Private Preservation of Wildlife; N. Seijas and F. Vorhies

Watching the giraffes go by in South Africa, it is dangerously easy to forget about apartheid and the ongoing struggle South Africa faces. Only for a moment, that is. The reality of apartheid cannot be ignored, but there are oth er aspects of this turbulent country. And there are valuable lessons to be learned. South Africa's conservation of wildlife teaches one of these lessons. In South Africa, conservation is treated more or less as a business, in which government and the private sector compete. Kruger National Park, a game reserve the size of New Jersey, is owned and run by the South African government. Right on its border is a consortium of 20 smaller game parks, all privately owned. They receive no government funding, and are subject to no specificwildliferegulations. South Africa is a country, one must remem ber, where the sphere of central government is even more vast than it is in the United States.

Such broad political control has been the source of violent conflict for decades. In the Nancy Seijas is a member of the staff of the Free Mar ket Foundation of Southern Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa. Frank Vorhies teaches in the Department of Business Economics at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. case of wildlifeconservation, depoliticization is clearly the solution for South Africa. Privately owned game reserves in South Africa are a model for private sector management of public goods. These 20 private reserves in the lowveld are part of South Africa's eastern Transvaal re gion. Together, they comprise what is known as the SabiSand Wildtuin ("tuin" means "park" in Afrikaans). Among the individual owners, there is competition and sometimes animosity. But there is also order and respect. The parks are separate, but together; they are unified by the rules of their voluntary consortium, and by their reverence for the bush, the patchy foliat ed land of the lowveld. The bush may be the owners' livelihood, but it is also their love.

Back in the 1920s, big game like lion, rhino, and elephant roamed freely across the cattle ranches of the Transvaal Consolidated Lands, another ranch next door called Toulon, and an open stretch of land which was the original Sabi Game Reserve. At that point, the reserve was unoccupied. The Sabi and Sand Rivers ran through it, as did a train line called the Selati Railway. In 1927, a big-game hunter named W. A. Campbell bought several farms near the Sand River. For hunters like Campbell, buying up game-filled land was the only way to secure their sport. If they did not take the land, they knew that sooner or later the government would, for agriculture or for preservation. More and more hunters began to follow suit, and hunting and cattle ranching became the principal occupations in this part of the eastern Transvaal. But by 1934, cattle ranching had 308 THE FREEMAN • AUGUST 1989 fallen into decline; the manager of Transvaal Consolidated Lands died in 1932, and Toulon had closed down. The trend in the area was moving closer and closer toward wildlife preservation, but the big-game hunters still owned a great deal of the land.

The Transvaal Land Owners'Association By the late 1930s, the hunters were looking for some way to cooperate formally, and to keep an eye on the unoccupied land in the area. To this end, they formed the Transvaal Land Owners' Association. When the TLOA started, there were eight member-owners, in cluding the old Transvaal Consolidated Lands. They elected a ranger to preside over the asso ciation, and paid membership dues. Those dues financed projects like fences and efforts to combat disease among the animals. When South African Railways fenced in the Selati line in the 1930s, animals began to get caught in the wire and break through. Conse quently, the TLOA removed the fence. When hoof-and-mouth disease broke out in the area a little later on, the association cooperated again to eradicate it. At one point, the TLOA had to shoot 1,100cattle in a single day. In 1950, the landowners made their last step toward a completely private ownership scheme. They liquidated the TLOA, and creat ed the SabiSand Wildtuin, or SSWT. Campbell became its first president, and served for 12 years until he died in 1962.

Campbell's death marked the end of an era. The image of the "great white hunter" is a car icature in South Africa now, a stereotype that many owners at SabiSand dislike and mock. Some hunting still goes on, but it is very limit ed. Its primary purpose is to finance the main tenance of the parks, through the sale of select ed big game and the meat from more common species. The rules of the day have changed, from hunting wild animals to protecting them. Here is the paradox of the SabiSand Wildtu in: it was born of the self-interest of hunters-white men who killed wild animals for sport and who had the money to buy a place to do so. Self-interest is still the motivat ing force behind the game parks today, but the nature of that interest has changed. Today, the SabiSand park owners want to provide a safe environment for the animals that roam there, and to make money by doing it. Now, it is pro tection of the animals that serves the owners' interests.

In the past, protecting those interests meant openly opposing apartheid. In 1940, the South African government placed two of the farms in the area under the Bantu Trust Act, the legisla tion that created homelands for South African blacks. By the 1960s, about one-third of the SSWT was considered "released area" under Bantu Act legislation. This meant that the cen tral government could seize the land at its dis cretion to create "reserves" for black people. In 1963, the SSWT Executive Committee se cured a verbal agreement from the Minister of Bantu Administration that their land would not be confiscated. Now, the SSWT is relatively free from cen tral government controls. There is a 75-mile fence separating the consortium from Kruger Park, so the SSWT cannot "benefit" from ani mals that would migrate across the borders of Kruger. There are no internal fences between the individual reserves. The wildebeest, warthog, impala, waterbuck, and kudu roam freely over 265 square miles of open land.

Notten'sBushCamp Within this vast tract of land, individuals have separate homesteads. One of those homesteads is Notten's Bush Camp. It is owned by Dedrick and Gillian Notten-"Bam bi" and Gilly to those who visit the camp. Visi tors come to Notten's to experience life in the bush, for a price, of course. The Nottens' 2,OOO-acre"backyard" is their business. The Nottens' land has been in Bambi's fami ly for 20 years. A little over two years ago, Bambi left his job as a builder in Johannes burg, and the Nottens moved to the lowveld permanently. Their two sons are now in board ing schools, and visit the bush every other weekend. Missing her boys is Gilly's only complaint about the move. She would love to have them live at home, but there is no school to which they could commute. And with a full-time famPRIVATE PRESERVATION OF WILDLIFE 309 Off on a run at Notten's Bush Camp. ily, Bambi and Gilly couldn't run Notten's Bush Camp in the way they do.

The Nottens' guests do not just visit a game reserve. They enter Bambi and Gilly's home; they get to know the Nottens and their life. They watch their hosts experience the same wonder·and joy at the wild animals of the bush, as if the Nottens themselves were first-time vis itors. When Gilly tells stories of Johannesburg on the veranda, glancing over her shoulder at the land stretching out behind her, she just smiles. "The bush," she says, and pauses. That's her full answer to why she moved to the lowveld. "The simple life of the bush." A typical day in that life starts at about 5 A.M., with tea and coffee in the "boma." The boma is a tall, maybe eight-foot circular wall, made of tied bamboo and reeds. It encloses a small area where the Nottens cook for their visitors, with a shallow pit in the center for hot embers, and a stone-and-mortar barbecue off to one side. There is no electricity at the camp, and only a small kitchen, so the boma sees a lot of use. Gilly and Bambi have a small boma of their own, attached to their private cottage.

After tea, Bambi takes the guests out for a "game run." Not only do the Nottens run their business out of their home, but Bambi drives their guests around the reserve in his car. It is a big green open-air Land-Rover, which Bambi occasionally takes on the highway to Johannes burg. It seats eight-that is all the Nottens will accommodate at their camp at one time. They are unique in this respect. The neighboring parks, like MalaMala and Londolozi, are much more "booming" businesses, with lavish hotel accommodations, fleets of Land-Rovers, and higher per-day prices. A game run with Bambi is simply a drive through the bush, occasionally on the dirt roads and paths through the Nottens' land. Much of the time, Bambi just drives through the wilderness. With no fences, there is nothing "protecting" the visitors but their particularly human sound, look, and smell. However, that is no protection from a lion, an elephant, or especially-a hippopotamus. If the lion is king of the jungle, the hippo is the grouch; it has a nasty disposition, and tourists have much more to fear from a disgruntled hippo than any other animal in the bush, lion included.

On all game runs, Bambi carries two things: a gun and a golf putter. The former, for protec tion; the latter, he says, just for walking. One suspects, however, that it is the other way around. To hear Bambi talk of the animals of the bush, and to see him identify the tiniest bird in the farthest tree, it is difficult to imag310 THE FREEMAN • AUGUST 1989 ine that reaching for his gun would be his re flex reaction to danger. Of course, Bambi would shoot an oncoming hippo, or lion, or rhinoceros if he were sure it was endangering the lives of his visitors. But after spending just a day or so with Bambi, one can't help thinking he just might reach for the putter first, and the gun second. The Nottens are a unique couple. Bambi is not at all what his nickname would imply to Americans. He is a tall, burly man, with shaggy dark hair and a booming voice. Golf putter in hand, he strides through the bush, describing in detail the plants, the sounds, and the smell~.

One night, he spent 20 minutes studying a spi der ensnaring a moth in her web, and giving blow-by-blowcommentary to the visitors. Gilly is equally fascinated with the bush. She will drive into the bush by herself, for peace and serenity among wild animals. Gillian Not ten is the only woman in all the 20 private re serves who will venture into the bush alone, and take guests out herself. Occasionally on the game runs, the Nottens will run into other Land-Rovers from neigh boring reserves. The larger reserves in the con sortium send out rovers to spot a pride of lions or family of cheetahs, and then radio back their location to the camp. If there are chee tahs in the area, MalaMala and Londolozi are sure to know. According to Bambi, it is not often that three or four Land-Rovers pull up to the same spot, as quietly as four Land-Rovers can, to stare at a family of leopards or a herd of zebra.