Tsavo National Park, Kenya, and its elephants: An interim appraisal

Tsavo National Park, Kenya, and its Elephants: An Interim Appraisal

NORMAN MYERS

P.O. Box 48197, Nairobi, Kenya; School o f Forestry and Conservation, University o f California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

A B S T R A C T

The problem o f "excess Elephants" in Tsavo National Park, Kenya, came to a head with the die-off during the 1970-71 drought. Like many parts o f Africa, Tsavo is being threatened in its workings--and, in the long run, in its existence--by the pressure o f people in the environs. Tsavo's present travails epitomize many o f the threats facing Africa's wildlife refuges. These problems o f conservation require solutions that are much more complex than they would have been in the past--solutions which will reflect the balances o f the entire environment, outside the park as well as inside. A wildlife ecosystem demonstrates characteristics which can scarcely be predicted from the properties o f its con- stituent components. It embodies a different and higher level o f organization (an 'emergent quality') which cannot be perceived by looking with microscopic intensity at any particular part, but only with a macroscopic perspective at the total pattern. By extension, Tsavo can be taken as a measure o f how far people around the worm are ready to assist in safeguarding Africa's wildlife, and what costs they are willing to bear--in terms o f their pockets and philosophies alike. This survey o f the present position at Tsavo attempts to propose perspectives which do not always receive as much attention as they should.

been little mentioned. Only half-a-dozen years ago Kenya was 'rescuing' a total of about 70 Rhinos at an average of $250 each, in order, so it was said, to assist a species that was possibly threatened with extinction.

Tsavo National Park, over 20,000 square kilometres in area, is almost the largest park in Africa, and well over twice the size of Yellowstone (Fig. 1). It possibly contains the last large congregation of Elephants on earth, and almost certainly the last large congregation of Rhinos. Yet it looks as if the Park is not half big enough to do its job. The entire ecounit, i.e. the area required to meet the year-around needs of the greater part of the ecosystem's animal biomass (the Elephants), extends across 44,000 sq km (Laws, 1969a), which, in turn, is not big enough for the regional total of 35,000 Elephants. In such arid country, with the average annual rainfall for much of the area well under 500 mm, there are probably more Elephants than the range can support. The problem is, how many too many are there, and what should be done about them in a National Park, where Man is supposed to intervene as little as possible in the natural running of affairs?

In Tsavo National Park, Kenya, around 4,700 Elephants (Loxodonta africana) died during the drought of 1970-71. Some people think the number could be half as many again. Out of a Park population of 23,000 Elephants, and a regional population of 35,000, neither figure is of any great consequence in itself. But the Elephants were dying, not so much because of an 18-months drought as because of a 12-years modification of their habitat, which could cause the herds to 'crash' again should the ultra-dry conditions--such as are not unusual for Tsavo-- return once more. Moreover, the environment could be undergoing not only fundamental modifications but drastic deterioration, making it less able to support Elephants and a range of other creatures--particularly Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis). During the drought the Black Rhinoceros population fell by several hundreds--an aspect of the die-off which has

123

Biological Conservation, Vol. 5, No. 2, April 1973- -~ Applied Science Publishers

THE P A R K A N D ITS ENVIRONS

No park in Africa is an island, and nor is Africa any longer 'the last great empty continent'. Man's impact on Elephants is not asserted nearly so much through hunting, whether for sport of commerce or subsistence, as through disturbance and compression of Elephant habitats (Laws et al., 1970). Over the past 25 years, the density of human population in much of the region surrounding Tsavo has increased until it has now doubled in several areas. An apparent policy inside the Park, geared to preserving a patch of old- time Africa, is as basically out of ecological balance as is the sudden upsurge in human numbers outside. Old-time Africa has disappeared with old times, and what is left is an Africa which bears as much resem- blance to the Africa of only 25 years ago as Africa then did to the Africa of a century ago.

Ltd, England, 1973--Printed in Great Britain

124 Biological Conservation

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Fig. 1. Sketch-map of Tsavo National Park, Kenya. Elephants are being continually compressed into the Park by expanding human activities in the hinterland. Population Densities per sq km in districts adjacent to Park in 1948,

1962 and 1969:

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Kilifi 14"4 19"8 24-6 Kwale 13"9 19" 1 24"9 Taita 3"7 5"2 6"5 Tana River 0.8 1.0 1-3 Machakos 24.2 37.2 47.8 Kitui 7.2 9.7 11.7 Kajiado 1 "4 3-2 4.1

Myers: Tsavo National Park, Kenya, and its Elephants 125

Fig. 2. Aerial photograph showing gross discrepancy between the Park side o f the boundary and the human- inhabited area outside (below and on right ).

Hence, Tsavo National Park is no longer a 'natural' situation (Fig. 2). Excess Elephants inside the Park are setting up artificial, man-induced pressures. Having triggered off a grossly inflated situation, Man might wonder whether he should not intervene to bring the position back into dynamic balance, even though this is territory set aside for his use as a 'privileged visitor who does not remain'. Upon the pattern of the populations in Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda, the Tsavo Elephants may take 15 to 20 years to compen- sate for their radically changed situation (Laws, 1969a), and by then their habitat could be altered so much that they require further fundamental adaptation to their reduced circumstances. During the periods when their evolutionary ecology was being worked out, they presumably avoided the risks of sudden oscillations in their numbers (a very unstable situation for such a long-lived, slow-breeding animal), through

the tactic of migrating in search of 'pastures new'. Now they are far less able than formerly to move out of an overcrowded environment which has become--for them--an impoverished habitat; rather, they meet extra Elephants coming in from outside.

At the centre of the Tsavo problem lies the matter of moisture. But water systems take no more notice of park boundaries than do Elephants or poachers or fires. The Voi River, running through Tsavo but rising in the headwater territories far outside the Park, dries up under its silt load when the rains cease, now that its catchment area in the Taita Hills has undergone almost a doubling in human numbers between 1948 and 1969, and a trebling in the amount of land under cultivation: human aspirations are rising just as fast as human numbers, and every farmer wants more land than formerly--even if this necessitates digging on some very steep slopes. This does not mean


that the moisture is necessarily lost to the Park's system merely because it remains underground. But nobody knows how far its effect is reduced. Mean- while, other parts of the hinterland are being denuded as they lose their trees; in terms of tree use, the charcoal industry in Kenya has increased to thirteen times its former size in the last four years, though the situation is now receiving some regulation through the efforts of government bodies and local conservation organizations.

POPULATION 'CRASHES'

By late 1971, when the 'crash' was at its climax, the Park authorities started to suggest that this was perhaps no bad thing after all: it could be Nature's way of settling imbalances in population, especially when the major losses occurred among breeding cows and calves--which means the population pyramid will reflect the reduced reproductive capacity for a long time to come. It is quite possible, moreover, that well over 4,700 Elephants died, despite the Park's attempts by aerial searching to track down every last carcase. In the past, their efforts have allegedly found less than two in every five dead Elephants--a record neverthe- less better than Kenya's general average of one in four (Watson & Parker, in prep.).

It is an open question, however, whether large animals, with such a slow turnover in their populations, would resort, as an evolutionary expedient, to mass die-offs for stabilizing purposes. Cyclic crashes may be a normal part of Nature's routine for a creature that breeds much more rapidly, such as the Wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus), which, subject as it is to density-dependent regulators such as Lions (Panthera /eo), is also incapable of wreaking such impressive havoc on its food supply, whether so intensively or exten- sively, even though it often exists in huge aggregations. A tendency to extreme fluctuations among the larger mammals is perhaps more likely to be pre-empted by depressing the reproductive capacity and by dispersal. Droughts in the tropics may counterbalance winter limitations on forage, as happens with White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in North America. Various medium-sized herbivores living in African savanna have been recorded as limited by food, and a few Elephants died during the recent drought in Kenya's northern territories, even though they presumably had plenty of room to migrate. In the main, however, an Elephant 'crash' as a 'natural' regulatory mechanism is less probable when considered from the standpoint of the supporting ecosystems.

ELEPHANTS IN THE ECOSYSTEM

To ask what is good for Tsavo's Elephants means asking what is good for the Tsavo system. It is this 'overview' perspective, approaching the problem with an entirely different 'focus', which may reveal an insight more in accord with the ground-rule workings for the overall ecosystem. The Elephant is an animal which has not only an outsize appetite but also an unusual physical capacity to modify the habitat to suit its requirements (Fig. 3). A system which allowed such a species to breed until its numbers periodically crashed into equilibrium would be very unstable from the point of view of the vegetation, associated animal species, and so forth (though some observers believe that such an adaptive creature should be considered more akin to a successional species, i.e. unstable for any particular area over the long term).

In so far as natural selection works through a system as well as through its components, one could adduce Lotka's concept (1922) of survival of the fittest system in terms of maximum power output (though this model is perhaps more appropriate for less severe, more stable climatic regimes). Not only could selection perpetuate those populations which are most suited to the system's efficient functioning, but it could select those that most actively support the system's long-range order and energy-flows. The component is controlled by the system (and the part by the pattern) through 'loop circuits', which recycle material for reward and stimulus in proportion to the contribution of the parts to the system; too much or too little growth by any one component puts a loop out of harmonious

Fig. 3. Remains of Elephant, head severed, with broken bushes behind and much devastation to skyline, Tsavo

National Park.


flow (H. T. Odum, 1971). Natural selection also reveals immense capacity for responding to ostensibly short-term gains, particularly at the lower levels of organization in the system's hierarchy (notably the individual organism). At the population level and above, there may be information encoded from previous experience to permit feedback anticipation of droughts and other recurrent phenomena.

This is not to say that there is not a good deal of natural selection within Elephant populations. Pre- dation is a minor factor for Elephants, but calf mortality may still account for one in five---enough to exercise the sanitation effect of weeding out the unsuited. But this sort of selection is different from the wholesale removal of calves in their hundreds, if not thousands, over a few seasons, as has happened in Tsavo--a process considered by some observers as making for a 'healthier' population. No survivors are going to be very healthy unless their food supply is also healthy. Body growth-rates for the Elephants in 1967, at the height of an unusually moist cycle, sug- gested that they were already suffering from some form

of malnutrition, or from social stress from overcrowd- ing (Laws, 1969a).

In addition, Elephant numbers may be subject to long-term fluctuations, extending over lengthy, shallow cycles of several generations (I. S. C. Parker, pers. comm., 1972). These oscillations may have adaptive value, since the evolutionary processes supply positive, as well as negative, feedback, inducing fresh forms of long-term equilibrium just as much as imposing short- term homeostasis. There are signs of pastoralist communities suggesting that one hundred years ago there were far fewer Elephants in Tsavo; these indications are indirectly confirmed by hunters' and traders' reports which scarcely mention Elephants in the region at that time. One could argue that Elephants, being able to exercise such an adaptive influence on their habitat, perhaps stay in one area for a prolonged period until the changes which they themselves have wrought, together with the shifts set off by climatic trends and associated factors of the ecosystem, cause them to move away for a while--only to return when the vegetation has resumed the forms that constitute

Fig. 4. Aerial photograph showing two elephants in area with few trees standing but many uprooted and smashed, Tsavo National Park.


their preferred food. Presumably the Elephants now at Tsavo are ready to migrate elsewhere. But these are not altogether wild Elephants in wildest Africa; they are unduly restricted Elephants trapped in a patch of semi-artificial Africa (Fig. 4).

food through its gut in relatively undigested form. Something of the same difficulty faces the Black Rhinoceros, which is not in so much trouble as the Elephant but is the only other creature at Tsavo to be dying in fair numbers (Fig. 5).

Ecosystem Development In other senses, moreover, an Elephant-dominated

community could indicate an advanced stage of development in the local ecosystem, with enhanced stability. There is sometimes a tendency in the later phases of a system's evolution for larger creatures to predominate, particularly those with long and complex life-histories (E. P. Odum, 1969). Nutrients tend to shift from inorganic to organic, which militates against the small-sized creatures that are adapted by their surface-volume ratios to an environment which is rich in minerals and nutrients. The more the ecosystem develops through that particular phase of its evolution, the more the nutrients tend to disappear inside the biomass for long periods, favouring the larger organisms such as big-bulk trees and Elephants; Tsavo's large-mammal biomass is at least 80 per cent Elephants. With their greater storage capacity and more highly-developed life-styles, these creatures can exploit a sudden release of nutrients at the end of a lengthy 'famine'.

This would make them, once again, less prone to 'crash solutions' to pressure on their resources--unless they encounter a famine that is grossly exaggerated beyond their usual evolutionary experience, with other escapes (such as migration opportunity) blocked off. At the same time, the Elephant is at some disadvantage as compared with most herbivores in Tsavo, with its larger bulk, its greater absolute intake of food per day, its dependence on woody vegetation for at least part of its diet, and a monogastric system that passes

Fig. 5. Dead Black Rhinoceros and Elephant in Tsavo National Park.

Elephant Management It is ironic that the minimum estimate of elephants

that have been found dead at Tsavo has already far exceeded the number requested by Laws (1969a) for research cropping in 1967. It is likewise regrettable that, apart from taking the age and sex of many of the carcases, the research unit has had little time (or staff, or money) for checking on the placental scars of all the dead females to see whether the reproductive status has further declined since 1967 (far less of a problem if the Elephants had been reduced by scientific culling instead of starvation). This would be a fundamental pointer in determining whether the Elephants will ever fall within the carrying capacity of the habitat, or whether their declining numbers will continue to follow behind declining environment until they finally become grossly diminished or virtually extinct some seventy or eighty years hence, as appears to be the process on the south bank at Murchison Falls (Laws & Parker, 1968). One solution could be to give the declining populations a push to get them ahead of the declining habitat, namely by removing several thousands until equilibrium is achieved. Cropping on these lines would take no more Elephants than are eliminated in other parts of Kenya every year by 'control shooting' for the protection of maize crops and the like.

But if, because of Park policy, the Elephants cannot be cropped inside a sanctuary, there is opportunity for achieving something of the same purpose along the borders. Eight of the ten populations appear to range outside the Park for at least part of their annual needs (Laws, 1969a), and, if the compression theory is correct, these will be the populations most needing relief. So why not serve the Park's purposes in the meantime, instead of waiting for management by default rather than design ? In fact, the plan could be accomplished without the Park ostensibly having anything to do with it, provided the authorities are prepared to recognize that a park border has two sides to it.

The objection is sometimes raised that Elephant cropping is no easy task, requiring much expertise and capital equipment. While this is an extremely valid point for an organization, such as the Kenya National Parks, with their limited funds and manpower, it has not proved an insurmountable obstacle to Luangwa Valley, Kruger, and other major parks in Africa. There is less substance to the assertion that one of the parties to the research proposal for culling Tsavo's elephants

Myers: Tsavo National Park, Kenya, and its Elephants

was motivated by a commercial incentive; this allega- tion, while frequently presented, has yet to be supported by any evidence of any material kind.

ECOSYSTEM DIVERSIFICATION--OR IMPOVERISHMENT?

Apart from the Elephants and the Rhinos, there are various other creatures that the Park is supposed to protect. There was a warning several years ago (Laws, 1969a) that a number of reptiles, Amphibia, inverte- brates, small mammals, and plant species, may be undergoing grave depletion, though the authorities at Tsavo maintain that there has been an increase in diversity rather than a decline. The onus should perhaps rest on the defenders of the status quo to show that their view of the situation is correct. Indeed, there have already been warnings about what might overtake the Rhinos (Goddard, 1970, and cj'. our Fig. 5) and the Lesser Kudu (Tragelaphus imberbis) (Leuthold, 1971) if the elephant damage continues. But there has been little quantification of the food supply at Tsavo until very recently--merely assertations that things seem to be going all right. Nor has there been much comment on the Baobabs (Adansonia digitata), which have undergone such extreme devastation in only a dozen years that they are probably past the point of recovery (Fig. 6). One might wonder whether such stately features of the wildland scene are not worth perpetuating for future spectators--just as much as the Zebras (Equus burehelli) and other creatures which are upheld as proof that Tsavo is becoming more diversified and, hence, more attractive to visitors.

Fig. 6. Baobab (Adansonia digitata) with elephant-gouged hole in it, Tsavo National Park.

129

It is this process of apparent diversification that has proved a central point of contention. But habitat simplification can sometimes seem, in its early stages, extraordinarily like habitat enrichment. Different creatures appear, animals and plants Mike, which, as long as they exist side by side with remnants of the old regime, give a semblance of greater variety: grasslands, grassland-feeders, and feeders on grassland-feeders. All too soon, however, the new order asserts itself, and a more restricted spectrum may emerge. One would have thought that the policy for Tsavo should at any rate retain a built-in safety margin for maintaining the special aspects of its ecosystem-- to which the Park authorities respond that it is they who are playing things safe.

Not that either side is entirely right, judged by present indications. Less than one-quarter of Tsavo, about 4,400 square kilometres in the south-east sector, has been subject to the most intensive devastation. Large parts to the north, and much of the western areas, show far less change. But their turn will come, say those who approach the problem through the dynamics of Elephant populations and the pressures of Elephant foraging habits. Remarkably enough, the embattled Elephants of the eastern parts have made little attempt to move into the less damaged parts of the region; there has been hardly any movement into the relatively lush western sector, even at the height of the drought. Nor is it easy to understand why 'excess' Elephants in the northern parts of the Park do not make off towards the Tana River area and into a patch of country there which has hitherto received less human disruption than most of the environs (unless a group of pastoralists occupying a strategic string of waterholes in the dry season is enough to deter the Elephants ?).

Perhaps each population occupies such a specific home range that its members are loath to move, come what may- -o r they meet disuasive tactics by the resident herds whenever they try to move into a better habitat? Possibly an Elephant home-range represents a focal point for the population over a number of years, but is still liable to dynamic changes in response to continued pressure. This would explain why undue compression from outside the Park is not confined entirely to those populations along the Park boundary, but is partially diffused among the inner populations over the course of years.

The Park has frequently been described by the research unit as 'understocked' with plains game, though what measure is applied for evaluating any piece of savanna as overstocked or understocked, or indeed just right, is not indicated. In the opened-up section of the Park south of the Galana River, there are, in addition to the 6,700 Elephants, a number of


Buffaloes (Syncerus caffer), Zebras, and other large mammals, totalling nearly 10,000 in all: the 'population explosion of plains game'. But this is only about 4.4 to a square kilometre--a long way from the 40 to a square kilometre which one can often see in Nairobi Park, an area which is by no means outstanding in East Africa for its very high numbers of plains animals. Soils, climate, and a range of related factors, contribute to the difference, but there is still little support for claiming that Tsavo's tourist attractions have been significantly enhanced by the increase in plains animals. In southeastern Tsavo one still has a better chance of seeing a good herd of Elephants than a fair-size number of Hartebeest (Alcelaphus bucela- phus coki), or Zebras, or even Buffalo, and there is little doubt as to which of these the visitor will see several times elsewhere in Kenya.

While there is debate about what the ecosystem conceals--whether the present stage is an interim phase on the way from one viable vegetation mosaic to another, or whether it is a lurch from stable bush country to semi-desert--there is less question about what is happening to the Elephants: according to the reproductive and recruitment parameters, they are on the downward trend. Although the Park authorities insist that there is no threat to 'sizeable' numbers (again, no definition is given), the Elephants already reveal a marked delay in reaching maturity, an extended interval between calves, and an increased mortality rate among the calves, even at the best of times (Laws, 1969a, 1969b). An Elephant crash is apt to be difficult to detect until the process is well under way, and often it is too far gone to be saved except through salvaging measures. White-tailed Deer take a few seasons to crash, and Meadow Mice (Microtus pennsylvanicus) a few months; Elephants take fifty years (Laws, 1969a). The initial stages are spread over an extended phase, hence spread 'too thin' to be easily perceived and corrected until action may have to be as ultra-drastic as it is over-urgent.

PARK POLICY

The situation at Tsavo is apparently to be left to adjust itself as best it can. Not that a policy of non- intervention need be an automatic target for criticism, even if the converse principle is now thoroughly accepted that a wilderness area must be managed not only to change it, but to maintain it in its current form (and even if one recognizes that Tsavo already engages in such manipulation of its biota through artificial water supplies, suppressing as much wildfire as possible, introducing alien species from outside, and so forth). A 'hands-off' approach can constitute

purposeful planning provided the results of the non- intervention are monitored--and provided it is known what in fact is not being interfered with. In the meantime, one of the Earth's great natural ecosystems is veering off in one direction after another, with all too few investigators to watch over its manoeuverings-- beyond a minimal research team whose funds are so short that it takes three years to raise £2,000 for an Elephant exclosure, and where there has not even been £250 to protect thelargest collection of Rhinoceros skulls ever assembled.

Regional Planning In the long term, one must reckon with an intensifi-

cation of the pressures in the hinterland that helped to set off the present process. The human population in Kenya is growing annually at a rate approaching 3.5 per cent. By the end of the century, there will be at least twelve million landless people, from the arable areas of Kenya, seeking ways of subsisting off the drier savanna lands--the areas that are also called the wildlands. If parts of these territories are set aside exclusively for the disportment of foreigners whose waistlines do not display much of a nutrition problem, the local observer of the scene might come to consider these wildlands the waste-lands of Kenya, to be put to 'better' use.

What would assist at Tsavo is a plan to integrate the various land-uses of the entire region into a single conservation unit, such as is in operation at Ngorongoro in Tanzania and is proposed for Murchison Falls in Uganda. The region's disparate interests could be welded into a functional whole, allowing various land- uses to work in support of each other (rather than in conflict). But when aiming at a functional balance between competitive land-uses in a confined area, one must decide how much of each is appropriate; and this means measuring the 'worth' of each in relation to the others, and also to the region's overall integrity.

This is no easy task when there is no easily accessible index for gauging one against the other. The philo- sophic argument for protecting great natural spectacles appeals to the foreigner rather than the local man, and is in any case too abstract for quantification of its value in itself, let alone in comparison with other activities. The region features various land-uses-- particularly cultivation and pastoralism--which are more readily appraised in terms of economic efficiency, if not social welfare. But the main revenue-producer of the region in the near future, should game cropping be ruled out, is tourism. A fundamental feature of Tsavo Park, tourism has been hailed as an efficient earner of that prime lubricant for an emergent economy, foreign exchange (Mitchell, 1970). It is an industry that is complementary to already-existing activities rather


than competitive with them (except in terms of outright occupation of land for exclusive use, such as a park). But one can hardly use, as a sufficient measure of 'public interest', the industry's contribution to Gross Domestic Product or even Gross Regional Product, since this criterion is too gross for a developing community with needs beyond those measured by parameters of supposed monetary enrichment. One should include considerations such as labour-absorbtive capacity in a country where unemployment and underemployment run to 25 per cent. Perhaps one should also consider food production in terms of nutritional status, which usually means more animal protein rather than extra cereals-derived carbohydrates.

The problem is not only that many of the values are not susceptible to measurement in any marketplace, but that the person who benefits is not always the man who bears the cost. Moreover, one finds, at a local level, that the buyer and seller of socioeconomic benefits rarely confront each other in their transactions. It is as difficult explaining the point of computing net social gains, even as a rough first approach, to an African in the bush as it is to the California farmer who wants to dust his land with persistent pesticides without justifying his action face-to-face with his compatriot who goes to look at Brown Pelicans. This is a problem which needs urgent attention in East Africa, and is getting hardly any.

Multiple Use A matrix for integrating multiple use in the region,

including the Park, is a perspective far different from the present position. Not that the Park itself is a single-purpose enclave: apart from protecting natural phenomena, it features--whether deliberately or not - - a whole range of activities. These include tourism, scientific research, revenue-raising through selling ivory, and other activities (not to mention protein production through poaching), not all of which are compatible. The Park has also engaged in straight commercial exploitation of fish in one of the large artificial reservoirs--a practice which scarcely accords with its preservationist ethos. But not only the people on the spot might resist the idea of the Park as part of an openly-declared exercise in multiple-use resource exploitation. This approach would not meet the international criteria for National Parks, namely ' a n . . . area where one or several ecosystems are not materially altered by human exploitation and occupation' (IUCN, 1969).

Policy for the United States parks concentrates on the aesthetic, as opposed to the economic, factors of park values. It suggests that if you once let commercial considerations into a park, the place stops being a park: to which one might retort that, in Africa, unless

you let commercial considerations into a park, it will stop being a park. In Kenya, much more than in North America, parks should reveal how they sustain not only the spirit but the stomach, whether directly or indirectly. While some people might say that, however much parks are for people, they are certainly not for production of protein, others might respond that such a factor should come near the top of park objectives in a country where 180,000 people were on famine relief at the time that thousands of Elephant carcases in Tsavo were being left to the vultures. If the Elephant numbers are to be reduced, the excess could well be utilized in a more efficient, not to say rational, or even humane, fashion, and if the crisis cropping were to be followed by a continuous scheme for removing the annual surplus on a sustained-yield basis (perhaps restricted to areas outside the Park), a 5 per cent offtake could produce half a million kilo- grammes of meat from the entire ecounit in a land where each person normally enjoys as much meat per week as an American gets through in a single small steak. At the same time, there would be revenue approaching half a million dollars--as much as the annual budget of the Kenya National Parks organization and several times as much as the collective wildlife research budgets of the Parks.

A regional framework for measuring one form of land-use against another, can be put to work to illuminate what happens for less explicit forms of land-use evaluation. There are lots of people already busy in the Tsavo region with planning of a different kind. Their appraisal is not likely to optimize returns from the region, but it could well be an improvement, in their eyes, over the current position, however dis- ruptive their practices may be. These people do not carry out their planning deliberately, nor do they do it wantonly or perversely; but they do it just the same, and the configuration of Tsavo's future is being worked out daily by thousands of people with their hopes and hoes, their ambitions and their axes. In the words of H. T. Odum (1971), in his analysis of these suppressive situations, 'To survive and maintain a competitive position, a system must draw the maximum power budget possible in a situation, and process this budget in works that reinforce future survival and stability. . . . . If the flow of energy does not do useful work and does not have loop controls, that energy flow may do work that is detrimental and explosive.'

In other words, the people of the Tsavo region will derive what benefit they can from the area, according to their own lights, whether with the Park's cooperation or not; and, before long, their power systems are going to generate a lot of steam. The Tsavo region is undoubtedly to undergo various forms of severe management in the near future. Whether these will


conform to rational planning in a spirit of 'fair shares for all', or whether the situation will degenerate into a scramble of 'first come, first served', depends largely upon those people in Tsavo National Park who are at present engaged in a last-ditch defence of a chunk of ancient Africa, and who resist management in only a small segment of the total spectrum of activities on the grounds that it would constitute gross interference.

CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge the many valuable comments and constructive suggestions of David Western, and expresses warm thanks to the Director of Kenya National Parks, P. M. Olindo, for his specialist knowledge and generous help in the final revision of the manuscript. These persons are, however, in no way responsible for the opinions herein expressed.

The plight of Tsavo National Park represents several of the conflicts facing the major wildlife areas of eastern and southern Africa. Among the factors shaping their future, the socioeconomic constraints will count just as much as the ecological determinants. Solutions for these difficulties will not be limited to wildlife considerations alone, however much one might prefer a world where biological problems require merely biological solutions (though at present, management actions within Tsavo National Park are being taken by wildlife communities rather than by park officials). The outcome will reflect how far developing Africa can come to terms with its environment- -an overloaded environment and a single environment, where most ecology now contains the all-too-obvious component of human ecology. The outcome will also reflect how far the outside world recognizes what it can contribute towards resolving these problems.

Present funding is not remotely adequate for even minimal research into the Tsavo problem--research which was urgent already ten years ago. This is an opportunity for people far away from Africa, who frequently remind Africans that their wildlife is a heritage not of Africa alone, to show how far they are committed to conservation in Africa. Professional bodies could meanwhile reflect on their priorities during a decade when several hundred additional studies were added to the thousands on White-tailed Deer (by no means an endangered species), while in Africa an episode of large mammal ecology underwent one spasm after another, and of a telescoped intensity that was virtually unprecedented since the emergence of modern biology. It has been a phenomenon on such a scale as would almost rival the appearance of a mammoth in Tsavo, yet a phenomenon largely unrecorded and unregretted by the world at large.

References

GODDARD, J. (1970). Age criteria and vital statistics of a Black Rhinoceros population. E. Afr. Wildl. J., 8, pp. 105-21.

IUCN (1969). Proceedings of Tenth General Assembly, New Delhi 1969. IUCN, Morges, Switzerland: 224 pp.

LAWS, R. M. (1969a). The Tsavo Research Project. J. Reprod. Fert., Suppl. 6, pp. 495-531.

LAWS, R. M. (1969b). Aspects of reproduction in the African Elephant, Loxodonta africana. J. Reprod. Fert., Suppl. 6, pp. 193-217.

LAWS, R. M. & PARKER, I. S. C. (1968). Recent studies on Elephant populations in East Africa. Syrup. Zool. Soc. Lond., 21, pp. 319-59.

LAWS, R. M., PARKER, I. S. C. & JOHNSTONE, R. C. B. (1970). Elephants and habitats in North Bunyoro, Uganda. E. Aft. Wildl. J., 8, pp. 163-80.

LEUTHOLD, W. (1971). Studies on the food habits of Lesser Kudu in Tsavo National Park, Kenya. E. Aft. Wildl. J., 9, pp. 3545.

LOTKA, A. J. (1922). Contribution to the energetics of evolution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 8, pp. 147-55.

MITCHELL, F. (1970). The value of tourism in East Africa. E. Afr. Econ. Rev., 2, pp. 1-21.

ODUM, E. P. (1969). The strategy of ecosystem development. Science, 164, pp. 262-70.

ODUM, H. T. (1971). Environment, Power and Society. John Wiley, New York: ix + 331 pp., illustr.

WATSON, R. M. & PARKER, I. S. C. (in preparation). The interaction between Man and Elephants. (Cited in Graham, A. D. & Laws, R. M. (1971). The collection of found ivory in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda, E. Afr. Wildl. J., 9, pp. 57-65.)

Documents

Tsavo National Park, Kenya, and its elephants: An interim appraisal