How many of these marvelous animals do you have in Zimbabwe and how many of those are in Chiwewe National Park? There are an estimated fifty-two thousand elephant in Zimbabwe, and our figures for Chiwewe are even more accurate. Only three months ago, we were able to conduct an aerial survey of the Park sponsored by the international Union for the Conservation of Nature. The entire area of the Park was photographed, and the animals counted from the high-resolution prints.
How many?
Daniel asked. In Chiwewe alone, eighteen thousand elephant. That's a huge population, something approaching a third of all the remaining animals in the country, all in this area. Daniel raised an eyebrow.
In the climate of gloom and pessimism that prevails, this must give you a great deal of encouragement?
Johnny Nzou frowned. On the contrary, Doctor Armstrong, we are extremely concerned by these numbers. Can you explain that please, Warden? It's simple, Doctor. We cannot support that many elephant.
We estimate that thirty thousand elephant would be an ideal population for Zimbabwe. A single beast requires up to a ton of vegetable matter each day, and he will push over trees that have taken many hundreds of years to grow, even trees with trunks four feet in diameter, to obtain that food. What will happen if you allow that huge herd to flourish and to breed? Quite simply, in a very short period they will reduce this park to a dust bowl, and when that happens the elephant population will collapse. We will be left with nothing, no trees, no park, no elephant.
Daniel nodded encouragement. When the film was edited he would cut in at this point a series of shots he had taken some years previously in Kenya's Amboseli Park. These were haunting vistas of devastation, of bare red earth and dead black trees stripped of bark and leaves holding up their naked branches in agonized supplication to a hard blue African sky, while the desiccated carcasses of the great animals lay like discarded leather bags where famine and poachers had destroyed them.
Do you have a solution, Warden? Daniel asked softly. A drastic one, I'm afraid. Will you show us what it is? Johnny Nzou shrugged. It is not very pretty to watch, but, yes, you may witness what has to be done.
Daniel woke twenty minutes before sunrise.
Even the intervening years spent in cities out of Africa, and the passage of so many other dawns in northern climes, or in the fluid time zones of jet aircraft travel, had not dulled the habit that he had first acquired in this valley. Of course, the habit had been reinforced during the years of that terrible Rhodesian bush war, when he had been called up to serve in the security forces.
For Daniel the dawn was the most magical time of each day, and especially so in this valley. He rolled out of his sleepingbag and reached for his boots. He and his men had slept fully clothed on the sun-baked earth, with the embers of the campfire in the centre of the huddle of their prostrate forms. They had not built a boma of thorn branches to protect themselves, although at intervals during the night lions had grunted and roared along the escarpment.
Daniel laced up his boots and slipped quietly out of the circle of sleeping men. The dew that hung like seed pearls upon the grass stems soaked his trouser legs to the knees as he moved out to the promontory of rock at the head of the cliff. He found a seat on the rough grey granite knoll and huddled into his anorak.
The dawn came on with stealthy and deceptive speed and painted the clouds above the great river in subtle talcum shades of pink and grey.
Over the Zambezi's dark green waters the river mist undulated and pulsed like ghostly ectoplasm and the dawn flights of duck were very dark and crisp against the pale background, their formations precise and their wingbeats flickering quick as knife-blades in the uncertain light.
A lion roared, near at hand, abrupt gales of sound that died away in a descending series of moaning grunts. Daniel shivered with the thrill of that sound. Though he had heard it countless times, it always had the same effect upon him. There was no other like it in all the world.
For him it was the veritable voice of Africa.
Then he picked out the great cat shape below him at the edge of the swamp. Full-bellied, dark-maned, it carried its massive head low and swung it from side to side to the rhythm of its stately arrogant walk.
Its mouth was half open and its fangs glinted behind thin black lips.
He watched it vanish into the dense riverine bush and sighed with the pleasure it had given him There was a small sound close behind him. As he started up, Johnny Nzou touched his shoulder to restrain him and settled down on the granite slab beside him.
Johnny lit a cigarette. Daniel had never been able to talk him out of the habit. They sat in companionable silence as they had so often before and watched the dawn come on more swiftly now, until that religious moment when the sun thrust its burning rim above the dark mass of the forest. The light changed and all their world was bright and glazed as a precious ceramic creation fresh from the firing oven.
The trackers came into camp ten minutes ago. They have found a herd, Johnny broke the silence, and the mood.
Daniel stirred and glanced at him. How many? he asked. About fifty.
That was a good number. They would not be able to process more, for flesh and hide putrefy swiftly in the heat of the valley, and a lower number would not justify all this use of men and-expensive equipment.
Are you sure you want to film this? Johnny asked.
Daniel nodded. I have considered it carefully. To attempt to conceal it would be dishonest. People eat meat and wear leather, but they don't want to see inside the abattoir, Johnny pointed out.
This is a complex and emotional subject we are examining.
People have a right to know. in anyone else I would suspect journalistic sensationalism, Johnny murmured, and Daniel frowned. You are probably the only person I would allow to say that because you know better. Yes, Danny, I know better, Johnny agreed.
You hate this as much as I do, and yet you first taught me the necessity of it.
Let's go to work, Daniel suggested gruffly, and they stood up and walked back in silence to where the trucks were parked.
The camp was astir, and coffee was brewing on the open fire.
The rangers were rolling their blankets and sleeping-bags and checking their rifles.
There were four of them, two black lads and two white, all of them in their twenties. They wore the plain khaki uniform of the Parks Department with green shoulder flashes, and though they handled their weapons with the casual competence of veterans they kept up a cheerful high-spirited banter. Black and white treated each other as comrades, although they were just old enough to have fought in the bush war and had probably been on opposing sides. It always amazed Daniel that so little bitterness remained.
