Angola’s Nearly Fallen Eden
The Battle to Resurrect a Nation’s Wildlife BY PETER ROTHPLETZ
HUNTLEY CAN’T help but remember his first conservation expedition to Angola in September 1971. He and his partners—hired as state ecologists—were stationed in an abandoned restaurant that overlooked the Cuanza floodplains. Every morning, he would look out from the building’s veranda and watch herds of elephant, red buffalo, and bushbuck graze on the miles of swamp grasses below. These vistas don’t exist anymore. Instead, in Huntley’s most recent book, Wildlife at War in Angola, the South African biodiversity consultant solemnly describes a landscape teetering on the brink of ecological ruin—a nearly fallen Eden. Rusting tanks and live landmines litter the bush, serving as grave markers for the BRIAN
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species that have been hunted to local extinction. The country is at a crossroads, grappling with competing calls to preserve cultural tradition, intensify economic development, and save the few animals that remain within its borders. “Since 1975, most, if not all populations of large mammals have been severely reduced, if not eliminated,” Huntley explained in an advance copy of his book provided to The Politic. “Wholesale slaughter of elephant, rhino, eland, roan, oryx, springbok, zebra, bushbuck, reedbuck, lechwe and many other species occurred in all parks and reserves.” Huntley is not alone in noting Angola’s decimated wildlife. But decades of proxy war and civil conflict
have all but prevented conservation groups from accurately assessing conditions on the ground. That is, until recently. Last July, the Associated Press published a story detailing the conclusions of a pair of research surveys launched by National Geographic and Panthera, a New York-based big cat preservation group. Their findings confirmed Huntley’s fears. “The common ungulates are largely thinned out,” Dr. Paul Funston, Panthera’s senior director, stated grimly in an interview with The Politic. “All the wildebeest, all the buffalo are almost non-existent, and once those prey animals disappear, the lions and hyenas tend to blink out quite quickly. The situation is not good.”
