30 Nov 2000 - An account by Dr. Dick Potts, who finds a fertile region for research
Game Conservancy Trust of Great Britain Director General Dr. G.R ‘Dick’ Potts shares impressions he gained and observations he made when he visited us in March 2000
A GREAT UNCLE of mine, an amateur ornithologist, wrote to me regularly from what was then Bechuanaland with all sorts of exciting news about wildlife. In 1949 he learnt of my bird egg collection (!) and sent me an ostrich egg. Ever since then I have wanted to visit South Africa and, through increasing contacts first with the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute, then with Professor Crowe, Rob Little and others, the desire grew and grew.
Finally, I met the redoubtable Brendan O'Keeffe and so it was that my wife and I landed at Johannesburg on 7 March for a three-week tour.
Whisked off to Brendan's Shikari Lodge, we soon saw Natal and Crested francolins and Swainson's spurfowl. Always worried back here that the efforts of the protection organisations, and often the government agencies, amounts to a creeping back door nationalisation of wildlife, I was greatly heartened by the huge efforts made at private game lodges such as Shikari.
Following excellent meetings with Agred in Johannesburg, this was emphasised by our experiences at the Ian Mitchell-Innes farm in Natal where we Saw Shelley's francolin and an excellent system of managing grazing to the benefits both of beef cattle and wildlife.
While taking a breather at Tsitsikamma Lodge we saw a fifth francolin, the fascinating Redwinged.
For us both, however, the real treat of the trip was to see the conservation and wildlife at Black Eagle Lodge. There we first saw the Greywinged francolin that I had read about for 20 years wondering how much different it really was from the grey partridge. The answer is considerably in its feeding habits, but otherwise very similar.
After a wonderful trip along the coast we found Cape spurfowl, including a nice covey in the garden of the greatly lamented Logie Buchanan, and some quite high densities on the coast near Lambert's Bay.
One day we hope to come back and see the Orange River francolin and perhaps even Hartlaub's spurfowl.
They are all wonderful birds for me and it was very timely that we were in Cape Town for the launching of that wonderful book "The Gamebirds of South Africa" by Rob Little, Tim Crowe, illustrated by the incomparable Simon Barlow.
Apart from the sheer beauty of the places we visited, my lasting impression is one of gamebirds no doubt suffering from agriculture, but nevertheless far healthier densities than now exist in Europe. It is obvious that predation control is not so important to the gamebirds of South Africa. Why? It seems to me this is a very fertile region for international research but my first impression is that predation control is not so important where there is a reasonable distribution of the top predators. These (for example the wolf, lynx eagle owl and eagles) are completely absent from most of the game habitats of Europe.
It was interesting, therefore, to hear of attempts to reintroduce leopards and of the much more enlightened view of species such as the Martial eagle than was the case before.
There are indeed some very interesting areas for research here and I am delighted that there is now such co-operation between Agred, WWF, Birdlife South Africa and ourselves. We could all achieve so much together that we will never do independently. Gamebird conservationists really have to get back into the mainstream of conservation and in South Africa more progress has been made in this direction than over here.
So thank you to everyone in Agred and particularly to Brendan and Peter Moses for organising so much, and for making our holiday so useful and enjoyable.
We send every good wish to Agred and hope for a long and fruitful partnership.
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Agred Newsletter Summer 2001 |
