The Modernization of Conservation and Apocalyptic Future Visions of Wildlife in the 1960s
After the Second World War, colonial politics pertaining to conservation changed, and protected areas expanded across the continent. Neumann (2002) argues that four global trends were conducive to the rapid expansion of protected areas after the Second World War: (1) the British post-war colonial development and modernization agenda for Africa, (2) the rising significance of the sciences and experts in the management of natural resources, particularly in wildlife management, (3) the expansion of international air travel, making tourism possible at an international scale, and (4) the emergence and increasing financial and scientific power of international conservation organizations (Neumann 2002: 23).
But why did the trend towards the establishment of more protected areas continue unabated after the early 1960s, when most African states became independent? While in the 1950s many African nationalist movements had promised to eliminate colonial wildlife laws (Gibson 1999: 11), by the early 1960s many African leaders had endorsed a conservationist agenda and had coupled it with visions of economic growth, development and poverty eradication. Matheka (2008a, 2008b) and Neumann (2002) describe the spectacular spread of protected areas and the transition from earlier preservationist ideas to the ideas of rational use of wildlife propagated by an international conservationist lobby since the late 1940s.
After the Second World War the Society for the Protection of the Fauna of the Empire progressively gained influence on the British Government through intense lobbying and the framing of conservation as an act of state-led modernization (Neumann 2002: 30–2). In the late 1940s, the Colonial Office adopted a determined conservationist agenda, against the distinct wish of some regional administrations in Africa. Wildlife biologists and ecologists, many of them from the United States, argued for a clear separation of agriculturally used lands and protected areas, and from the late 1950s ‘most existing and all subsequent national parks in East and Central Africa banned human settlement altogether … Mass evictions became a key management strategy in the new national parks’ (Neumann 2002: 34). Lekan (2020) shows for the Tanzanian case how German zoologist Bernhard Grzimek succeeded in convincing Julius
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Map 7.1. Protected Areas on the African continent [Cartography: H. P. Vehrs].
1 In our analysis 2063 protected areas (out of 8400) were without record of year in the UNEP-WCMC database; 6337 records were included and arranged in four classes.Nyerere, the incoming President of an independent Tanzania (or Tanganyika at that time) to expand conservation areas in order to protect a global heritage area, ‘the Serengeti’, and thereby pave the way for high numbers of Western tourists projected to be flocking to Tanzania’s national parks. Bernhard and his son Michael Grzimek’s 1959 Oscar-winning film ‘The Serengeti Shall Not Die’ argued that ‘the Serengeti could only be saved by removing Africans from this paradise’ (Lekan 2020: 6). The Grzimeks’ account was grim and pointed to the immediate threat to wildlife and alleged wildernesses, as did other media accounts, such as the UNESCO Courier (1967, 1969, 1973). The narrative followed the argument that the rapidly expanding African population, the trend towards sedentarization and agriculture in pastoral societies and the commodification and globalization of wildlife-based trade (e.g. trade in hides and skins, trade in ivory) would soon destroy species and ecosystems, if draconian measures were not taken.
There was much concern over whether newly instituted African governments in 1960s would endorse British or international conservationist agendas, and the likelihood that ‘national parks would be de-designated en masse’ (Burnett and Conover 1989: 252) was intensively discussed. In response to these anxieties the IUCN formed the ‘African Special Project’ in 1960, in an attempt to reach African leaders in the run-up to independence and to gain continued support for conservationist programmes.
Reports on the impending collapse of wildlife populations were one pillar of the argument for the expansion of protected areas. The second pillar consisted of broadly positive projections about the economic contribution of protected areas to national economies and local livelihoods. We will first try to gain a better understanding of the first argument. The large institutions that had emerged in the post-war period, such as IUCN or UNESCO, played a key role in promulgating the narrative of an intense threat to a precious and irreplaceable part of our natural heritage. Julian Huxley, biologist, secretary of the Zoological Society of London, then first Director of UNESCO and founding member of the World Wildlife Fund in 1961, formulated in drastic terms what was at stake:
The future of African wild life is bound up with that of the conservation of natural resources. Both are now in the balance. The next five or at most ten years will be decisive in determining whether they are headed downhill towards a point of no return, or set on the upward path of beneficial development. (Huxley 1961: 8)
But, Huxley continued to explain, conservation of wildlife was not only about the maintenance of heritage, it was also about unleashing an economic potential of considerable significance:
Wild life in Africa as a resource may be summed up in the phrase Profit, Protein, Pride and Prestige, with enjoyment and scientific interest thrown in. It can yield Profit from tourist revenue, sales of meat and trophies, and Protein from game-cropping schemes; it can be a source of local Pride and of international Prestige; while its importance as a source of scientific knowledge is very great. The best way of realizing its exceptional enjoyment value is by means of National Parks. (Huxley 1961: 13)
A flurry of international conferences on wildlife and conservation in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s into the early 1960s affected the handling of conservation during the last decade of colonial administration and the first decade of independence. Conservation in Africa was well on the way to becoming an international concern, involving a multitude of stakeholders on the one hand and potential funders on the other whereas previously colonial administrations had dominated decision making pertaining to wildlife. In 1953 an international conference in Bukavu convened by the Commission for Technical Cooperation in Africa South of the Sahara (CCTA) and the government of the Belgian Congo, with the participation of UNESCO, IUCN, ICBP (International Council for Bird Preservation), and the Scientific Council of Africa (CSA) demanded a number of changes to the London Convention of 1933. It particularly raised the point that conservation had to play a role in development.
A number of further conferences across the continent followed (Curry-Lindahl 1969: 116–8). One essential step for a true overhaul of the 1933 Convention was the 1961 Arusha conference on Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources on Modern African States organized by IUCN and CCTA with the participation of UNESCO and FAO. The conference was attended by 140 participants from 21 African and six non-African states, and five international organizations. The goals for this essential conference were elaborated by Richard Turnbull, the outgoing Governor of Tanganyika. He summarized (IUCN 1963: 14) that (a) governments will need wildlife and wildernesses as a source of revenue and that therefore wildlife needs to be ‘exploited rationally’ as the best form of land use in many settings, (b) that the support of the rural population was essential and that public opinion needed to be convinced of the manifold benefits of conservation and the value of this ‘special African heritage’, and (c) international aid was needed ‘if the world wished to see Africa’s unique fauna preserved’ (IUCN 1963: 14).
During the course of the Arusha conference, the WWF (the World Wildlife Fund, today the World Wide Fund for Nature) was founded as a financially strong body to support IUCN’s conservation agenda and wildlife protection in emergent nations of the Global South. The founding members of the WWF read like a list of the wealthiest privateers of the Global North and from the (former) colonies. European nobles, Western industrialists, and also South African elites were involved (Meyer 2017).
Throughout the 1960s, further conferences took place to translate the Arusha Manifesto into a convention of independent African states. At times FAO and IUCN competed with different versions of a convention (as vividly summarized by Curry-Lindahl, at that time advisor to the IUCN), before the African Union then gave the mandate to the IUCN. The Convention agreed upon in 1968 in an Algiers meeting of the organization, then, rather stood at the end of a period of rapid expansion of protected areas and the internationalization of wildlife conservation particularly in Eastern and Southern Africa. In the preamble to the convention the heads of state emphasized their hopes in the future of conservation for their nations.