The Plight of the Bushbucks: Losing By Conserving – Part 1

“Why do you call them, ‘Nyala Gardens’, Julian?” My PH smiled and said, “You’ll see.” Later as I crouched next to Julian and our two Sena Trackers, Fernando and Dolish, watching the Nyala bull, cow and their two ‘kids’, a new calf, and a yearling, I started to get it. We had already stalked past 20 some odd of these beautiful antelopes, mostly cows and their calves, but also beautiful bulls with the magnificent orange legs, gray-brown bodies, vertical white side-stripes from belly-to-backline, long snow-white dorsal crests and lovely bell-shaped horns ending in ivory tips. None of the bulls seen measured up to Julian’s standards – 28 inches or better along the outside curve of the spiral horn – but I wasn’t minding the lack of a shot. It was breathtaking to be in the presence of so many Nyalas, some not more than 10 yards from where we crouched with binoculars raised to our eyes. I didn’t want the hunt to end.

            We never did find an Nyala trophy, in an Nyala Garden, satisfying my PH’s strict requirements. But, the Gardens always had tens to hundreds of their namesakes; feeding through the clearings, browsing on the branches of shrubs and trees and, when we weren’t careful enough in our movements, rocketing through open spaces and disappearing into the forested margins. As we drove away from this first of my Nyala Garden experiences, I mentioned to Julian that I was surprised we had not seen the other spiral-horned species that preferred the same type of habitat, Chobe Bushbucks. Julian stated flatly “The Nyalas are much better competitors and the Bushbuck numbers are way down.” We did see, or hear the alarm bark from, the occasional Bushbuck while creeping through the Gardens, but those were rare encounters compared to the herds of Nyalas.

OK, so I’ll admit being a bit skeptical about Nyalas causing declines in Coutada 11’s Chobe Bushbuck populations. This was a tropical paradise with, to my eye, food enough for all the browsers and grazers. As a scientist, I knew better than to fall into the logical, intuitive trap set by my own ignorance. I fell in anyway. The only way out was to observe Coutada 11, survey more PHs and scientists working in the concession, and dig into the scientific and wildlife management literature. Before you despair, I’m not going to recite tons of undigested data, but there are some cool observations that even scientists occasionally stumble over and report. Trust me, I’m a professional scientist and know of what I speak – often, we must stumble over interesting findings before we see them…

Professional Hunter, Dylan Holmes, provided the next brick in the wall of my education about the impact of Nyala overpopulation. The instruction came on my second Safari in Coutada 11. Dylan and I were not hunting Nyalas, but instead searched for one of the Chobe Bushbuck rams. The rams possess beautiful red-brown hides dotted with white markings on rumps, and an Nyala-like crest of long cream-colored hairs running from tail to neck. Driving across one of the many open Pans, my PH pointed to the edge of the rapidly approaching forest. I thought Dylan was trying to get me to see an animal, but that was not the case. Pointing he asked “Do you see how all the trees are bare of leaves up to about the head height of a very tall person?” With that, I stopped squinting into the shadows, looking for an animal shape, instead broadening my gaze to take in the treeline. Sure enough, each tree and large bush looked like someone had gone through with electric hedge clippers, leaving a horizontal line of vegetation beginning at about 7 feet off the ground. I hazarded a guess, “Nyalas?” Dylan nodded and once at the forest edge, brought the Land Cruiser to a stop to let me look more closely at the browse-line. The trees weren’t just missing a few leaves, the lower branches were completely bare. “Our Bushbucks are in trouble from all the Nyalas. It’s not that adult Bushbucks can’t reach nearly as high into the trees as an Nyala, it’s that they don’t get to the browse before the greater numbers of Nyalas strip it clean.” The addition of an exclamation point to this lesson happened as we rounded the curve into the forest; a cow Nyala stood at attention, flanked by three generations of calves and a mature bull…