Bushpigs are not supposed to live on the rocky hillsides. And, unlike the males of Sus scrofa, a boar Potamochoerus usually stays with the sow and her piglets. Of course I understand something of the old boy’s biography: I’ll reckon that his family was scattered or dead, and I know that his on-campus, lowland habitat has been subjected to unprecedented human degradation. Now I’m not going to plead the bushpigs’ case; most folks in Zimbabwe think the country has plenty of ‘em, and so would you if you’d ever tried to stand between a sounder of Potamochoerus and your maize-crop! On the other hand, the plight of Old Bushy is related to my vocational difficulties this semester—and has also forced me into some unfamiliar moral habitat.
Most people in the USA—even wildlife professionals—are unaware that the 20th Century’s most important & innovative game-management strategy (at least for Africa) was developed by a U.Meth missionary. This is Zimbabwe’s Campfire Program, a scheme by which the ForEx derived from high-dollar safari hunting is returned in large part to the local Zimbabweans who share habitat with the trophy animals. The basic principle is called “value-added conservation.” An elephant that’s merely a crop-raider is, economically, little different from a 4-tonne rat. On the other hand, an elephant whose death by Yankee gunfire generates a minimum of $20,000US—well, that elephant is a beast to be cherished. Of course the philosophy underlying “value-added conservation” is not new; it’s been preached as gospel in every US Wildl. Biol. Dept. for more than a generation, and user-pays concepts have been fundamental to American game management for almost a century. The brilliance of Campfire, I’d argue, comes from its U.Meth roots: this is the idea that most of the hunting-dollars should be returned to the people as a coherent community—and that the community-as-stakeholder should be involved at a grass-roots level in deciding how the money is to be made and spent.
I shall refrain from discussing Campfire further, but I must tell you that (although I’d not care to shoot a high-dollar trophy animal) it fits well with my personal, long-held views on conservation. As you must have gathered from reading these blog-entries, I am a Methodist. (I may not be a very good Methodist, and I may not believe everything that Methodists are supposed to believe, and I’m certainly not as decent a person as Methodists are supposed to be. But I am Methodist right to the core: cut me bad, and I’ll bleed Welch’s Grape Juice.) As such, I believe that every person has a fundamental vocation of loving and sharing; that is (ready, Bernie?) the quintessence of the Gospels. It seems to me, however, that the New Testament writers interpreted the life of Jesus for a world that was in its Last Days: with relatively few remaining tomorrows, we should split all of the world’s bounty generously among our brothers and sisters, today. On the other hand, I am 100% convinced that we are not living within the Last Days. (No offense to a legion of former and present students, but if I thought this was the End of Time, I would not be prepping statistics classes!) Therefore, in my opinion, to fulfill the Gospel’s mandate of sharing, we must consider not only persons-living; we must also think about the needs of generations yet unborn. (As a some-time mathematician, I visualize this geometrically: the sharing discussed by the Gospel writers occurs in horizontal dimensions, across space; the sharing discussed by many conservationists occurs in a vertical dimension, across time.) In other words, the gospel of conservation is the gospel of sustainability.
So, all that is vintage-Ab. I know it’s super-simple, but it has always seemed true to me, so I’ve written it & said it & preached it throughout my adult life. However, my comfortable orthodoxy of sustained-yield conservation is not working on the A.U. campus during the last semester of 2007. In the past 50+ days, I have tramped all over this wonderful landscape, spending practically every spare minute afield. And what have I seen? Let me list four activities that currently dominate the “undeveloped” parts of campus. The grasslands have been burned, in part to facilitate hunting. Subsistence gold-panning has increased radically so that the local bottoms of the Mutare River have become a moonscape of exploratory pits. Wildlife snares, targeting critters from twitbirds to bushpigs, have been set throughout the wildest places. And firewood—oh, my gosh, firewood—is being cut and dragged away, tonne upon tonne, every day of the week. I have not had the luxury of gathering quantitative data on these four exploitive practices, but I promise you that they are not sustainable at current levels.
All of this has affected me on personal and vocational levels. A few of you may know Jim Salley, another U.Meth, a South Carolinian from Orangeburg, a home-town graduate of S.C. State. Jim has made it big in life & now works in the U.Meth Nashville Vatican as Director of Development for Africa University. For several years Jim and I have discussed a book about A.U. that somebody needs to write. We’ve envisioned a nice, slick, coffee-table volume, illustrating photographically the natural wonders of the University campus. Ever since I first imagined this book-project, it has been something that I’ve dreamed of doing. In part, this is because I care deeply about the 600ha of Africa where I’m privileged to live. It is a wonderful place, and I’ll describe those wonders a bit more in future blogs. But I’ve also conceived of the campus, biblically, as a City on a Hill, as a potential model for how undeveloped plots of land could serve as refuge-islands in Africa’s increasingly agricultural landscape. I have wanted to create this book more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything else. I’d planned in this book to develop the island-model with pictures and words—and I’d planned to offer this model as a small gift to Africa.
Because I had worked at the University for three previous semesters, and because I’d already begun to chronicle the campus biodiversity, I planned to acquire the photographs for the book in a single semester. (No, I did not really believe that I could accomplish this feat alone. I’ve got some good help here. In December, I’m bringing over GR Davis—who’s already published a similar book—to take command, and I’m begging Terry Ferguson to join in the fun.) To this end, I committed all the personal financial resources that I could muster, and Jim Salley generously committed the resources of the U.Meth Church. But I tell you the truth, folks, this semester it’s been hard going! By luck or persistence I’ve already managed to get a few decent pictures, and things will get easier when the rains come, and I’m definitely thinking of GR as the rescue-cavalry, charging toward Old Mutare. But the campus itself, so generous in previous years, has been very stingy with its treasures in 2007. This, of course, is to be expected: “my” 600ha are just being exploited beyond their ability to be generous.
Please don’t get me wrong, folks; I’m not blaming the exploiters. They are not greedy people; they are not trying to get rich; in today’s hard times they are just trying to stay alive & to keep their families alive. Metaphorically put, while the ship of National Economy has foundered, our A.U. campus has become the local lifeboat! And I am thankful for every blessing the campus has given to the desperate communities of Manicaland—for every guinea-fowl, for every gram of gold, for every stick of Acacia-wood that has cooked a child’s supper. But the current level of exploitation cannot last, and thus it violates Ab’s gospel of sustainability.
I have lain awake some nights, thinking upon these things. I do not know any answers, and that’s a problem because (1) the Ag Dean & the Church will ask me for campus-management recommendations, and (2) GR & I need some philosophical underpinnings if we’re gonna finish the god-dang book. In some later blog entry, I may offer my initial thoughts about campus-management; if so, I’ll beg for your help in clarifying my tenuous ideas. But as I sit at my comfortable desk, high on aspirin and worry, I confess that I’m no longer qualified to preach the easy gospel of sustainability—because I have not followed the hard, hard Gospel of the New Testament.
To complete my confession, let me wrap some flesh around the lifeboat analogy. During the Second World War, the USAT Dorchester was struck by torpedoes in the icy waters off the coast of Greenland. Four U.S. Army chaplains—Dutch Reformed, Jewish, Methodist, and Catholic—were aboard the troopship, and they were tasked with loading the lifeboats, which were of insufficient supply. These four gentlemen were asked to make some tough decisions about who should ride the boats versus who should not. And indeed they did make those tough decisions—but only after they had joyously given up their own tickets to ride.
So anyhow, Mr. Bushpig, I too am confused about this new world. And like you, I’m turning to look back. For me, it's toward America, the Great Lifeboat which I must soon visit. My look is two parts fear & one part hunger.
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