Book Review - The White Impala

The White Impala: The Story of a Game Ranger: Hardcover, Collins, 1969: Norman Carr, born 1912 in present day Mozambique, was a conservationist who transformed vast stretches of what is today Zambia into two of its best known parks – Luangwa and Kafue. He is also credited for his vision in seeing that community-based conservation is the only conservation that works. Zambia's Norman Carr Safaris grew out of the walking safari company Norman started in the Luangwa Valley and ran after he retired from the wildlife service. It remains in family hands today.

Norman wrote three books about his life with wildlife – Return to the Wild (1962) about two orphaned male lion cubs he raised and returned to the wild; Valley of the Elephants (1972) about the Luangwa Valley and its large elephant population (written before the disastrous 1980s when elephant and rhino populations were decimated); and The White Impala (1969), the story of his early years as an elephant control officer in what was then Northern Rhodesia, his stint in the military, and his career as a game warden. It also chronicles his important evolution as someone who kills a lot of animals to someone who sees animals as more important "than a medium for expressing my prowess." The title of The White Impala's last chapter is called "A Final Reckoning". Norman tallies his "mental balance sheet" between his acts of killing animals (he admits more than was "absolutely necessary") and his acts of saving them. History will be his judge he writes, but meanwhile he hopes good deeds such as setting up national parks, training local people in wildlife conservation and including them in wildlife issues and decisions will result in a credit balance in his favor.

Norman devotes a whole chapter in The White Impala to the "hunting instinct". "Why do people hunt?" he asks, which is my favorite question for hunters willing to talk to me. Norman Carr, a man who killed 50 elephants before he was twenty, thinks that hunting is a predatory instinct inherited from pre-human ancestors as well as the other inherited needs of competition and domination. We wouldn't be where we are today without our competitive natures. However, we are also where we are today because our drive for one-upmanship does find expression in less destructive ways. So why do people hunt looks to be more of a moral question than anything else. But, writes Norman: "However we may try to moralize about it, we must face the fact that instincts can be successfully channelled but not denied. We are as we are and however we try to improve we can only do so by disciplining the basic elements within us, not by pretending they do not exist. We belong to the order of nature, and hunting is of that order." What do you think? The discussion on "why do people hunt?" is an ongoing one and a complicated one as well.

Addendum: let me give you an idea of what an animal's life was worth in Zambia last year for those of us whose urge to dominate couldn't find expression elsewhere.

Lion: 4200 USD Leopard: 2650 USD Cape buffalo: 1600 USD Greater Kudu: 1600 USD Hyena: 250 USD Porcupine: 190 USD (who wants to shoot a porcupine?)

10-03-2010