JOZANI-CHWAKA BAY NATIONAL PARK AND COVID-19

by Jonathan Walz

Evidence of beach erosion due to climate change at Paje (photo: J. Walz)

In Zanzibar, 2020 was a unique and impactful year. Covid-19 raised challenges for the state and its communities and environments. Compounded climate change and the national elections in October added stresses. The spring high tide event in mid-October (4.68m tidal change amplified by sea level rise) demonstrated that incremental increases to sea level during the last two decades have real world effects, including breached beach crests, saline wells, and inundated agricultural fields. Dramatically reduced tourism on Unguja and tourist revenue, alongside the aforementioned stresses, influenced biodiversity and the management of protected areas.

National parks around the world face multiple challenges during the global pandemic. For instance, significantly reduced staffing due to a decline in income from tourism influences parks’ capacities and plans to effectively enforce protections, facilitate scientific research, and ensure upkeep. In addition, and as a core threat to global biodiversity, administrators and observers of protected areas cite a parallel uptick in illicit activities that continue to degrade environments, species, and the human-environment interface: land grabs, deforestation for firewood and charcoal-making, animal poaching, an intensification of the illicit trade in wildlife and wildlife products, and the illegal mining of rare minerals and construction materials.

Burned bee honeycomb at Jozani (photo: J. Walz

“Biodiversity” is high species richness and evenness, which is equated with ecosystem health, productivity, stability, and resistance to disturbances, including disease. In general, biodiversity hotspots in Zanzibar – terrestrial and marine – are understudied (scholarly investigations in the archipelago being skewed to social and historical topics). Thus, biodiversity in the archipelago faces threats even before its is thoroughly understood. The sickness, death, and social disruption of the pandemic continue to act on the economically impoverished society and on the uncertainties spurred by climate change. Impacts from climate change are apparent: temperature increase (1.2 degrees Celsius since 1997), reduced rainfall with uncertain distribution, consistent sea level rise (0.28 cm/per year since 2009), and coastline and reef degradation. During the pandemic, pressures on the urban economy and food security in Zanzibar City have increased human and environmental vulnerability and changed behavior.

Up to January 2021, although human mortality and Covid-19 infections seemingly have been lower across eastern Africa than in areas of the Americas, Europe, and South Asia, nevertheless there have been negative outcomes in the region, for instance increased food insecurity and growing strains on health systems and natural resources. However, generalized statements about the pandemic’s impacts to nature conservation in Africa and the Global South more broadly deserve scrutiny and critique. What negative impacts to protected areas are being underemphasized in reports and what conservation positives have arisen during the pandemic?

Red colobus monkeys at Jozani (photo: J. Walz)

The Zanzibar archipelago, a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania, has a single national park which serves as a useful case for analysis: Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park and Biosphere Reserve. Jozani (for short) is an accessible park which in the last two years (2018 and 2019) has received more than 60,000 visitors per year. In April 2020 (during the first global peak in Covid-19), there were 14 total visitors to the park: less than 0.5% the number of visitors in April 2019. Diminished tourism revenue resulted in a temporary 50% reduction in park staff which influenced monitoring and enforcement, park upkeep, and public engagement. Urban job loss and modest food insecurity on Unguja redistributed some residents from nearby Zanzibar City to the countryside near the national park. Schools were closed which left children at home throughout the day to help gather natural resources for these larger households at the park’s edges. In addition, poachers used the ocean – not just land – to access remote areas, a practice previously documented primarily on Unguja’s sister island to the north: Pemba. Ad hoc observations and interviews with rangers documented that illicit activity increased, the evidence of which included tree stumps, cuttings from medicinal plants, shotgun shells, burned bee honeycombs, and traces of sand mining along the bay front.

However, positives for conservation and biodiversity have been lost in caricatures of the impacts of Covid-19. Absent tourists, monkey troops (especially Red colobus monkeys) at the national park reverted to less habituated behaviour. Farmers at the edges of the protected area reported fewer cases of damage to crops from park wildlife. Domesticated and feral animals were more visible, making them easier to humanely capture and relocate outside of park boundaries. In Chwaka Bay, intertidal species like octopus, a popular food served at tourist hotels, rebounded. On June 29, schools reopened; school groups became the primary park visitors and the focus of environmental education programs rather than secondary to the attention of overseas tourists. With few foreign-led NGOs in operation during the pandemic, a few of Zanzibar’s citizens stepped-in as agents of conservation at the park but also in Zanzibar City. They tended to public green spaces, outdoor areas less prone to transmit Covid-19.

Octopus and fisherman at Chwaka Bay (photo: J. Walz)

Biodiversity loss and socio-ecological instability increase vulnerability to on-going and future disasters. To overcome the disabling effects of Covid-19 and the compounding threats of climate change and other influential factors better promotion of evidence-based interdisciplinary study of coupled natural and human systems should be a priority. The multiple invested stakeholders should enforce protections to areas and species through standing or new policies, enhance resources for in-country experts to conduct and communicate research, bolster the health and wealth-being of people and environments through community “green” strategies, and collaborate with mindfulness to improve human livelihoods. The protection and restoration of biodiversity will improve adaptability to threats.

The public should be wary of simple narratives about Covid-19 and its impacts in Zanzibar and elsewhere. Covid-19 has not put threats to biodiversity “on hold”. However, at the same time, Covid-19’s outcomes have not been wholly negative.  As noted, during the pause in tourism, citizens of Zanzibar have initiated and developed conservation practices outside the orbit of ex-patriots, many of whom returned to their home countries due to the pandemic. At national parks in Africa and Indian Ocean island states, Covid-19 produces mixed conservation outcomes. Evidence builds more balanced and meaningful narratives that recognize the vulnerability and adaptability of people, ecosystems, and parks in an era of change.

THE LATEST AND GREATEST LOLIONDO LAND GRAB

by Susanna Nordlund

Survival International article

The Tanzanian Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Khamis Kagasheki, announced on 26 March 2013 that 1,500 km² of land will be taken from the people of Loliondo. The grabbing of this corridor of dry season grazing land bordering Serengeti National Park will destroy the lives and livelihoods of the Maasai pastoralist landowners.

They government claims that this decision has been taken to protect wildlife and water catchments. The minister has warned that “There will be no compromise with regard to any attempt to infringe the newly established boundaries.” At the same time the public is being misled into believing that the state is doing the Maasai of Ngorongoro District and Loliondo and Sale Divisions a favour by giving them the 2,500 km² of Loliondo Game Controlled Area (GCA) that it hasn’t taken.

The reality is that the GCA was previously an area in which only hunting rights had been given away, while other land uses were allowed to continue. It has been managed as customary Maasai land for as long as anyone can remember, and belongs to eight villages under the provisions of the Village Land Act No 5 of 1999. However, the Wildlife Conservation Act of 2009 restricted livestock keeping and other agricultural activities on GCAs, and deemed that they could not overlap with village land. This protected area “upgrading” was concealed by retaining the old designation, but its very real consequences can be seen in what is now happening in Loliondo.

The location of Loliondo (source: Tanzania Natural Resource Forum)

In typical fashion the government is blaming resistance to this blatant land grab on mythical “NGOs” and “Kenyans” that are stirring up conflict.

Pastoral production is not incompatible with the conservation of wildlife; ironically it was the richness of wildlife on traditional rangelands that led to their loss to the Maasai when Serengeti National Park was created in 1959. Pastoralists in the neighbouring Ngorongoro Conservation Area are living under strict restrictions and have, against promises given when being moved from Serengeti, lost further grazing lands. The government, hunting companies, and so-called “non-consumptive” tourism continually seek ways to grab more Maasai land – like the Boston-based Thomson Safaris that is treating 12,617 acres of grazing land as a private nature refuge, calling this “community-based conservation”. The Maasai can just not afford to lose another square inch of land.

It’s probably no accident that the 1,500km² corridor of land that is being taken is also the core hunting area of the Otterlo Business Corporation (OBC) – an outfit that organises hunting safaris for royalty from the United Arab Emirates. In a corruption scandal in 1992 that is still remembered as “Loliondogate”, OBC was given Loliondo GCA as a hunting block. Although this deal didn’t transfer land ownership, OBC have often behaved like lords of the land and have been backed by the government in resulting conflicts with the Maasai.

The Avaaz petition

The worst incident occurred in 2009 during a severe drought when people and livestock were evicted by force from the corridor of land by the Tanzanian authorities assisted by OBC. Houses were burned down and many cattle were lost, while one young girl disappeared in the chaos and has never been found. The evicted Maasai eventually moved back and many leaders “reconciled” with OBC, creating a generational rift when young people questioned their reasons for doing so.

On 25 March this year, when it was evident that the land grab was about to be announced, thousands of people attended a public meeting in Oloipiri at which it was declared that the local MP and other political leaders would resign in protest, that all contracts with OBC would be terminated, and legal proceedings initiated with an injunction against the grab and an attempt to reclaim the lost lands of the Serengeti. On Tuesday 2 April another big meeting is planned in Wasso, at which people will respond to the announcement that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism has since made.

Anyone who in any way can help the people of Loliondo in this struggle is kindly asked to do so as soon as possible.

Links

Survival International are standing up for the Maasai – http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/9091

Avaaz are helping in their own way –

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_the_maasai_loc/

Jason Patinkin of the Guardian has written the following report – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/30/maasai-game-hunting-tanzania

Article in The Guardian (London)

For further reading and viewing:

Author’s blog post from 23 March with subsequent updates:

http://termitemoundview.blogspot.se/2013/03/the-tanzanian-government-insists-on.html

Press release from Onesmo Olengurumwa of JUWASAWINGO http://www.freemedia.co.tz/daima/habari.php?id=47051

A blog post from 2011 with the history of the corridor and OBC: http://www.termitemoundview.blogspot.se/2011/07/corridor.html

Also from 2011, voices from Loliondo about land use in the "wildlife corridor":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7knZOEVxO0k

News item on ITV Tanzania about protests against the beacons of TANAPA on village land: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a66HfC1qeBE

Blog post about the beacons at Klein’s Gate: http://www.termitemoundview.blogspot.se/2012/12/the-beacons-from-hell.html

And a call for help on the official blog of Ololosokwan: http://ololosokwan.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/streets-of-ololosokwan-are-burning/

BEIT EL AMANI – A MUSEUM CONSERVATION CHALLENGE IN ZANZIBAR

by Jonathan R. Walz

Beit el Amani in July 2011, before renovation (copyright Martin Walsh)

Public engagement and conservation are two principal concerns of the African Studies community in general. However, more often than not, those interested in conservation in Africa emphasize natural history, national parks, and wildlife. As recent events in Timbuktu in Mali demonstrate, historical sources, archaeological remains, and architectural legacies also deserve robust and sustained commitment. Governments, museums (and other institutions), and scholars play key roles in this endeavor, as the parties who ensure the responsible conservation of cultural heritage in Africa and who facilitate public education about African history and contemporary societies.

There is broad recognition that African archives and museums are in a poor state. A visit to the Swaziland National Archives in Mbabane, for instance, reveals insufficient infrastructure, financial resources, and staff to meet the basic conservation needs of the unique and remarkable historical sources housed there. The archives and museums in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, like other states in the global tropics and sub-tropics, suffer from multiple legacies. Among other factors, these include regional impoverishment, insufficient leadership and staff training, and a gaping disconnect between scholars and such heritage institutions. International scholars in particular often conduct research and then depart countries without attending to the further management of the materials they collect. Recent adjustments to antiquities research fees in many countries, including Tanzania, are beginning to rectify this problem by collecting monies intended for curation.

Beit el Amani in July 2012, after renovation (copyright J. R. Walz)

Of course there are exceptions to the tendencies of poor management in museums and archives outlined above. Notable success stories include the Hargeisa Provincial Museum in Somalia (Mire 2007) and various branch museum organizations in Niger and Senegal (see Merrick Posnansky’s comments in Walz 2010: 208-209). And the International Council of African Museums (AFRICOM), as well as other international, continental, and national working groups and funds are making headway in the struggle to improve heritage training and awareness. However, the destruction in Timbuktu shows how quickly a success story – the South Africa-Mali Timbuktu Manuscripts Project – can turn. There is much serious work to be done in partnership among stakeholders.

Tanzania faces challenges similar to other African countries (see Schmidt and McIntosh 1996). A 2001 conference in Dar es Salaam celebrated the growth in historical scholarship and heritage studies in Tanzania since mainland independence in 1961. But at the same time attendees bemoaned the many significant impediments to heritage development (Mapunda and Msemwa 2005). Zanzibar Town and other historical places of Tanzania’s offshore islands also face threats to heritage as well as the institutions that enable the conservation of historical sources and public engagement.

Disarray in Storage D, Beit el Amani, July 2012 (copyright J. R. Walz)

In July 2012 I visited Beit el Amani – the Peace Memorial Museum (aka the Zanzibar Museum) – in Zanzibar Town. Lying at the intersection of Benjamin Mkapa and Kaunda roads, it contains artifacts and other historical sources of Zanzibar’s long-term history, from great antiquity up to and through the early twentieth-century: archaeological remains of Swahili urbanism, relics of the Omani sultanate, material culture from European exploration, items of railroad and postal history, and crafts common to Zanzibari households (for the early history of the museum see Longair 2012). The museum was under structural renovation when I visited in July (and had been for more than a year previously) and therefore the material collections and displays were off limits to the general public. Aesthetic and structural improvements appear to have been successful (as the museum’s façade has been renewed), but they conceal striking problems.

A museum official kindly agreed to show me the archaeological collections in ‘storage,’ some of which had been relocated due to the ongoing renovations. Storage Room D is demonstrative. Disarray and destruction (surely unintentional) of this type should elicit great concern. Storage boxes and bags are broken or otherwise disintegrating in Storage Room D and the original provenance of a proportion of material has been lost. Most apparent are ceramics, beads of glass and semi-precious stone, and even non-archaeological materials, including a stuffed duck. Sadly, my photos illustrate this desecration of history. Relevant objects include those excavated in the 1990s from Unguja Ukuu and other regionally important archaeological sites located on Unguja (Zanzibar) Island and its smaller sister, Tumbatu.

Another view of the jumble in Storage D (copyright J. R. Walz)

After speaking with a Zanzibari official, I contacted numerous international heritage groups and funds, including the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania. However, for various reasons – including surpassed funding deadlines – no monies were available for immediate improvements. Then I approached the Office of Community Engagement at my academic institution, Rollins College (in Florida). Thankfully, I was granted a small sum to clean and organize the materials in Storage Room D, a task I will complete during July 2013 with Rollins students. This scheduled activity integrates well the engaged liberal arts and two courses I teach: “Cultural Heritage and Museums” and “Heritage and the Politics of Now.” Zanzibari museum staff and students in new archaeology and heritage management programs at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) will work alongside us to improve circumstances at Beit el Amani. Stay tuned for a follow-up blog as the case progresses.

The archives and museums of eastern Africa, and all of Africa, deserve greater care. In this instance, archaeologists who work in Zanzibar and wider Tanzania should step forward and find more concrete ways to ensure proper curation of materials. Although Rollins College supplied funding to launch this project in Zanzibar, donations, volunteer support, and suggestions for additional funding are much appreciated.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Martin Walsh for facilitating this blog post. I further appreciate the support of Abdul Sheriff during my stay in Zanzibar in 2012. Many commentators offered assistance through a previous online post about Beit el Amani.

References

Longair, S. C. 2012. ‘A Gracious Temple of Learning’: The Museum and Colonial Culture in Zanzibar, 1900-1945. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Birkbeck College, University of London.

Mapunda, B. and P. Msemwa (eds.) 2005. Salvaging Tanzania’s Cultural Heritage. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press.

Mire, S. 2007. Preserving knowledge, not objects: a Somali perspective for heritage management and archaeological research. African Archaeological Review 24 (3-4): 49-71.

Schmidt, P. and R. McIntosh (eds.) 1996. Plundering Africa’s Past. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Walz, J. 2010. An interview with Merrick Posnansky. African Archaeological Review 27 (3): 177-210.

THE NOT-SO-GREAT RUAHA

Water lilies in Ihefu

In an earlier post ('Diani Beach: a forgotten land grab?') I wrote about land alienation on the Kenya coast, and mentioned in passing the East African case of land (and water) grabbing that has exercised me most, the expansion of Ruaha National Park and expulsion of livestock keepers and others from their homes in Usangu, in Mbarali District. My paper on this case, 'The not-so-Great Ruaha and hidden histories of an environmental panic in Tanzania', has just been published in the Journal of Eastern African Studies, as part of a collection on the 'Politics of Rain' edited by Michael Sheridan. It's taken a long time to get this into print -- I drafted the article in 2008, using data gathered in the course of investigative research undertaken the previous year and compiled in a consultancy report (Walsh 2008). During the process of (more than one) submission and revision I was able to update some of the information contained in the paper, but the basic narrative remains the same, and has not been changed by anything I've learned since. In lieu of a longer post on subsequent developments, here's a taster of the paper:

Cattle in Ihefu (before the evictions)

The abstract...

Water is one of the world's most contested resources, and Africa's river basins are no exception. In December 1993 the Great Ruaha River upstream of Tanzania's Mtera Dam stopped flowing for the first time in living memory. This became a matter of national concern in 1995 when electricity shortages and rationing in Dar es Salaam were blamed by the national power supply company (TANESCO) on the continuing drying-up of the Great Ruaha. Since then different institutions and interest groups have sought to explain the river's increasing seasonality, focusing on resource use in and around its immediate source, the Usangu wetland, and laying the blame on different groups of resource users. In 1998 the core of the wetland (Ihefu) was gazetted as part of a new game reserve, and fishermen and livestock keepers were forcibly removed. Increasing government concern over power shortages culminated in the mass expulsion in 2006–07 of livestock keepers and their cattle from Usangu and Mbarali District, large parts of which were to be incorporated in an expanded Ruaha National Park. This was the largest eviction of its kind in recent Tanzanian history, widely condemned by NGOs and in the national and international media. This article examines in detail the development of the environmental panic and events which led to this eviction, highlighting the behind-the-scenes role played by actors and interests in the public and private sectors in fostering the panic and its controversial outcome.

Fishing in Ihefu (before the evictions)

...and the introductory paragraph:

In his speech at the official opening of parliament on 30th December 2005, Tanzania’s newly elected president, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, sketched out his government’s agenda for ‘environmental conservation’ and singled out particular problems for attention. One of these was the worrying situation in one of Tanzania’s most important sub-catchments:
"A few areas need special and urgent measures to protect the environment because the situation has deteriorated to an extent that it affects other sectors. One such area is the Ruaha River Basin, which connects almost all major river systems in the country. We have watched as the situation at the Mtera Dam deteriorated. The Great Ruaha River is no longer great—it is almost dry in some parts. The Government at all levels should now intervene and be ready to be held to account for this situation. This damage must be stopped, and reversed."
In response to this and subsequent exhortations Kikwete’s government did indeed take “special and urgent measures” to protect the Great Ruaha. These actions focused on the immediate origin of the river: the wetlands of Usangu in Mbarali District, Mbeya Region. In May 2006 hundreds of cattle herders and their animals were evicted – not for the first time – from Usangu Game Reserve and the permanent Ihefu swamp. In June it was announced that this protected area would be upgraded to become part of an expanded Ruaha National Park, and between November 2006 and January 2007 large numbers of livestock keepers, most of them Sukuma agropastoralists, were forced to leave Mbarali District together with their herds. According to one (probably exaggerated) estimate, more than 300,000 cattle were driven out of the district, around two-thirds of them to Lindi and Coast Regions in the east of the country. This drastic eviction was roundly condemned by pro-pastoralist and civil society organisations in Tanzania, who pointed out that not only were livestock and their keepers in Usangu being blamed for environmental crimes that they had not committed, but also that the process of eviction had involved a number of human rights violations. In April 2007 the government established a special Commission of Enquiry to investigate these allegations, and its completed report was submitted to the president in early June 2007. Despite questions in the Tanzanian parliament, neither the report nor its findings have yet been made public (as of November 2010).

Needless to say, this is still the case, and at a recent meeting in Iringa President Kikwete defiantly declared that he would not allow evicted livestock keepers to return to the protected wetland because of its economic importance to the nation ('Ihefu wetlands out of bounds', Daily News, 23 March 2012).

References

Anonymous 2012. Ihefu wetlands out of bounds. Daily News (online edition), Friday 23 March 2012.

Walsh, Martin 2008. Pastoralism and Policy Processes in Tanzania: Mbarali Case Study. Report to the Tanzania National Resource Forum (TNRF), Arusha.

Walsh, Martin 2012. The not-so-Great-Ruaha and hidden histories of an environmental panic in Tanzania. Journal of Eastern African Studies 6 (2): 303-335. [A limited number of eprints are available here.]

IMAGINARY ANIMALS OF ZANZIBAR

On 14 June 2007, the Hon. Ame Pandu Ame, MP for Nungwi constituency in Zanzibar, asked the following question in the Tanzanian parliament:

Given that Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, and that some animals have now disappeared from the islands, such as Ader's Duiker (Paa-Nunga), Impala (Swala), Zebra (Pundamilia), and Ostrich (Mbuni):-

Does the government not see that there is a need to take these animals (which aren't dangerous to man) over to the islands so that people can see them there?*

The Hon. Member's knowledge of his own islands' fauna was evidently on par with that of the brains behind the "Rare Animals of Zanzibar" series of stamps that was issued in the mid-1980s. Two of the mammals depicted, a rhinoceros and a pangolin, have never occurred in the wild in Zanzibar, at least not since Unguja became an island at the end of the last Ice Age. The same applies to impala, zebra, and ostrich. And although Ader's duiker (Cephalophus adersi) is classed as critically endangered, a small population still survives on Unguja island.

The Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Professor Jumanne Abdallah Maghembe, was quick to set the record straight. He began his reply as follows:

Honourable Speaker, please allow me to inform your respected Parliament that impala, zebra, and ostrich are not native to Zanzibar, but were taken there in 1980 for a show. Once the show was over, they were put into a zoo in the forest at Dole Masingini.

Honourable Speaker, because of poor management and lack of expertise, the animals broke out of their enclosures time and time again and escaped into people's farms, where they damaged crops before being killed.*

Prof. Maghembe went on to explain that there were currently no plans to import and release such animals into the wild in Zanzibar, and gave the obvious ecological and other reasons for not doing so. He also gave an update on the status of the near-endemic Ader's duiker. "The only animal thought to have disappeared from the forests of Zanzibar", he added, "is the Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi ["adders" in the original])."

I don't know what motivated the CCM MP's question: by and large Zanzibar manages its own natural resources without reference to the mainland, and Zanzibar's wildlife isn't a normal topic of debate in the national parliament. But I do know that the liberalisation of the economy and growth of (eco)tourism in Zanzibar has made people aware of the money-making potential of zoos and animal enclosures in a way that the state-controlled experiment at Masingini could never have done. Mohammed Ayoub Haji's Zala Park, a small zoo that is best known for its reptiles, was opened in Muungoni village, close to Jozani Forest, in the mid-1990s. For a long time this was the only facility of its kind, but more recently Zanzibar's political and economic elite have begun to muscle in on the action. There's now at least one private zoo on Unguja owned by a prominent businessman. Latest on the scene is Zanzibar Park, located on a 20-acre site by the Mwera road, 3 km east of Zanzibar town. This zoo's flashy website suggests that it's a step up from Zala Park in ambition and scale -- perhaps not surprising, given that it's said to be owned by Zanzibar's First Lady, Shadya Amani Karume. It opened to the public in October 2009, and houses at least some of the species mentioned by Hon. Ame in his parliamentary question.

One animal that's unlikely to appear in Zanzibar Park anytime soon is the Zanzibar leopard. As Prof. Maghembe suggested, some zoologists think that it's extinct, though this is by no means certain (Goldman and Walsh 2002). But lack of scientific corroboration hasn't stopped the rural inhabitants of Unguja from seeing this island endemic, or believing that leopards are still being kept and used by witches (wachawi) to frighten their fellow villagers and attack their livestock (Goldman and Walsh 1997; Walsh and Goldman 2007). Leopard-keeping narratives are so pervasive and persuasive that some foreign researchers have fallen for them and gone in search of domesticated leopards. Needless to say, these kept leopard chases have always proved futile. Likewise proposals emanating from the Government of Zanzibar and local conservationists that call for leopard-keepers to display or sell their leopards for display to tourists and other fee-paying members of the public (Ame 2003). Helle Goldman and I have written about this at greater length in a recent workshop paper (Walsh and Goldman 2010), and both the abstract and now part of the text can be seen on our Zanzibar leopard blog.

Afterword (image), 13 February 2011

from the Humphrey Winterton Collection

An undated postcard from the studio of J. B. Coutinho in Zanzibar (not a wild rhino, alas!)...

(Citation: Rhinoceros, Zanzibar. Winterton Collection of East African Photographs, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston. Object 43-1-43-1. http://hdl.handle.net/2166.DL/inu-wint-43-1-43-1.)

----
* My translation from the Swahili.

References

Ame, Mwantanga 2003. Serikali iko tayari kununua chui. Zanzibar Leo, Sunday 13 April 2003, 6.

Goldman, Helle and Martin Walsh 1997. A Leopard in Jeopardy: An Anthropological Survey of Practices and Beliefs which Threaten the Survival of the Zanzibar Leopard (Panthera pardus adersi). Zanzibar Forestry Technical Paper No. 63, Jozani Chwaka Bay Conservation Project, Commission for Natural Resources, Zanzibar.

Goldman, Helle and Martin Walsh 2002. Is the Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi) extinct? Journal of East African Natural History 91 (1/2): 15-25.

Walsh, Martin and Helle Goldman 2007. Killing the king: the demonization and extermination of the Zanzibar leopard / Tuer le roi: la diabolisation et l’extermination du leopard de Zanzibar. In Edmond Dounias, Elisabeth Motte-Florac and Margaret Dunham (eds.) Le symbolisme des animaux: L'animal, clef de voûte de la relation entre l'homme et la nature? / Animal symbolism: Animals, keystone of the relationship between man and nature? Paris: Éditions de l’IRD. 1133-1182.

Walsh, Martin and Helle Goldman 2010. Chasing imaginary leopards: science, witchcraft and the politics of conservation in Zanzibar. Paper prepared for the VIII European Swahili Workshop, Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography, University of Oxford, 19-21 September 2010.

GIRIAMA BIRD NAMES

Last year (2009) Nature Kenya / the East Africa Natural History Society (EANHS) published its Checklist of the Birds of Dakatcha Woodland, an Important Bird Area (IBA) in the hinterland of Malindi on the Kenya coast. The woodland is home to a number of globally threatened and near-threatened bird species and is itself threatened by illegal commercial agricultural development. One of the birds under threat graces the checklist’s cover: the beautiful Fischer’s Turaco (Tauraco fischeri), known as kulukulu in the Giriama (= Giryama) language. This is the first checklist of its kind in Kenya to include the vernacular names of birds recorded and cross-checked by local community members. It was edited by Fleur Ng’weno, the Honorary Secretary of the EANHS, and I played a minor role by reviewing the Giriama names and advising on a consistent orthography.

I’d been keeping a file of bird names in Giriama and other Mijikenda languages since 1992, when I met ornithologist John Fanshawe in Mombasa and we discussed the possibility of working on my largely dictionary-derived list together with David Ngala, a colleague of John’s at the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest Reserve. Unfortunately other work took us both away from the Kenya coast and nothing came of this planned collaboration, although we didn’t entirely give up on the idea and I continued adding to my list of Mijikenda names. I never did get to meet David, and so was delighted to see that he was one of the main contributors to the Dakatcha checklist. The matching of local names with reliable ornithological identifications transformed my untidy lexical collection, and I’ve typed up a working list of Giriama names incorporating the new information from Dakatcha. Linguistic and ethnobiological research like this won’t by itself save endangered flora and fauna, but experience suggests that it does have a part to play in combatting the ignorance of local knowledge and practice that all too often accompanies extractive development.

Afterword, 29 July 2010

Further information and up-to-date news on the land grab that is threatening Dakatcha woodland is available on the A Rocha Kenya website: see for example this recent post on the use of violence against conservation staff and a reporter. ActionAid is running an appeal for international support against the commercial cultivation of Jatropha curcas at Dakatcha, part of its wider campaign against biofuel production. Resources on the problem of land grabs in Africa can be dowloaded from the Oxfam pages on land rights in Africa maintained by Robin Palmer.

SCRIBD AND, FOR EXAMPLE, LEOPARDS

I started this occasional blog by posting short articles that I'd already written and (in all but one case) published. 'Occasional' became an understatement when I started scanning and posting papers and other miscellaneous writings to the document-sharing website Scribd. I've now uploaded more than 170 files to Scribd, including my doctoral dissertation (1984) about Usangu and a collection of research assistants' notebooks from western and central Kenya. I've still got a way to go, and haven't begun to scan notebooks written in Swahili by assistants in Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania.

One of the advantages of doing this is that I can now link directly to files on Scribd and/or embed them in the text of this blog. Here's an example, a poster shown at a conference in Oxford in 2007:



And here's a paper about the Zanzibar leopard:



To view and/or download these (and other documents) use the Scribd toolbar at the top of the windows.