February 15-28, 1999
By Jack Shepherd FSP, Director

The final field research project took place in South Africa. The Dartmouth students and FSP directors flew from Harare to Johannesburg -- which was actually cheaper than riding 16 hours on a bus -- and were met at the airport by Prof. Albert van Jaarsveld, Chair of the Department of Zoology and Entomology at the University of Pretoria and the new Director of the Center for Environmental Studies, also at U of P. We all loaded into two vans and two 4x4 vehicles and off we went.

Since the Africa FSP is a regional program, one of our tasks was to compare the two "Jewels in the Crown" of the region: Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe (where we spent time in early February) and Kruger National Park, one of the premier parks in Africa, in South Africa. In Kruger, we camped at two locations and spent much of our five days on game drives, hearing lectures by the park's research scientists, and in conducting interviews and research. Kruger is one of the few national parks in Africa -- not just South Africa -- that makes a profit. This is shared with the other South African parks and supports both wildlife management and conservation research in those parks. But Kruger, as we all saw, pays a price: its roads are paved and visitors live in fenced-in campgrounds with rondovals and hot showers. Tourists are also brought in by large air-conditioned buses. Compared to Hwange, we (in our 4x4s and vans) felt removed from the wildlife experience found in Zimbabwe. That said -- we weren't quite removed, as one of the students discovered during a night-time plenary session around the camp fire. She was interrupted in her research presentation by the screams of baboons being attacked by a leopard across the river outside our campsite!

We also took time to go out on a night game drive and to study the night sky in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost all of us can now identify the Southern Cross and find "due south" much as we know the Big Dipper and can find the North Star. We're also getting used to the "summer" sun rising and tracking across the north, from which (in this hemisphere) comes our warm days.

From Kruger we went on to Badplaas, a warm-springs town near Swaziland. On the way out of Kruger, however, we paused to watch a leopard up in a tree. It was straddling a large limb, legs limp on either side of the branch with its tail hanging down, head on a paw, sound asleep.

At Badplaas, we undertook some field research on grassland fragmentation and the impact of tree farming (a large industry in South Africa) on small rodents. Some of the students and one of the directors also laid field traps for mice to count rodents in a grassland ecology. From Badplaas we went to the coast and the students got their first swims in the Indian Ocean. The beaches here are pure white sand and the water is aqua-blue. Our tasks here were to observe and understand the coastal ecology, especially the interplay between the sand forests, wildlife (especially elephants) and the local indigenous communities. I must admit that one of the restful highlights, after nights of tenting, came at Blackrock Beach -- an empty crescent beach about a mile long, white sand, blue sea, black rock outcropping -- and a cove full of porpoises, a sting ray, and rocks covered with varieties of crabs.

From the coast, where we also observed indigenous fishermen fishing with spears in stick enclosures, we traveled to Tembe Elephant Park and on to Ndumo NP along the South Africa-Mozambique border, to observe elephant habitat and to study the impact of tourism on wildlife management in very small parks. Our last student-run plenary started in a swimming pool in Ndumo under the full African moon and ended in a barbecue of nyala and beefsteak (vegetarians also had excellent choices) with a serious discussion about the parks, indigenous peoples, wildlife management issues and politics of Southern Africa.

After two weeks in tents in South Africa, the students are now at work on their ENVS 84 paper. They have organized themselves into sub-teams of about four people each and are completing their research and starting their writing. The Dartmouth Center in Harare is abuzz with them; some are staying overnight there to complete their work. Our thank-you party for the Harare homestay Moms and Dads is Saturday night (130 guests including Dartmouth students and Ross Virginia, ENVS Chair). We leave for Great Zimbabwe on Thursday (11 March) for a night there and our final farewell party and discussion. The program ends on 14 March, although most of the students will stay in Southern Africa for internships and/or traveling before returning to Hanover.

Jack Shepherd

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