The Eye of the Elephant

by Mark James Owens

  Determined to reach this vale, we have hiked from camp along the Lubonga for two days through mist and torrential downpours. By keeping records of the species of wildlife and plants we encounter in each habitat, we begin to understand the flux and flow among the plant and animal communities in the valley. Thinking that we would easily make it today, we have walked until late afternoon along the Lubonga. But from the base of the last rock outcropping between us and Hidden Valley, we can see that the route is more formidable than we thought from the air. Night will fall before we reach our destination.

  "Okay, this is a great spot to camp," I agree, looking around at the lush plain that stretches to the small mountain. The Lubonga, in full flood, rushes through the narrow canyon and then meanders across the soggy bottomland. I lift the heavy backpack from my shoulders and ease it to the ground.

  "Look—buffalo?" Kasokola points northwest toward a low stand of Combretum trees. Stooping over, Mark and I look under the scattered trees to see three hundred buffalo milling about in the mist, not a hundred yards from us. Some are bedding down in the soft grass for the night; others continue to graze toward us. Apparently they have not seen or smelled us, and as we set up our little fly-camp, some of the herd wander still closer, grunting and mooing until at last they lie down, very near our camp.

  As Mark pulls the tent's guy rope, he looks over his shoulder, then points to the buffalo. We all stop in our tracks. A few large females have stood up and are blowing their alarm call as they stare at us. Suddenly the entire herd are on their feet. Blocked by the ridge, the river, and the steep canyon walls, they have nowhere to go except in our direction. Their feet sloshing in the soggy ground, they stampede past our campsite, then disappear in the gray swirling mist.

  Up before the sun, we break camp and walk to the gorge. Our plan is to follow the river through the canyon to Hidden Valley on the other side of the four-hundred-foot ridge. But the river is so high that it crashes against the steep walls, leaving no space for hiking. We will have to climb over the ridge.

  Following an elephant trail up the hillside, we pause here and there to clip samples from towering trees and tropical undergrowth for our plant presses. Water from the leaves drips down my neck, and my last pair of dry socks is soaked. When we reach the top, Hidden Valley, nestled in its own secret hills, lies quietly below us. Shrouded in a veil of mist, giant trees and bamboo line the tiny, grassy valley—only a few hundred yards wide. The Lubonga snakes gently through the marshy bottomland, and small herds of puku, buffalo, and waterbuck graze the lush, green foliage on the banks.

  For the next two days we trek through the lofty forests and across the small dambos—sunken, grassy glades—recording animal and plant life. We see tracks of the rare sable antelope and come upon a family of wild pigs digging for roots. Elephant paths worn inches deep in the hard gravel of the ridges suggest that they have been traveled for centuries by generations of pachyderms winding around the hillsides.

  One afternoon, leaving the Bembas in our little fly-camp, Mark and I follow the meandering Lubonga through Hidden Valley. We cross the meadow and follow the river up to where it springs from the hills. Here the heads of the tall elephant grass rustle as we pass, and in the distance the scarp mountains brood. We step into a small, marshy clearing and pause to watch two male puku sparring across the river.

  Suddenly the long grass between us and the river moves and warns us of something big, bold, and bulky.

  "Buffalo!" Mark whispers, pulling me behind him and raising his rifle. A huge bull staggers out of a reed-filled dambo only fifteen yards ahead, his hooves sucking loudly in the mud. He pauses, lifts his head, and stares in our direction, nostrils flaring, a bunch of grass sticking out of his mouth.

  "Freeze," Mark whispers to me, thumbing the .375 rifle's safety off. The bull lowers his head and starts toward us like a Mack truck, his horns swinging from side to side. He is looking directly at us, but—incredibly—does not seem to see or smell us. At only ten yards away, he stops again and raises his massive head to scrutinize us, blowing puffs of air as he tries to take our scent. Lone bulls can be extremely aggressive and often attack With no apparent provocation. Turning my head carefully, I see a tall winter-thorn acacia tree forty yards behind me.

  "Mark," I whisper between clenched teeth. "I'm going to run to that tree."

  "No! Don't move!"

  The buffalo raises and lowers his head, as if straining to make out the two forms standing in front of him. It is said that buffalo cannot see very well, but he can't possibly miss us at this distance. Holding his head at full height, the buffalo starts toward us again. This close, he is going to be very unhappy when he discovers us. I take a tiny step backward.

  "FREEZE!" Mark hisses. The bull stops, shaking his head.

  "I AM RUNNING TO THAT TREE!" I hiss back.

  Without moving his lips, Mark vows, "If you move, I'm going to shoot you in the back!" I pause, considering my options.

  Eight yards away the bull is raising and lowering his heavy black boss, and again blowing air through his wide nostrils. It's too late to run. I couldn't make it to the tree anyway, with my knees shaking like this. Slinging saliva and grass stems, the buffalo shakes his head and grunts. He stomps and rakes his right hoof. A dank, musky odor lies heavy on the air. Lowering his nose to the grass, he smells along the ground and begins walking again in our direction. After a few more steps he looks directly at me, drool falling from his mouth. Once again he tosses his head.

  He turns slightly, then step by step walks right past us until he enters the tall reeds on the other side of the clearing.

  When he is out of sight, Mark turns to me and grins. "See, it's okay."

  Sitting down heavily on a log, I ask, "Would you really have shot me in the back?"

  Mark smiles and sits next to me. "You'll never know."

  On our last day in Hidden Valley, we hike with Kasokola, Mwamba, and Simbeye up into the mountains. Believing that we are the first people to explore this little corner of earth keeps us cheery and warm in spite of the constant drizzle.

  But then we come upon a well-used footpath leading down from the scarp mountains to the valley. "Poachers," Mwamba says. Walking silently, we follow its switchbacks across the hills. Periodically there are clearings and old campfires, and occasionally large meat racks and piles of discarded bones. The path has been used regularly for years by large bands of commercial poachers.

  We tell ourselves not to be discouraged; after all, we know that poachers hunt in North Luangwa. Even so, our hike to Hidden Valley has taught us that this is a very special place, and even more worth saving than we had believed before.

  The stall warning blares constantly as the plane shudders and shakes, trying to maintain altitude. We are flying our first wildlife census of North Luangwa, which requires that we hold an airspeed of eighty knots at two hundred feet above the ground, along transect lines running approximately east and west across the park. Because of crosswinds and thermal air currents, it isn't easy to hold a precise heading, airspeed, and height above the ground, even over the relatively flat floor of the river valley. We have divided the park into sixty-five grids, and as we fly along we use tape recorders and a stopwatch to record the species of wildlife, the habitat type, and the exact time, which will later be computed against our airspeed to give us a rough grid position for the animals sighted. From these data we will calculate the distribution and density of the animal populations.

  But the mountains of the Muchinga Escarpment cut a jagged line across the park, jutting more than three thousand feet from the valley floor in a series of ever steeper hills, deeper gorges, and higher cliffs. No matter how rugged the terrain, for purposes of the survey we must maintain a constant height above the ground. When we reach the first foothills, Mark pulls up the plane's nose and pushes in the throttle to climb over the first range of hills. But as soon as we have crested them, he hauls back on the throttle, drops flaps, and we sink into the next narrow valley. We
level off, and before our stomachs can come down, a rocky precipice stares us in the face and we are climbing again. At the top of the next ridge, the earth plunges away to a seemingly bottomless ravine, then soars again to new heights. Mark pushes the stick forward and the plane dives through the gorge toward what looks like the center of the earth.

  Under these conditions we cannot possibly maintain two hundred feet, and at times the wings slice within feet of massive trees and boulders. I try to concentrate: "5 buffalo, 10:25, brachystegia woodland; 3 wild pigs, 10:44, upland mopane." But more than once I close my eyes as the plane tries to scale a rocky cliff. The mountains stretch for more than thirty miles across the park and we must fly across them thirty-two times. The stall warning sounds continuously and the plane barely maintains altitude. I glance at Mark. Beads of sweat glisten on his forehead, and his hands strangle the stick as he fights the downdrafts and swirling air currents. I think we must have reached the top; but as I dare to look up, the tallest peak yet fills the plane's windshield.

  Mark stomps left rudder and turns the plane away from the mountain. Gliding at a safe height above the ridges he flies us back to camp and lands on the airstrip. I step out on wobbly knees and control an urge to kiss the ground.

  "Okay, that's just not safe," Mark says. In all our years together, I have never heard him say these words. I lean against the fuselage while he spreads the maps across the plane's tail. "This is what we'll do," he says. "Instead of flying east and west across the scarp, we'll fly northeast and southwest along it, and sample it independently of the valley floor. The peaks and valleys won't be as severe that way. As long as we design the transect lines correctly, we'll cover the same ground and not distort the data."

  After redrawing the lines and calculating the new headings, we take off again. True, the ups and downs above the jagged earth are not as severe flying along the scarp, but the plane still struggles to fly and I still struggle to keep my eyes open. But "scarping," as we have come to call it, is worth it. The soaring forested peaks surround not only fall-away canyons but soft grassy glades and mountain streams. We see a herd of sable galloping through a meadow and a family of elephants walking on an ancient path through the hills. A leopard balances on top of a termite mound as he watches us pass. With each transect line, each hilltop and dale, we learn more about Luangwa.

  In late February there is an unusual break in the rains. The ground dries up a bit, and we are determined to cut a track across the park to the plains that parallel the Luangwa for miles. From the air we have seen more wildlife on these seemingly endless savannas during the rainy season than anywhere else in Africa.

  We fly from camp on the Lubonga River, past Mvumvwe Hill and all the way to the Luangwa, searching for the route with the easiest stream crossings and the lowest hills. Once we have decided on a general route, Kasokola, Mwamba, Simbeye, and I drive out and cut our way across the bush the best we can. Periodically Mark flies overhead and gives us detailed instructions by radio.

  "Delia, you're heading too far north, you're going to run into a gully. Pull back to the last streambed, then head zero five five degrees for about four and a half miles till you get to a rocky cliff. I'll tell you where to go from there."

  "Okay, Roger. I copy that." And on it goes for two weeks, until the guys and I finally reach the Fitwa River. It is too deep for the Cruiser to cross, so we turn back for camp to collect Mark and the Mog. We pack the truck with darting gear, camping gear, plant presses, and food in preparation for a long expedition to the plains to dart lions, take wildlife censuses, and sample the vegetation.

  "Mark, do you really think the Mog can make it through this?" I stare at the angry Fitwa, raging between mud-slick banks that are fifteen feet high. We will have to ease the Mog down a fifty-degree slope of mud, ford the shoulder-deep current, then climb the opposite bank.

  "No problem. Hold on, guys," Mark calls to Simbeye, Kasokola, and Mwamba, who are perched on top of the gear in the back. Mark shifts to the third of the truck's sixteen gears and eases forward over the edge. At first the Mog's four-foot-tall mud tires hold on the greasy slope, their ribbed tractor lugs biting deep. Then, as the entire weight of the truck heads downhill, the treads break loose and we begin a sickening slide toward the river. I grab for the handles in the cab and hold on. The truck hits the river, submerging its front end completely under water, spray, and mud. Mark rams the truck into a higher gear. It churns through the river, water boiling through its chassis, around its sides, and into the cab around our feet. Near the opposite bank he guns the turbo-diesel and the Mog claws its way up the slope—so steep that we are almost lying on our backs in our seats. The big tires spin, slide, and sling mud through the window into my lap.

  "Hey! Hey!" Shouts come from somewhere behind us. Turning, I see our three helpers tumble off the back of the truck and into the river, followed by our mattresses, tents, and bedrolls. Splashing about in confusion, they grab overhanging branches and hang on against the swift current. With a free hand or foot they snare bits and pieces of our gear as they float by. I jump from the cab and slide through the mud to help them, as Mark maneuvers the truck to the top of the bank. Pulling Mwamba from the current I say, "Thank goodness you guys can swim!"

  "I can't," he says with his ever-present smile. "But it would be a good thing to know how to swim when crossing a river with this boss."

  Unbelievably, nothing is lost. We repack the soggy gear and carry on. Two days later we reach the plains.

  As we emerge from the woodlands, the savannas stretch for miles in every imaginable shade of green. Dozens of different kinds of grasses wave with iridescent reds, greens, and yellows. Like a huge abstract watercolor, they boast an array of spiraling blossoms and sprays of soft seeds. Choreographed by the breeze, they bow, swirl, and pirouette. Wind and grass make perfect dance partners.

  And it is here where most of the wildlife of Luangwa spend the rainy season. Large herds of zebras, wildebeests, eland, impalas, and puku graze the succulent wild rice (Echinocloa) and other grasses (Erograstis, Spirobolis) and attract lions, leopards, spotted hyenas, and wild dogs. In the late afternoon they pause to drink at hundreds of small water holes filled with knob-billed ducks, blacksmith plovers, jicanas, sperwing and Egyptian geese, and Goliath herons. Majestic crowned cranes strut nearby. Some of the smaller water holes are more mud than water, and in each a battle-scarred old bull buffalo wallows, caked in gray sludge, oxpeckers sitting on his broad back. Herds of more than a thousand younger bulls, cows, and calves mow the grass all around. Warthogs kneel to root up bulbs and subterranean delicacies. Greater kudu stand silently in the shadows of Croton and Combretum trees, and families of elephants pull up bunches of the tender grasses.

  Amazingly, some of these "plains" are the same devastated and degraded woodlands we saw in the dry season. Then they looked like a portrait of ecological disaster—the soil a gray, dry powder without a single living plant to its credit, the mopane trees limbless and dead, the bushes leafless. We worried that this ruined habitat could never recover, but the rains have transformed it into a lush grassland that, in this season, is the most heavily utilized habitat in the park.

  Most of this area was once healthy mopane woodland. But about fifteen years ago, when commercial poachers invaded the area and began killing unprecedented numbers of elephants, the harried survivors sought sanctuary deep in the heart of the park. Squeezed into these woodlands in unusually high numbers, the animals stripped the trees of their bark, leaving them vulnerable to diseases such as heart rot, and to the wildfires set by the poachers each dry season. This combination of pressures from elephants, disease, and fire has killed off hundreds of square miles of mopane forests, opening the way for the establishment of annual grasslands that appear only during the rains. The poachers have devastated the woodlands, just as they are devastating the elephants.

  Now that the grasses have supplanted the dying woodland, there might seem to be no problem. But while grasslands favor buffalo and
other grazers, forests are important to elephants, kudu, and other browsers. So poachers are reconfiguring the floral and faunal communities of the park. Who knows what changes in species composition or loss will occur if more woodlands are damaged by the bushfires that now sweep over 80 percent of the park every year.

  Our radio tracking of lions in the Kalahari taught us not only about their natural history but about the habits of other carnivores, and the distribution and habits of their prey. We are anxious to put transmitters on the Luangwa lions so that we can learn more about their competitors and prey, and so that we can compare them with the Kalahari lions.

  On the edge of one of the plains is a grove of large Combretum obovatum bushes that stand fifteen to twenty feet tall. The thorny branches of each bush hang down in a dense tumble, creating a spacious cavern within—a perfect place to hide. We put our puptent inside one of the combretums, and the guys erect theirs in another. In a clearing surrounded by a dense thicket, we build a campfire and set up the small table and chairs. With the Mog hidden in the bushes behind the camp, we are totally concealed from the wildlife on the plains.

  We have always darted carnivores from a truck, but since the Mog is so huge, Mark worries that lions will not come within range of the dart gun. Instead, we will make a blind and operate from it. We hang a large piece of awning cloth between two combretum bushes not far from our little camp and hide our chairs, tables, and darting gear behind it. It is dusk by the time we finish, so we retire for the night in our tucked-away campsite.

  At dawn we quietly cook a breakfast of oatmeal and fried toast over the campfire. Our plan is to set up a huge stereo speaker at each side of the nearby blind and play recordings of lions feeding, mating, and roaring their territorial challenge, in the hope that these sounds will attract a resident lion for darting. While I am making coffee, Mark plays the roars in the middle of our camp's little kitchen.