingpin reportedly had an outstanding order for 50 horns. That demand is still there. He was due to return to court yesterday for a further bail hearing, but I cannot find anything new on this matter. I have alreadv posted once about this and the original story appeared on the BBC wesbite

The latest figures (October 30th this year) are that over 600 rhino have been killed in South Africa in the last two years, just for their horns. The killing, which has been going on for centuries, had declined somewhat and an average of “only” 36 rhinos were poached in the five years up to 2005.

These two were slaughtered in Pilansberg NP and the stark photo was taken by Steve Dell, who is a field ecologist in the park.


A truly ugly new component is reported by Declan Hofmeyr of Madikwe Game Reserve, which lies on the extreme west of South Africa, close to the border with Botswana. During a recent arrest in the Kruger a Chinese hand grenade was seized from one of the poachers. That is bad enough, but it seems as if carcasses are also being booby trapped with Chinese munitions as a revenge tactic against rangers who killed some poachers last year.

The myth persists in many countries of the orient that rhino horn is the essential ingredient for many medical purposes. The most recent claim seems to be that is it a cure-all for cancer. If that is the case, why not harvest finger-nails from beauty salons, because the stuff is of the same make-up. Trouble is, rhino horn fetches about $35,000 US dollars per kg on the Oriental market. That’s a lot of incentive for the poachers.

The perpetrators are not only using simple old techniques of shooting with rifles, but have gone into the use of helicopters, night vision goggles and darting. It is not just South Africa. A few rhino have been poached in Kenya and no doubt other countries are being targeted. There was even a recent case in Tanzania in which a ranger was shot at with a poison-tipped arrow. His jacket saved him as the deadly Acokanthera poison, for which there is no antidote, failed to enter his blood stream.

Such is the demand for rhino horn that museums in the UK are being raided and horns from mounted specimens have been stolen. In a recent report one gang lost out when they stole what were actually latex horns from an exhibit.

The whole issue is clouded by other factors. It has long been known that the only way rhino can be protected is in heavily guarded refugia. High profile reserves like the Kruger National Park are employing military forces to guard their rhino, as are some of the private preserves in Kenya. They can afford to, but smaller operators are in a bind.

Another South African correspondent wrote to me just a couple of days ago. He has been intimately involved with the commercial game ranching industry in South Africa for many years, and understands that in the Africa of today’s world, wildlife has to pay its way. This is part of his email:

"The current rhino poaching and the moratorium on export/trade in the horn just illustrates the fact “that if it pays it stays”. Rhino horn is after all a renewable product and can be cropped I think every three years. What is now happening is that Game ranchers cannot afford the cost of protection as they cannot realise any income , the price of rhino’s has fallen and there will be fewer kept. The situation currently is though that the population growth is still exceeding the poaching rate."

There seem to be two separate movements on this subject. One is an attempt get a total ban on all rhino horn (and elephant tusk) trading world-wide. This has been spearheaded out of Kenya and the folks who started the petition are seeking a million signatures. If you feel this is an option, then got to this site.

The other idea, which has been touted before, is summarized in an online BBC article of Oct 30th this year by Pumza Fihlani titled Could legalising rhino horn trade stop poaching?

She states that “Some game farms in South Africa have resorted to de-horning rhinos before poachers get to them.” She may not know that this has been tried before, mainly in Zimbabwe. It failed. The poachers went ahead and killed rhino anyway.

A bulleted box derived from WWF and Campfire Zimbabwe data on that same BBC site gives one a picture
• 80% Africa's rhino population is found in southern Africa
• There are 4,500 black rhino in southern Africa
• The black rhino population has decreased by 95% since the 1980s
• There are 20,000 white rhino in South Africa alone
• About 80% of Africa's rhinos are found on state-owned land and the rest on private property.

According to Fihlani “South Africa has commissioned a study into whether legalising trade in rhino horn could in fact help to bring down poaching, the Department of Environmental Affairs announced recently.”

She correctly goes on to say that while many countries are desperate for answers to the poaching problem - and many agree that a lot more can be done to save rhinos, critics says South Africa's idea might be too unconventional and untested to get the supports it needs.

There were plenty of comments on Fihlani‘s page, with ideas like contaminating horns to make them undesirable in the TCM trade, shooting poachers on sight, harvesting horns every three years and genetic modification of rhino to be hornless among them.

On a final note, some artificial insemination trials have started and moderate success has been achieved. It is exciting from the scientific point of view, but will never really impact overall rhino populations.

Meanwhile, I’m off with family to visit old stamping grounds in Kenya and hope to see lots of rhino and other species in the private game preserves of Solio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solio_Ranch) which was Kenya’s first private game reserve, and into which I moved quite a number of rhino on the 1970s. I wrote about it in my book The Trouble With Lions. Let’s hope we see sights like these. The older female of these two rhino was one of the last ones I worked on before we came to Canada

We also plan to visit Ol Pejetaas well as the Masai Mara. It will be fun to show my grand daughters where their mother was born and what it is about Africa that is so compelling. I will not have a computer with me, so no blogs until just before Christmas.

Family visit and great scenery

Great trip south and west to visit family in Spokane, Washington. As we headed out we realized we would see a real cross-section of the prairies and the scenery through the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at a time when fall colours and migrating birds would be major features.

And so it proved. First up, a small group of a couple of hundred Canada geese roosting on sand banks in the South Saskatchewan River near Outlook during their midday break. They had likely been out feeding on grain or pulse crop stubble since early morning and would head off for another feast late in the afternoon. Soon they will head south.












Then a slightly larger mass of snow geese zooming around as they settle on a typical prairie slough near Rosetown. Although the numbers are beyond my ability to count, and I’m merely guessing at a couple of thousand in this picture, this was as nothing compared to other twenty and thirty hectare sloughs that we saw covered in what must have been tens of thousands of the birds.











A couple of hours later we were in the foothill country and I could not resist snapping picture of three things that are such an integral part of the Alberta scene. First, an oil derrick backed by the snow-capped ranges of the Rockies, and then, a few kilometres further south, the extension of those ranges, but a large ranch in the foreground, with groups of Angus cattle.















Then we were up through the Crow’s Nest Pass and a complete change of scenery. The Elk River near the town of Fernie is backed by more snowy tops and the contrasting colours of the spruce and yellow autumn show put up by hundreds of tamarack larch, with bare-boned poplars in the foreground along the river banks and willows on the sandy shores.










Down into the US at the Kinsgate border crossing and we were soon seeing vistas near Spokane.
















Our bonus? Visiting over the Halloween weekend and watching the grandchildren, dressed respectively as an orc and a vampire, getting ready to head out on their evening “trick or treat” expedition.

Grand daughter’s birthday

Visiting Spokane and enjoying time with two of our grand children (and their parents) who have recently moved here. The youngest has a birthday in a week’s time and so we had a sort of Mad Hatters tea party this afternoon. Not really an unbirthday party, but more of a slightly early one (just a week early). We shard the pizza she had chosen, and then came a gift unwrapping that involved the usual tearfest of coloured paper and then a slow examination of the goodies within.

We made it a double session as her brother was also due some bits and pieces.

We had made some of the gifts and these seemed to go down pretty well. Gabriella got the dolls crib with a sliding side that I put together in the woodwork shop. The mattress and blanket were also made to measure by Jo, my talented wife, so the thing was ready to roll. Here it is, with a knitted Teddy bear lying down for a nap. The one side can be lifted up or kept down. If you look closely you can see the pins, strings attached, that are inserted when the side is in the “up” position.

For Mathew I made a chair from walnut and Jo made the cushion for it. I also made him a wooden sword. Here it is. At least it was mostly wooden. The blade was cut down from an old piece of 2 x4 lumber. The handle came from a broom handle and the guard started life as the lid of a peanut butter jar. Mathew is going on his Halloween circuit as an orc, so the sword will be part of the outfit. He is deeply embedded in all things Tolkein and Lord of the Rings, so we have an order for a chess set from the stories. Don’t know if such a thing even exists, so now I have to dive into Google and see what is out there

Sewer piple nest boxes

Autumn, fall colours, migration of birds, with geese in their thousands honking and hooting overhead. Most of them are snow geese and in the early morning they seem to pour over in an almost continuous stream.

At a more home-based level I have been cleaning out the nest boxes from around our little plot. Most are for mountain bluebirds and tree swallows, and are very easy to make. One sees them all across the prairies. Often made of plywood nailed together they are usually fixed to fence posts, two boxes about 30 metres apart, and then another two a couple of hundred metres down the road. They have to cleaned out afresh before every nesting season. Ours are a bit different and have the potential to be much longer lasting than plywood.

Here’s how.

I take length of 4-inch (10 cm) sewer pipe, black by preference, and cut it into 15-inch (37 cm) lengths. Near one end I drill a 1.5-inch (3.75 cm) hole with a spade bit. The size is critical. Starlings cannot enter and the “boxes” are used only by those bluebirds and tree swallows. Then I put a cap on the thing, drill one small hole near the base and I’m ready to roll.

I walk round the garden and among the poplar tree searching for old stumps that are about 3 or 4 feet tall. I have even cut off dead trees at about this height and trimmed them so that the top is the right diameter. Here is one that has been in use for three years. The fact that it is not upright doesn’t seem to bother the tenants. Sometimes I use fence posts. I slip the pipe on to the stump and run in a single screw in the small hole near its base to secure it to the post or stump.

For my first efforts I made a mistake. I used white pipe and realized at once that this would not do, as the plastic glared in the sun. The solution? I roughed up the outside with a coarse file and then slapped on a couple of coats of grey exterior plaint. Before the second coat was dry I rolled the tubes in wood shavings gleaned from the sawdust collector in my woodwork shop.

When I do the rounds, either in the fall or spring, I can quickly see if the birds have found the nesting sites to their liking. It is simple. The used tubes are filled with little twigs – juts like the one in this picture. To clean them, it is simply a matter of undoing the one screw, lifting off the “box” and giving it a good shake. Now it’s ready for the new season. I’ll be making some more this winter as they have been a great success.

Of Moose and Men

I now have the front cover for my new book to share with everyone. It is due out in the spring – probably May 1.

You might ask how I got this picture. The story is told in full in the book, but here is a summary. The animal had been immobilized (obviously) and in order to get accurate data I had designed a sling made of old webbing material that had once been used to make visual i.d. collars for moose. We borrowed a scale from the vet college and using this technique we were able to gather data on weights of over 40 moose and tabulate them according to sex and age. Using a variety of body measurements we were able to get reasonably accurate data that would give others, who lacked a scale, a good indication of the weight of the moose by simply measuring head length, spinal length, heart girth and so on. From those data they could use an equation we developed to give a reasonable estimate of the animal’s weight.

Another way of viewing this is to link to my Youtube video. This was shot in the snow, and the book cover was not set at that time, so I selected a dramtic one that was unforunately too grainy to use in print as it came from a Super 8 footage clip.Here is the link.

Fire in the house

A week ago today we had a bit of a disaster. A small pan containing wax was on the stove. The wax was to be used to seal a huge batch of tomato chutney that was ready to be added to the preserves we have been able to make from a marvelous garden this year.

As we sat and read after lunch the pan spilled over and the wax ignited. About 45 seconds later I had sprayed the entire stove area with a fire extinguisher. The fire was out, but the oven and microwave were not in good shape.

The Fire Department boss basically kicked us out of the house when the professional cleaning crew came in. This was because the ultra-fine dust from the extinguisher had coated everything and invaded the rest of the house. This is toxic stuff and the crew used masks for their work.

We headed north for four nights and stayed in a friend’s cabin at Little Bear lake, about 320 km northeast of Saskatoon, in the heart of beautiful aspen parkland country. This put us out of Internet and cell phone contact, which was, in some ways, a blessing.

When we got back we discovered that we have no clothes, no kitchen appliances (large or small) and only three rooms that we could occupy. The cleaners had use hepafilter machines to remove all traces of the extinguisher dust and they tell me that all electronic stuff is done for. Toaster, kettle, coffee machine, printer, etc etc. All must be replaced. The clothes have gone to be washed or dry-cleaned and we have no word on when we will get them back. I may not have any usable wool socks if they put them through a dryer, and I only use wool socks. Any food packets that had been opened are also dumped, so our larder looks a bit like mother Hubbard's.

On the bright side, the weather has been amazing. At the lake the temperatures were consistently above 20 degrees during the afternoons, and there was lots of sunshine. The canoeing was serene. The Northern Lights had a small show one evening and when we got home Oncidium orchids that have been blooming in series since about February have gone absolutely nuts, as if to welcome us. Gorgeous!

The bottom line? Don’t snooze when making wax for preserves. Don’t let your kitchen catch fire, but if it does, make sure that you have a handy fire extinguisher. Fire extinguisher dust is nasty, but no home would be a lot nastier.

The Word On The Street in Saskatoon

LinkJust back from a wonderful three-day break canoeing and fishing in Meadow Lake Provincial park, in Saskatchewan’s northwest. With all the kids back in school, and the official summer season over, we almost had the entire park to ourselves.

The weather was fantastic, with daytime highs in the mid 20s and nights above freezing, and we had our campground entirely to ourselves. We encountered black bears twice, in both cases when we were driving.
This group of a mother and cubs was feeding on low-bush cranberries right by the road. They all looked fat and sassy.

The canoeing was great. The waters were calm, and the fall colours were just getting going.

Now I have a bigger task. Today is the city’s first ever participation in The Word On The Street Festival and I have been drafted at the last minute to act as an MC for one of the afternoon sessions. We have a stellar line-up, with 32 readings and activities in three performance venues. Our headliners are Yann Martell and Sandra Birdsell, but we have lots of other authors, and a major attraction will be Netty the talking car.

The Word On The Street is a free Community Festival that celebrates reading and advocates literacy. It takes place across Canada on the last Sunday in September each year and this year Saskatoon joins established venues Toronto, Halifax, Kitchener and Vancouver as well a newbie Lethbridge as we bring together talented writers from our city, our province and beyond.

You can find out lots more about the day at our website You can also see a short clip that was made by the students at the Evan Hardy High School media school during last year’s preview event They will be with us again this year and we look forward to seeing what they can come up with.

Talking books on TV

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For a change I'm uploading a video of a TV show I did with Saskatoon author and host Wes Funk who hosts a show about books and writing. It is called Lit Happens and is shown on the local Shaw TV station. Wes and I talk about two of my books. Mainly about The Trouble With Lions, but also about Of Moose and Men. I'm stil struggling with a possible subtitle of the latter. Right now I favour A Glasgow Vet's Journey With The Moose, The Whole Moose and Nearly Nothing but The Moose. Hope you enjoy the video. You can find it here on Youtube.

Book talk on TV

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For a change I'm uploading a video of a TV show I did with Saskatoon author and host Wes Funk who hosts a show about books and writing. It is called Lit Happens and is shown on the local TV station at Shaw. Wes and I talk about two of my books. Mainly about The Trouble With Lions, but also about Of Moose and Men. I'm stil struggling with a possible subtitle of the latter. Right now I favour A Glasgow Vet's Journey With The Moose, The Whole Moose and Nearly Nothing but The Moose. Hope you enjoy the video.

Of Moose and Men and Tony Bubenik

I thought I would share with you a little of the material from my new book Of Moose and Men. The subtitle is not yet firm, but may well end up as something like The Moose, The Whole Moose, and Nearly Nothing But the Moose.

One character whom I met several times through the years, and who was highly regarded among deer biologists around the world was Tony Bubenik. I fist met him in Prince Alberta in 1978, and then several subsequent times, including when he stayed in our home.

He was never backward in coming forward with new ideas or extending discussions. Not all his ideas proved to be correct, but he was the first to acknowledge it when they did not pan out, and to the end of his life at age eighty-two he kept abreast of developments and technology.

His output included something over three hundred articles and contributions in numerous books. He was also fluent in six or seven languages (accounts differ, probably because of differing definitions of fluency) and wrote in thirteen.
To top it all off, Tony was an accomplished artist, and we have two large watercolour crayon works of his. This one shows a scene which he witnessed when walking in the bush. He told me that the look of surprise on the animal's face was exactly what he saw. The sketches that illustrate the story I have below were also his, made from Super8 movie clips shot by his biologist wife Mary.

Tony’s early life was not easy. He first suffered persecution from the Nazis in his native Czechoslovakia (as it was then) and then dealt with the Communist takeover after World War II, when he was forced to work as a labourer. He came to Canada in 1970 and was soon recognized as one of the most innovative thinkers in the field of deer biology.

Because he was fascinated by the role of antlers in deer society Tony carried out a series of experiments related to the pre-flight displays that occur just before and during the rutting season. He loaned me a copy of Mary’s footage and his son George kindly allowed me to use the sketches for the book.

For the moose study he built a dummy head to which he could attach antlers of various sizes. Even with only two legs, as the sketches showed from these and other experiments, the wild animals reacted to them. He found a bull that had taken up residence near a pond in Ontario and proceeded with his study.
First, he put on a tiny set of antlers that matched those of a sixteen-month-old spiker and walked out from behind his hiding place when the wild bull appeared. The movie shows the bull lifting his head briefly from the water, taking one glance at the intruder, who was showing the correct behaviour in moving lateral to and not facing the dominant animal, and ignoring him. This was much as expected.

Next, as his experiment escalated, Tony exchanged the spikes for a set of super antlers, far bigger than those of the resident. This time, when the bull saw him, he again took a look, but he did not hang around. He simply retired from the scene and ghosted into the spruce trees.

Then Tony showed his true scientific inquisitiveness. He put on the last set of antlers, a set that he had constructed to match those of his subject as nearly as possible. This time he was neither ignored nor avoided.

As Tony’s drawing from the film clip shows, the bull came round the side of the pond and began the ritualized threat that precedes a serious fight among bull moose of equal rank. He dropped his head so that the massive palms would show to maximum effect and rocked his head from side to side, showing off his “stuff.” He walked forward with his forelegs spread wide and locked as if they were stilts, like Frankenstein figures in early horror films.

Not surprisingly Mary’s filming technique suffered a bit at this point as she began to retreat behind a tree. Tony dropped the dummy head, having no wish to take his proof to its inevitable conclusion.

The dummies were so convincing that, as Tony wrote:

“On two occasions moose cows offered themselves for copulation even though a short while earlier they were courted by a bull of lower rank antlers.”

Iberian lynx conservation and white rhino

There have been several reports in the scientific literature and on websites (I first saw one by Rebecca Morelle on the BBC site) about the dire situation facing one of the world’s most endangered cats. This is the Iberian lynx, that lives in Spain and has been under intense pressure from farmers and the general impact of humans for a long time. This beautiful cat is about the size of a cocker spaniel and has the ear tufts of the caracal or African lynx. I found this picture (one of many) on this site through Google.

My only picture of a similar sized cat is of Africa’s serval, which has longer legs, but the same sort of body size. This one was taken in Kenya’s Meru National Park in the early 1970s.

There are thought to be only about 250 Iberian lynx left in the wild and there are those who have suggested that this puts them at risk because of low genetic diversity and inbreeding. The story is typical of the roller coaster for many species of wildlife. In the 1960s there were an estimated 3000 of the cats, but by 2005 the numbers were down to about 150. One major factor in the decline has been the reduction of the main food source, the rabbit. A successful and active captive breeding program has brought them back up to today’s numbers, but they are now only found in two isolated pockets in the south of Spain.

However, a recent report on the BBC website cites the authors of a scientific article by Dr. Love Dalen and others in the journal Molecular Ecology which suggests that the cat’s survival may not be doomed by its tiny population size.

The research suggests that the lynx has had little genetic variability over the last 50,000 years, and this has not hampered its long-term survival. The authors go further and imply that the information should offer hope to conservationists who are trying to reverse what seems to be a path to extinction.

Dr. Dalen, from the Swedish Museum of Natural History, is quoted as saying that "This indicates that some species can do fairly well at low population sizes, even for a very long period of time."

While most geneticists argue that there is a vital place for the use of genetic profiling in the conservation management of wild species there are examples of very successful recovery of almost terminal situations when genetic diversity has been severely limited.

As I wrote in my book The Trouble With Lions:

“The white rhino qualifies as one the really impressive examples of conservation in action. The southern race, which once occupied an area in parts of what are now South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola and Botswana, had all but died out by the year 1900.

A 1904 estimate had only 10 animals left in the country, all of them in the Umfulozi area of Zululand. Mainly through the efforts of one man, B. Vaughan-Kirby, who was the first game conservator in that part of the country, the species was brought back from the brink. In 1916 he reported 20 animals alive.

From that nadir the numbers climbed slowly to something short of five hundred when in 1952 Ian Player, oldest brother of champion golfer Gary, got involved in the very earliest translocation efforts and movement of the animals to many parts of Africa, and indeed to zoos overseas.

Between 1961 and 1972 white rhino had been moved to an impressive 38 new locations in South Africa and eight other African countries, including Kenya, where they went to Meru National Park and became my patients when I lived in the area for ten years. Over and above these destinations rhino also moved to 17 different countries, including Canada, the UK, and the USA.”

This pair of white rhino came to Meru in the late 1960s fror what was euphemitically called "Lesotho" (this was the days of apartheid and no credit could be given to South Africa in Kenya).

Let’s hope that with a population of 250 and a long history of limited genetic diversity, that the Iberian lynx can make a comeback like the southern white rhino has done.

Moose sounds - moans and grunts

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In the past week I have learned a whole lot more about moose calls. I had known that during the rut bulls make a noise that has been variously described as a grunt, a hiccup and even, somewhat bizarrely, as sounding like “a human being in the throes of seasickness.” This last description was made by Frederick Selous, the famous hunter of African big game who came to Canada in the early 1900s.
I wonder if this bull, painted by the late Tony Bubenik, was grunting.


I also knew that cow moose make a moaning call during the rut and had believed it to be a protest to courting bulls, especially youngsters.

Then a BBC Nature story written by Ella Davies appeared about a second reason for the moan. Davies had interviewed Dr Terry Bowyer, who used to work in Alaska before moving to Idaho State University. What Bowyer showed, after many hours of observation, was that the moan has a second surprising purpose. His paper was recently published on line in the journal Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology. He and his team showed that the moan is used as a tool to attract bigger bulls if a small male approaches. When that happens females moan more and this triggers aggression in larger males.
In fact, As Terry said in the interview

“Male aggression was more common when females gave protest moans than when they did not, indicating that this vocalization incited male-male aggression. Protest moans allow females to exert some female choice in a mating system where males restrict choice of mates through male-male combat.”

In this regard it echoes shades of human behaviour and clearly shows that there is a considerable element of female choice during the rut. When I chatted to Dr. Bowyer he told me that one of his colleagues, who read the manuscript, said to him, “This is not unique to moose, I have seen it in bars in Wisconsin.” I replied,” Not just Wisconsin, I saw it during my student days in Glasgow.” Of course we both acknowledged that this comparison is an oversimplification. As Terry said in that same BBC interview,

“Human females have far more opportunities for mate choice than do female moose because of differences in mating systems.”

The grunt of the rutting bull and the moan of the cow are not the only sounds that moose make.

As we sat over a beer during our recent writer’s retreat at the Sage Hill Writing Experience naturalist and long-time moose watcher Roy Ness of Whitehorse told me of two encounters with moose during which he heard more than just the moans of a cow.
In mid-September 1983, at the height of the rut, “I was in what's locally called the Teslin Burn,” he said.

“I was camped at the end of Grayling Lake, south of Teslin Lake, an area of regrowth that had the highest moose density in the Yukon.”
As he sat on a three-metre tall knoll at the end of the lake in the gathering autumn dusk he listened as a cow accompanied by her calf came to the shore from quite a distance away."

As I read Roy’s subsequent emailed graphic description of the next ninety minutes I got goose bumps.

“I was sitting there as it got dark and I heard the cow call. It started high and went down the register for about 10 seconds, closely repeated several times, each shorter than the last, until it ended in a couple of short grunts. She would call every five or ten minutes, each time getting closer and each time getting answering grunts from a bull at the far end of the lake.”

There was no moon that night and by the time the animals arrived in the meadow just below the knoll only the stars gave any light. It must have been magic.
“Even though they were only a few meters away,” he wrote, “I could barely discern their shapes. She continued to call for about an hour while her calf seemed to be playing—fits of running about then standing still for a while.”

I called him and as we chatted about his experience he told me that the cow suddenly became aware of him, although there was no wind to speak of. At that point “she let out the loudest sound I've ever heard escape the lungs of any animal. It was a lion’s roar with a deep loud belch mixed in. I nearly jumped out of my clothes.”
The cow took off at a great rate, down the meadow and through the willows, crashing though the bushes and letting out the same call as she went.
I wonder if the cow and bull ever got together, as happened in this picture taken in Prince Alberta National Park by Gerhard Stuewe.

This alarm call is made by both sexes.

On another occasion, in early June Roy watched a cow and her small calf feeding in some willows. “I could not see them a lot of the time,” he said during our conversation, “and they certainly could not see each other all the time. However, they both let out a series of high-pitched calls, almost like squeaks, as they stayed in touch. I couldn’t tell which was the calf, and which the mother.”

Vince Crichton from Manitoba is Canada’s senior moose biologist and has witnessed and videotaped a play fight encounter between two young bulls during which they both made sounds that closely resembled the moan of the cow during the rut. He told me “ If I had not seen them and heard their moaning I would have said it was cows – quite amazing – have video of this and I was about 20 feet from them.”

Sarus crane conservation

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Amidst al the doom and gloom about wildlife and the dwindling numbers of so many species, form fogs the world over, to rhino, lions and South American primates, it is nice to find a story that has a more positive message.

According to the Thai Society for the Conservation of Wild Animals the Sarus crane in Thailand had been extinct for at least twenty years. The government Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP) goes further and states that it disappeared from its natural habitat in Thailand 50 years ago.

Efforts by conservation groups, including the Eastern Sarus Crane Reintroduction Project, under the Zoological Park Organization(ZPO), with the Royal Patronage of H. M. the King of Thailand have made the all-important start to reversing the situation.

The ZPO has successfully bred sarus cranes through artificial insemination and ten chicks have been prodcued. A story in the Bangkok English newspaper of 2nd August quotes ZPO director Pimook Simaroj as saying that the chicks have been released into the wild and in a related story The Sarus Crane Reintroduction Project Thailand have posted a Youtube video that shows a radio collar device being fitted to one of the birds before release. The ZPO and the Thai Department of Natural Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation (DNP) plan to release more cranes.

If the survival rate is satisfactory, the DNP will discuss with related authorities to withdraw sarus crane out of the extinction, but as Nisakorn Kositratna, ONEP's secretary-general said “it may take more time before the cranes can be taken off the extinction list.” That's because the freed cranes were bred in captivity and a species can be removed from the list only after it successfully breeds in nature and its wild population grows.


In neighbouring Cambodia a new Sarus Crane reserve was created on 6 Jan this year, although it did take 5 years for the consultative and bureaucratic process to be completed. According to a report on the website

“In March 2010 the site held over 270 Sarus Cranes, more than 30% of the global population”

The sarus crane, in all its grey glory and red head, is indeed majestic. I got this picture of a pair when I traveled in India a twenty-five years ago. It is the tallest of the cranes at about 150 cm and was originally given the romantic name of Antigone antigone by Karl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy.

Quite why he chose the double barrel is a bit of a mystery, but I speculate that it was because the bird was believed to be truly monogamous. Not just monogamous, but also according to myth, so faithful that if one partner died the other would pine way and die. If I am right this was a reference to Oedipus’s daughter and heroine of Sophocles’s play who was unable to control her emotions on the death of her brother Polyneices and Linnaeus is bound to have had a classical education.

The name was later changed to Grus antigone to more neatly, but very prosaically, fit it into the crane family in general, a group that includes the very common Sandhill crane, the Whooping crane that nests in northern Canada and is even more endangered than the sarus, and several others.

These birds once ranged across southeast Asia, as far west as parts of India and Sri Lanka and even into northern Australia and are generally divided into subspecies according to the area in which they live.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed for this beautiful bird and the efforts of the dedicated people who are trying to keep it, and its habitat, in a viable state.

Sage Hill and Writing

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Getting over the highs and lows of my ten days at the Sage Hill Writing Experience, which took place at St. Michaels Retreat in Lumsden, in Saskatchewan’s beautiful Qu’apelle Valley.

The Highs?

1. Meeting an amazing array of writers, about fifty of them, from all across Canada. Nine were faculty, working in poetry, fiction and non-fiction. You can see their mug shots and bits about them on the Sage Hill website.

2. Watching Philip Adams conduct, compére, entertain and organize everyone. While not as tough as herding cats, his job required him to sleep little, laugh a lot, drive to and from the aiport at crazy hours and keep us all on track.

3. Listening to everyone read from their work. On three evenings about a dozen of the “students” had five minutes to read something. Each was introduced by the person who read before them. On three other evenings faculty had the chance to read for a longer period, up to half an hour.

4. Camaraderie and friendly chats over a glass or two of whatever takes your fancy.

5. Good food, amazingly good for institutional grub. Hats off to the team in the kitchen.

The Lows?

1. First up, the fact that I found out that my camera had been stolen on the way to the retreat. It almost certainly happened at a Subway stop in the town of Davidson. Not only my little point-and-shoot digital, but the specialized and expensive 400 mm lens that I use for bird photography. I have quite a number, like this one of a hammerkop who looks as if his eyes were bigger than his stomach at this spot on my website.

The one below, of a kildeer in our driveway with her newly hatched chick, is the last one I took with the big lens. With neither piece of equipment to use I cannot give any new photos here.

2. My bum knee – I won’t bore you, except to say “think twice (or many more times) before you go for a full knee replacement.”

There was a joint class for “beginners’, but from the quality and tone of their readings they were far from neophytes. There was a poetry colloquium. There were sessions on creative writing and on mystery.

I was in the smallest group, who were all working on non-fiction stories. Here we are. From left to right, Jean Crozier, Me, Myrna Guymer, Ted Barris, Ayelet Tsabari and Evonne Garnet.
We were led by award-winning military historian Ted Barris.

Ted has not only won awards for his books, but he had to leave early in order to attend a ceremony for veterans. As he said himself, “I am not a veteran,” but his work has highlighted many veterans issues and he has told their stories from both world wars, Korea and other conflicts. His commendation read, in part:

"Ted Barris has made such exemplary contributions by generously giving of himself and so both benefiting veterans and making manifest the principle that Canada’s obligation to all who have served in the cause of Peace and Freedom, must not be forgotten.”

Jean Crozier, Evonne Garnett and Ayelet Tsabari were my class-mates. One other person, Myrna Guymer, started with us but had to leave at very short notice on the second day when she received news that a tornado had ripped through her home town and knocked everything, including her own home, sideways. With her husband unwell and awaiting surgery she felt she had no choice but to head home.

Jean is working on the tricky subject of widowhood, her own and the same for others. Her initial idea had been to document her life with her late husband, whose photography she so admires, but Ted persuaded her that the subject may have a much wider scope.

Evonne has, as Ted put it in his blog written on the 26th, “the greatest and worst story to tell.” "She is struggling with her mother’s story of growing up in a household where rape, paedophilia and abuse were the norm." Her mother kept a meticulous journal of everything she suffered and Evonne’s challenge will be to find a way to use it. Ted quotes Evonne when she writes “with only the aid of her (her mother’s) journals and her faith, she broke free of the abuse cycle to find a measure of peace and freedom.”

Ayelet is working on what she delightfully calls “a suite of essays” that Ted stated “explores her own travels as a woman apparently unable to settle in one place”. Ayelet read from her darkly comical story about her time in the Israeli militry and being subjected to a lie detector test on suspicion of gun theft.

Ted has also steered me in a new direction and urged my to write about bears, and drop the “porcupine” segment of my planned book. He reckons there is enough about bears, particularly polar bears, to make an important book. I’m still wrestling with that as I last worked in the Arctic in the mid-1980s, but with lots of research and interviews I might be able to tackle it. I suppose that I did this with Of Moose and Men, with interviews and emails to over 80 people world-wide.

Of Moose and Men

Link

UNDERSTAND JOB OFFER SASKATOON STOP ON SAFARI IN RWANDA TRANSLOCATING ELEPHANTS STOP WILL MAKE CONTACT ASAP ON RETURN TO KENYA STOP HAIGH.

It was 1975, and I was working in Rwanda on an elephant project. The team had taken a brief break and come to Kigali, the capital, in mid-April 1975 and had not long come off the phone with my wife Jo, who was at our home in Kenya. After the normal greetings she said, “A man called Nielsen called from Saskatoon in Canada. They have offered you the job at the vet college.”

She read out the long number, which I tried to memorize, and then I realized that with the nine-hour time difference it would be 4 a.m. in Saskatoon. Not a good time to call. Conversely, by the time Nielsen would be in his office it would be 1 a.m. in Kigali, and I would not be able to use a phone, as the post office would be closed. In those pre-Internet, pre-fax days, a telegram was the only solution to my problem. And I was intent on getting my response to him as quickly as I could.

In the half-dark of a crowded post office jam-packed with Rwandans and three other “Europeans” (as any white person was called), I struggled to compose the telegram.
Eventually I got to the front of the queue, where I found that I could hardly see the clerk behind the grime-covered glass sheet. I bent down and spoke through the grate.
“I’d like to send this cable to Canada,” I said to him, only to receive a blank stare. I had forgotten that I was in a francophone country. I switched to French, which was also a mistake, as I ran out of vocabulary after the initial, “Je veux.” I changed gears again to Swahili, which allowed us to understand one another.

Dr. Nielsen was offering me a post as a zoo and wildlife veterinarian at the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine. I had applied several months earlier and been waiting to hear for some time.

It was this opportunity that has led to my 36 years in Canada and the writing of Of Moose and Men. Moose are the first free-ranging species on which I carried out research work and they have fascinated me ever since. Here is the first moose that I ever worked on and his new collar. The book is now in the editing stage with publisher ECW Pressof Toronto, so I’m moving on to the next phase. Tomorrow, Monday I head to Saskatchewan’s Quapelle Valley and the Sage Hill Writing Experience (see more here) to start work on anew project that I’m calling, for now, From Polar Bears to Porcupines. Let’s see if that title holds up after 10 days of work, but meanwhile, here is one of the pictures I would likely include.

I'm not sure how good the Internet contact will be at the retreat, but if it works I will certainly keep you posted.

Rhino poaching

www.eawildlife.orgLink
Several recent reports in websites and magazines might give one the impression that rhino poaching is a recent phenomenon, but the truth is that it never really went away. However, it has gone high-tech and there has indeed been a surge, most notably in South Africa, where it has been thought that the two African species were perhaps somewhat less vulnerable that in other areas of the continent. You can follow the ugly story by starting at the BBC website here, which has links back to previous accounts. Swara, the fine magazine of the East African Wildlife Society also has an account in their April-June 2011 issue. If this and other African conservation things interest you then try a subscription or visit their website here.

The modern high-tech version of the practice involves night vision goggles, helicopters and drugging. Indeed two South African veterinarians were charged in relation to a poaching ring last year.

There is one potentially good news element to all this, and that is that a Thai man named Chumlong Lemtongthai who has been implicated at the head of one poaching ring and is called a rhino horn ‘kingpin’ was recently arrested in South Africa. He will appear in court on July 15. I hope he doesn’t get away with as much as a Malaysian man on whom the prosecutors reportedly had enough to put him behind bars for mare than a lifetime. He plea-bargained his way into a paltry sentence of less than three years.

What those who have followed the sorry saga closely are well aware of is that rhino horn has been a target of poachers for well over a hundred years. There were once armed gangs scouring Sudan and other countries in that region to supply white rhino horn to buyers.

At least the print media now have it right, rhino horn is not a commodity to help old men get it up. The principal use is in the Orient, or even among oriental people who believe that it is a medical necessity for many ailments. Over 70% of Korean doctors believe it is essential. Secondary uses are as decorative items. This photo was taken by Jimmy Suttie in Korea and show rhino horn for sale in a pharmacy. Look at the very bottom where there are two short pieces.

Current market prices for horn are over $60,000 per kilo. That is about $10,000 more than the price of gold!

With all the high-tech equipment it is becoming increasingly difficult to prevent the poaching. Sadly it goes back to the basic statement by Kenya ex-game wardens Peter Jenkins and Ian Parker, among others, that the only way to ensure rhino survival is to keep them in heavily guarded refugia. That would be hellishly expensive.

Rhino poaching

Link
Rhino poaching.

Several recent reports in websites and magazines might give one the impression that rhino poaching is a recent phenomenon, but the truth is that it never really went away. However, it has gone high-tech and there has indeed been a surge, most notably in South Africa, where it has been thought that the two African species were perhaps somewhat less vulnerable that in other areas of the continent. You can follow the ugly story by starting at the BBC website here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14114327, which has links back to previous accounts. Swara, the magazine of the East African Wildlife Society also has an account in their April-June 2011 issue. If this and other African conservation things interest you then try a subscription or visit their website here at www.eawildlife.org


The modern high-tech version of the practice involves night vision goggles, helicopters and drugging. Indeed two South African veterinarians were charged in relation to a poaching ring last year.

There is one potentially good news element to all this, and that is that a Thai man named Chumlong Lemtongthai who has been implicated at the head of one poaching ring and is called a rhino horn ‘kingpin’ was recently arrested in South Africa. He will appear in court on July 15. I hope he doesn’t get away with as much as a Malaysian man on whom the prosecutors reportedly had enough to put him behind bars for mare than a lifetime. He plea-bargained his way into a paltry sentence of less than three years.

What those who have followed the sorry saga closely are well aware of is that rhino horn has been a target of poachers for well over a hundred years. There were once armed gangs scouring Sudan and other countries in that region to supply white rhino horn to buyers,

At least the print media now have it right, rhino horn is not a commodity to help old men get it up. The principal use is in the Orient, or even among oriental people who believe that it is a medical necessity for many ailments. Over 70% of Korean doctors believe it is essential. Secondary uses are as decorative items. This photo was taken by Jimmy Suttie in Korea and show rhino horn for sale in a pharmacy. Look at the very bottom where there are two short pieces.

Current market prices for horn are over $60,000 per kilo. That is about $10,000 more than the price of gold!

With all the high-tech equipment it is becoming increasingly difficult to prevent the poaching. Sadly it goes back to the basic statement by Kenya ex-game wardens Peter Jenkins and Ian Parker, among others, that the only way to ensure rhino survival is to keep them in heavily guarded refugia. That would be hellishly expensive.

Of Moose and Men

Link
Just signed a contract with Jack David of ECW Press for my new book and things are moving ahead towards a spring launch. Very exciting!

The title is fixed at Of Moose and Men. The subtitle is still under discussion. Watch this space!

Here is a brief outline of what it is about.

The book provides a wealth of information about moose from all corners of the world. It covers not only my personal experiences with both tame and wild moose but also an overview of moose biology, including their specialized diet and the relationship between sex and antlers, where size really does matter. It also covers the history of moose on earth and the marked fluctuations in populations that have occurred over time. There are chapters on moose diseases (not too technical), moose and traffic, moose as a resource, and the use of live moose in several ways that range from transport to clothing, as dairy animals and as pets.


Here is a section from my acknowledgements that shows the sort of coverage that I did in researching it.

In order to do as thorough job as possible, one of my self-imposed tasks was to try and gain an understanding of the status of moose in the early twenty-first century, and to that end I contacted biologists from just about every range country, US state, and Canadian province where moose exist. I read as many volumes as I could of the Proceedings of the North American Moose Workshop, not just the publications from the workshops I was lucky enough to attend. These workshop proceedings morphed into the journal Alces, whose front-cover mandate reads: “A Journal Devoted to The Biology and Management of Moose.” I owe the contributors and editors sincere thanks for their hard work. I also consulted several books that contained useful information. When those attempts failed, I went, with some care, to the Internet. In the end I was able to obtain information on fifty-five regions—including five separate ones in Russia, which I think is excusable because there are nine time zones involved.

This is not the place to list all those who gave me valuable information, but they are of course listed in the acknowledgements.

Of Moose and Men

Link
Just signed a contract with Jack David of ECW Press for my new book and things are moving ahead towards a spring launch. Very exciting!

The title is fixed at Of Moose and Men. The subtitle is still under discussion. Watch this space!

Here is a brief outline of what it is about.

The book provides a wealth of information about moose from all corners of the world. It covers not only my personal experiences with both tame and wild moose but also an overview of moose biology, including their specialized diet and the relationship between sex and antlers, where size really does matter. It also covers the history of moose on earth and the marked fluctuations in populations that have occurred over time. There are chapters on moose diseases (not too technical), moose and traffic, moose as a resource, and the use of live moose in several ways that range from transport to clothing, as dairy animals and as pets.

Here is a section from my acknowledgements that shows the sort of coverage that I did in researching it.

In order to do as thorough job as possible, one of my self-imposed tasks was to try and gain an understanding of the status of moose in the early twenty-first century, and to that end I contacted biologists from just about every range country, US state, and Canadian province where moose exist. I read as many volumes as I could of the Proceedings of the North American Moose Workshop, not just the publications from the workshops I was lucky enough to attend. These workshop proceedings morphed into the journal Alces, whose front-cover mandate reads: “A Journal Devoted to The Biology and Management of Moose.” I owe the contributors and editors sincere thanks for their hard work. I also consulted several books that contained useful information. When those attempts failed, I went, with some care, to the Internet. In the end I was able to obtain information on fifty-five regions—including five separate ones in Russia, which I think is excusable because there are nine time zones involved.

This is not the place to list all those who gave me valuable information, but they are of course listed in the acknowledgements.