Description
This book tells the story of wildlife in Southern Africa and the struggle between the conservationists and the killers to decide the fate of a beautiful environment and a flora and fauna of unparalleled richness. To the first men who evolved, migrated or settled in Africa, the continent seemed bound-less and its natural resources unlimited. They killed, burned, slashed and destroyed without thought of the consequences. Why conserve or domesticate if the numbers were inexhaustible?
Only the ostrich was domesticated in Southern Africa. All other wild creatures were slaughtered without mercy, some to extinction, others to the brink of annihilation. The last quagga, a female, died on 12 August 1883. She died not on the South African veld, not on those wide plains which had once been “darkened as far as the eye can reach with a moving phalanx of gnoos and quaggas whose numbers literally baffle computation”.
Instead, the solitary survivor of the race lay down and died in a cage in the Amsterdam Zoo, Holland. With that the quagga species became extinct. Nine days after the death of this lonely quagga, a group of people concerned at what was happening to wildlife in Natal, met in Durban and formed a game protection society.
From this humble beginning commenced the struggle for conservation in Southern Africa. It is a poignant but inspiring story, often brutal, bitter, full of disappointment and despair, but with a darkness illuminated by the faith of many dedicated people who worked incessantly towards the ideal of man living in greater harmony with nature
