Arusha Conference

This was most noticeable at the famous Arusha Conference of 1961. All manner of distinguished conservationists were at this northern Tanganyikan town, wringing their hands at the presumed fate of Africa's wildlife when the Africans of Africa gained their independence. (Somehow forgetting that the huge herds which so impressed the early European arrivals had been living in partnership with Africans for centuries.)

Hugh acted as tour leader when the Arusha delegates visited Manyara, Ngorongoro, and Serengeti for, as it were, a final look at the animal treasure house about to be dismembered. At one point, they stood around a dead rhino which had been speared by Maasai. The gloom was considerable but Hugh was enthused. He was eager for the future, knowing that the past - with Africans resentful that their big game had become big business for foreigners - had been none too perfect.

The postscript to our journey was the Arusha Conference held in Tanganyika in the September of the following year. The Conference on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in Modern African States, to give it its full title, was the first international conference on wild life conservation to be held in Africa. Its high point was the Arusha Declaration.

Part of our time [at the Arusha Conference] was devoted to finding out whether the terrible drought of 1961 was the final culmination of a long destructive process of habitat damage by the Masai, or a recurrent phenomenon of the Tanganyika climate. Both conclusions it appeared, were true. Eventually one elder recalled that the streams had failed once before in tribal memory, about forty-five years ago. On the other hand Professor Pearsall soon made it clear that there had also been a serious deterioration of the habitat.

I should recall that in 1956, as a result of the Tanganyika Government's inept handling of the problem, Pearsall had been commissioned by the Fauna Preservation Society in Britain to examine the entire problem of the Serengeti National Park area, including Ngorongoro and the rest of the Crater Highlands; and as a result the government was impelled to set up a high-powered Commission of Enquiry and eventually to establish the Conservation Authority. Here was a first class ecological mind, backed by first-hand local experience.