Sonny Mowbray’s Black Lechwe from Bangweulu

Think ‘Bangweulu Swamps’ - and the spectacular black lechwe antelope, which occurs in large numbers only in this area of Africa, comes to mind.

Population estimates vary according to the date and source.  I’m sceptical of the figure of 30,000 black lechwe reported in one publication; my own guess, based on what I saw there, is closer to 5,000 to 7,000. We also viewed 1,500 tsessebe – my estimate again – which may be one of the largest remaining herds in Africa of this species.  These are still mighty impressive numbers! In the local language ‘chikuni’ means a large herd of animals and, with some searching, that’s exactly what you’ll find in Bangweulu.

During the October dry season, each day we put 50 to 60 km on the 4x4.  The rains were due to start before too many weeks passed, and we had lightning and thunder several evenings.  Much of the area had already been burnt, but fires lit up the sky at night, and we saw smoke on the horizon during the day.  In some ways, the Bangweulu swamps reminded me of the Florida Everglades, as most of the area we drove would have 6 to12 inches of water during the wet season.  There were scattered island ‘hammocks’ with palms similar to the Florida cabbage palm.  Even here there seemed to be a problem with ‘exotics,’ as there were eucalyptus trees, probably introduced from Australia. I was not familiar with most of the other species of trees, and the folks I was with did not know an English name for them. 

Some of the ‘islands’ were actually termite mounds that created an elevation higher than the surrounding ground.  The locals build grass fishing huts on some of them and move to them when the water and fish return. They dig extensive, low-level dykes to impound the water to make for more efficient fishing, but what manual labour to dig all those miles of dykes by hand!  These dykes also make travel by 4x4 slow and tedious. We saw a black lechwe with a broken leg and surmised that he broke it jumping over one. We were told that when the fishermen move in, the wildlife moves out into the open – including the crocs that every year kill several natives. “That’s the way it is,” they said.
       
We also saw oribi, reedbuck, duiker, jackal, and a pair of hyena that trotted off very casually, stopping occasionally to look back at us.  More rarely we saw elephant and buffalo whose dried tracks also made for hazardous travel. The permanent swamps on the fringes harboured hippo, crocodile, and the elusive sitatunga.

Bangweulu is also renowned for its some 200 species of birdlife, including the shoebill stork; some say only 1,500 individuals of this species are left in all Africa, and thus this area deserves special protection. None of the locals would tell me how these ‘whale-headed’ storks taste, which is a running joke with our wood storks in Florida. I smiled when two flew past us – there is no mistaking that bird – and added them to my ‘life list.’

I wish I could have identified all the birds I saw.  We did have black kites that appeared tame flying around our camp so much, and saw wattled crane, which only occur here and on the Kafue Flats in such large groups. 

Yes, I collected my black lechwe.  It was mostly a matter of selecting one with a good spread and long horns, then keeping an eye on him while trying to get a clear shot; easier said than done.  They move almost continuously, changing positions in the herd, and just do not hold still for you. I took him on the move with a 7x57 but, like most African game, it just didn’t ‘crumple,’ even though my shot placement was dead on target.  He ran into the middle of the herd, but was left behind when he did go down when the herd moved on.

Black lechwe are not black but dark brown, although this one – with 24-inch horns – was darker than many of the other males in the bachelor herd he was travelling with. We immediately loaded him into the vehicle and headed for camp to start skinning, as the heat of the day was building and a watery mirage could be seen in the distance.

Hunting oribi here – after some heavy duty negotiating for a permit – also provided me with a learning experience. We’d seen the reddish coats mostly in the short grass, either bouncing away or lying down. The ewes seem hidden and lie completely still.  I was told one usually sees them in pairs, but we had difficulty finding a nice male.  After driving by ewes that did not even get up but just watched as we passed by, we finally spotted a pair with a male sporting 5-inch horns, by the scout’s estimate. When he finally stood still long enough for me to get a shot, the estimate proved accurate.

As in much of Africa, corruption, graft, and poaching here is a major problem, and the game guards carrying the AK-47s are rumoured to be as much of a problem as the poachers themselves. One local rancher told us he picks up hundreds of snares on his ranch, and the locals just keep putting out more.  The game guards told us the locals only have shotguns to poach with and thus cripple more animals than they kill, and we saw several limping or sickly looking animals. The real problem, as elsewhere in Africa, is too many people and too little land.  In only a few short years, the human population around the Kafue Flats has gone from 5,000 to approaching 100,000.

For the sake of mankind, I hope the Bangweulu and places like it, will still have wildlife in the future. Proper management would be far more valuable to Zambia than the carnage, wastefulness, and mismanagement that are going on in so many places now.  From the air, we spotted three rotting elephant carcasses not too far from camp; the small ivory had not even been taken from one.  The camp manager figured it had wandered off to die from a belly wound.  Elephants are closed to hunting in Zambia at this time, which is ironic, because in several national parks there are too many elephants, and they are destroying their own habitat.

After spending four months and covering 9,000 km in a vehicle, I believe there is too little respect for wildlife in much of Zambia. Some of the country’s prime game areas of the past are now devoid of wildlife. Ranchers and private landowners are fighting proposed legislation that would allow the government to tax the wild animals on their property as another source of revenue, which could be devastating for wildlife. Once one of the richest countries in Africa, like neighbouring Zimbabwe, today they are both amongst the poorest. Financial aid is not the solution, but now we have strayed into a totally new topic...

One can only wonder what the future holds for one of the last, truly wild and best hunting destinations in Africa.

American Sonny Mowbray is a wildlife biologist by advocacy and an outdoor writer – and hunter - by avocation. Environmentalists around the world have read his articles on conservation.