FRESH OUTLOOK

PERROTT’S 4TH BOOK IN 2016 PROPOSES ONE ALL KALAHARI WILDLIFE-NP-BUSHMAN HOMELAND

I recently published my 4th nonfiction African NP book available on Barnes&Noble and Amazon. The book’s pitch is to get GoB of Botswana (2nd maybe GoM) to accept a gift feasibility study to test the increase in the size of two already huge African wildlife Nation Parks (NPs) in Botswana and Mozambique (MZB). This was plus get summer access (a frozen winter built road) to Alaska’s Arctic National Reserve (ANWR) where I was Bechtel’s resident site manager in 1974-5 on the front end of what turned out to be the $8 billion for the pipeline without pump stations (Fluor for $1 billion), field development (others), and Valdez export terminal (others) just for the 800 mile 48” diameter crude oil pipeline from the Arctic coast south across the Yukon River to Valdez’s Pacific tanker loading. Pipelines are always buried. Alyeska is not. The oil was too hot (137 degrees F) with permafrost to as deep as 1000’). Half was above ground on piling, where ever the terrain was `thaw unstable’, our pipe was above ground, allowed to move sideways to expand, or shorten it’s length seasonally on a two pile slide plate, pipe insulated vs, winter freezing.

My 4th book’s major longer time interest was in Botswana’s Kalahari sands semi-desert as a total Kalahari ecosystem for wildlife NP-cum-Bushman homeland. This telling is after my living-working 17 years in Africa where I shot a man-eating lion feasting on a native in Kenya in 1965. That saga was OUTDOOR LIFE’s Dec 65 cover story. My man-eater was bagged in the same southern Kenya region where two man-eaters of Tsavo lions shut down the Kenya rail construction in 1898 by eating well over 100 Indians or natives over 9 months. Now someone is going to say “That SOB is a hunter”. Not since 1973 when I took a Cape buffalo charge at 14 paces, but he died not me. That put a lion and buffalo `book ends on my Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway African hunting days. My 35 year career was as a Bechtel key man on international mega projects, 17 years in Africa. That’s plus projects on every continent but Antarctica, more on larger islands as UK, Indonesia, New Guinea for plenty `been there’ experiences, minor time in home offices, guarding a desk vs. in front line trenches. If you don’t know Bechtel engineering-construction they’ve been USA’s biggest international outfit for the past 20 years.

Why enlarge these two particular African NPs? First to add anti-poaching- sanctuary territory for elephants (ivory), rhinos (nose horns) plus all the rest of a Noah’s Arc of African wildlife found nowhere else but now being poached to extinction. But these two ecosystems each have a `double-barreled’ special reason (detailed herein below). That’s enlarged NPs with electric-wildlife-wire-protected fence (solar generators), NPs well manned by armed wildlife guards with vehicles, supported by surveillance helicopters (or drones) with radios. That’s with-a-shoot-to-kill-get-tough approach in the two NPs or sanctuaries In Botswana, and Mozambique. In Botswana the NP simultaneously as the homeland for the near extinct human Kalahari Bushman, subjects of the 1986 movie THE GODS MUCT BE CRAZY which went viral internationally while playing longer in USA than any movie ever had. Then there’s the rest of this their (actually our) `human evolution’ story of `we walked out of Africa’, or those Bushman that did are now us (unless you are an African black that came out of Africa in more recent slave ship days.

We all need to know that Kalahari Bushman via DNA have now been identified as the 2nd wave of humans (evolution) `out- of- Africa’ on foot. That’s who out-survived their predecessors Neanderthal Man 1st human wave out of Africa. These click speaking Bushman who now untold centuries later have evolved to populate the whole rest of earth’s globe with their (our) same DNA as all the rest of we `others’ proving they are our African roots. Read British DNA scientist Spencer Wells book titled THE JOURNEY OF MAN, A Genetic Odyssey (2002). My recent 4th book proposes getting developed enlarged African NPs in MZB’s south and Botswana’s massive western Kalahari semi-desert if they pass their feasibility study with GoM and/or GoB. My Bk 4 is titled SAVE “NATIVE AND UNSPOILED FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS”(2016). Find it at Amazon under Author John Perrott (all my four titles listed together). As 1st BUSH FOR THE BUSHMAN(1992) , 2ND SAVE MOZAMBIQUE’S ELEPHANT COAST (2007), 3RD HUGUENOT ROOTS-cum-SIX CONTINENT ODYSSEY (2015), and 4th again SAVE “NATIVE AND UNSPOILED FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS” (2016). All are on Amazon or Barnes and Noble as green cause non-fiction.

Here’s how a construction-stiff-engineer-cum-pipeliner came to write an Africa 4th book? I’d been leading up to this 4th one proposing a consolidated entire Kalahari NP sanctuary since first visiting lo camp out in the Kalahari `bush’ a week with a nomadic—camp fire only-- Kalahari Bushman. That’s with a still hunter gatherer clan of 11. That was in 1988, now 29 years ago, more than a generation. Now this, my 4th book, is to propose feasibility studies on two enlarged NPs? That’s similar to some British Commonwealth nations giving up land back to their Australian aborigines, Canada to their Inuit natives in the Arctic north of Canada. British in Botswana were headed in the same wildlife-Bushman NPs direction in 1966 for their Bushman when they bailed out from their former Bechuanaland Protectorate for it to become Botswana now ruled by black Tswana cattle people domiciled almost exclusively in an eastern N-S border strip 30% cattle pasture of Botswana. That’s at 85% the size of Texas. As former British, Botswana is a Commonwealth country. Meanwhile the Kalahari sand region is the nearly uninhabited 70% W of Botswana now in diminishing wildlife, few surviving Bushman. The Kalahari is largely a `thirst and thorn’ ecosystem, a virtual wasteland of wildlife, a few Bushman but the Okavango Delta wetland, Moremi Wildlife Reserve in its NW, with more to be for international tourist developed.

One line of overall Kalahari reasoning is now to finish what the Brits had started prior to leaving in 1966. Make it all an International wildlife tourist drawing NP destination with all-the-rest-of-the-Kalahari (45%) one enlarged-consolidated NP-Bushman homeland. Would GoB (Tswana) agree? There are those who think Government of Botswana (GoM) largely just take Bushman as Stone Age embarrassments-cum- problems. But wait, times change. Or like when will a black Tswana native be up to piloting a space ship to the moon which only Russians and Americans have done? But probably it is more apt that GoM politicians of a now younger generations will accept Bushman for their now known exotic DNA and `GODS” movie international tourist draw like their Commonwealth cousin Aborigines, Inuit were brought back into favor in the 1970s, a bit overdue by GoM. Again times do change. Thru 1923 in now Botswana Brits paid a bounty for bringing in a pair of human Bushman `vermin’ ears. A similar evolution was giving land (homeland) back to Aborigines and Inuit—which I saw visiting their regions in the 1970s. Or we North and South Americans gave better treatment of our `redskin’ natives happened. Tswana are good, mild mannered so their change softening their treatment of their more native Bushman should come.

I saw a somewhat similar horse-and-buggy to vehicle evolution on our N CA Redwood Empire Pacific view cattle ranch when, where I grew up. That’s as a 4th generation of covered-wagons-west pioneers before the first USA intercontinental rail in 1869 San Francisco E. So some 50 years ago the visionary British had already dedicated 55% of Botswana’s Kalahari sand ecosystem to wildlife or Bushman sanctuaries, but wildlife tourism was limited more to guns vs. now to almost all cameras in such as the Okavango Delta or Chobe NP but now Africa has evolved into international camera-wildlife-watching tourism. But much of the British dedicated lands need further developing, to be wildlife fenced, wildlife restocked, provided with any or better overnight tourist facilities, logistics to get tourist in and out by road, rail, or air strip. In the tsunami increase in wildlife tourism, Kalahari Bushman now a tourist draw they need to play a useful part in tourist developments. An international land use feasibility study will surely show the British were on the right track. The center of wildlife tourism used to be Nairobi, Kenya but has evolved to be now more southern like Johannesburg, South Africa. In real estate the three most important words are said to be `location, location, location’, which Botswana has in its central southern location, available Kalahari sand land useful for what else but wildlife tourism with Bushman.

Then first off in 1988 Dr. Jack Wheeler camped us seven out for a week with a still nomadic hunter-gatherer Bushman clan which led to my 1st book. That’s our group’s Kalahari post visit book titled BUSH FOR THE BUSHMAN (1992) or (BFTB). Our BFTB saga was to alert the world that the last of the Bushman re-discovered by archeologists in 1950 in the Botswana-Namibia Kalahari, then later discovered by an international lay population via the 1986 “GODS” movie found a lot of now new Bushman lovers and supporters. Especially after British DNA scientist’s 2002 book’s revelation that Bushman are most of us starting with their (now our) `out of Africa’ DNA and roots, a revelation of where we came from, our who-where origins. Our BFTB book took exception to Bushman being displaced from their Brit provided now renamed Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) which is bigger than Switzerland, is 1/16 the size of all Botswana. That was a designated homeland for some of the five slightly different Bushman tribes.

The Bushman clan we visited (1988) were in Botswana’s NW corner on into Namibia were Kung (San) as were those actors in the famous `GODS” movie. Anthropologist `scientific’ named all Bushman the San, then break them into five tribes. San came from a similar click language (Koi) shared with their later evolved cattle herding cousins the Hottentots. Their shared language was Khoi San. For the San (Bushman) their `God-given” wildlife were their human pre-Agricultural Revolution `cattle’. Some of the 1656 early Cape Town Dutch rode out to kill Bushman’s claimed wildlife. Considered God given, theirs’, Bushman retaliated by killing some Dutch cattle, Dutch themselves too with Bushman’s—without any guns— rather poisoned arrows (poison from one particular bush’s roots dwelling grubs). Bushman were in individual small clans killed off by Dutch, Zulus et al for their original all-the-land (leaving only their rock paintings) which I visited in SA, Zimbabwe, MZB, and Tsodillo Hills. The few Bushman that have survived were only in the Kalahari sand region as they could survive there where others would not go or could not survive the `thirst-and-thorn’ ecosystem which the tough Bushman could an did survive in.

Then for me in spring 1988 future seeds for my second Africa MZB book were already planted. Dr. Jack Wheeler took us (a party of seven) to Santa Claus’s North Pole (NP) where Jack holds the Guinness Book sky diving record landing closest to the NP. Among us was one James U Blanchard III, his son and secretary (later wife) flying out over thin Arctic Ocean ice in a Canadian piloted Twin Otter with skis for landing on ice and snow, wheels for tarmac. Multi-millionaire Jim was the only person to make such a demanding trip as he was wheel chair bound since an auto accident at 18, a real character. Unknown to us a Russian-Canadian combined team had skied months from Siberia. They were now to be at the NP the same day as us. Our Twin Otter scouted a Russian weather station on a floating-Siberian glacier now iceberg only a few miles from the NP. We yanks hitch-hiked a last few miles to the Pole on Russian military M I-8 troop helicopters in those still Cold War days. On the Pole adventure New Orleans (NOJim) learned of my Bechtel engineering-cum-Africa years of experience. Seven years later in 1995 I returned from bidding (by better rerouting) a major gas pipeline in Argentina over the Andes to Chile to receive a phone call from NOJim. He’d been offered an Indian Ocean Mozambique (MZB) development (shanghaied) by MZB’s then President Chissano himself, for his pet tourist development deal.

I hired out to NP pal NOJim for MZB to key-man his required by GoM feasibility study to pass MZB’s then post-independence now Marxist Council of Ministers approval of President Chissano’s `dream’ development. But that was only after I got Jim to hire a feasibility study team off of Bechtel London to win his 63 Sq Mi native-and-unspoiled Machangulo Peninsula on the Indian Ocean Coast development. The site was 10 minutes E of MZB capital Maputo by helicopter (African tourist hot spot Lourenco Marques in Portuguese days). But to understand the `get there’ logistics, the peninsula was a good half day south via ferry, S to a bridge Maputo River crossing, across the Elephant Reserve, to approach the Peninsula from the S. Then Bechtel ruled the Peninsula alone was no go. it was only economically feasible with an international wildlife watching capacity revenue. So we just expanded our study S.

Next S was the near 200 Sq Mi 1932 Maputo Elephant Reserve. After MZB independence (1975) GoM leaned Marxist, there was no longer private land in MZB, it was all GoM owned. Most Portuguese left with `only-the-clothes-on-their-backs’. Those `white faces’ who stayed on saw 60% unemployment.

Russia got Castro to occupy MZB with his Cuban military to babysit Marxist GoM as Russia was occupied in Afghanistan and elsewhere. When we arrived (mid-1995) was after the second phase of MZB’s civil war of the West resisting the communism, the Cold War was over, the Cubans all gone. But Cuban military in helicopters had reduced 600 Reserve elephants to 100 gun shy survivors. Cubans had shot the Maputo Elephant Reserve completely out, carnivores, herbivores ( rhinos) but the few elephants except for a very few residual Nile crocks and living- in- lakes hippos. So then in 10 months our expanded feasibility study was done, now extended further S to 914 Sq Mi version, of Peninsula, Elephant Reserve, but now on S to the KwaZulu Natal (South African) border. It was now a substantial international wildlife watching NP destination to be. The whole 914 Sq Mi now had 50 miles of breathtaking untouched Indian Ocean coast, W to the E bank of the Maputo River, widening out to the S. It was all now a beautiful wildlife ecosystem to challenge Tanzania’s Serengeti NP or South Africa’s best in Kruger NP et al like the UAE’s international Dubai glitzy tourist development. But there was more good news for MZB, call it a `divine intervention’ surprise `second barrel’ add on to NP merit.

In October 1995 just as our MZB feasibility report was going out the door in London, we were informed by a South African botanist Professor that our whole 914 Sq Mi NP for MZB was a UN declared Center of Plant Diversity (CDP). This was a new UN concept announced at the 1992 Rio First Earth Summit. First UN created the International Biodiversity Accord signed by the World’s Heads of State in attendance at Rio. CPDs created an equivalent of a new `botanical’ parallel to the `endangered species list” of wildlife, birds, fish and reptiles threatened by extinction (but no humans like exotic DNA Bushman?). The UN as had regional biologists worldwide to submit their competing rich botanical ecosystems to be on the UN’s CPD list. Two years later (1994) via UN’s three volumes of the CPD `bible’ was published. They defined in detail the 250 chosen CPDs worldwide. Volume I of III included continental Africa, with its 84 CPDs. In MZB was the Maputoland-Pondoland Region CPD which extends S from the Limpopo River, then S to the W of Maputo. It’s W from MZB into Swaziland, then S into Natal province of SA. To get on the exclusive UN CPD 250 list endism was important (or to have plants that were found nowhere else), or if there were plants that were naturopathic medicine as opposed to USA-FDA’s approved Rxs by Big Pharma, then bigger numbers of varieties of plants including trees cut down for firewood still in the likes of MZB.

NOJim had his 914 Sq Mi now CPD-NP wildlife development for $ one million, including $250,000 to Bechtel for their 17 by 11 “ hard bound 181 pg published feasibility study, chock full of color images and maps plus build out details and budget. It was dubbed the `Brown Bible’ in MZB, as a runaway best seller which we gave away to important entities, like MZB politicians, media, et al plus the UN CPD Vol I. NYT, WSJ and UK’s the Economist visited, got `Brown Bibles’, published big international stories. South African Paper and Pulp (SAPPI) had a prior GoM 99 year lease in the S. But once our CPD-wildlife NP-CPD was known, SAPPI’s CPD destroying `eucalyptus plantation’ was gone. But sadly NOJim was not up to his now enlarged project. I tried to intercede with Bechtel to recruit other money, but Jim’s lawyer took advantage of his illness, substance abuse, was hate-Africa so Jim’s (our) MZB project died. Jim’s lawyer lied to Jim to get rid of Bechtel, me et al who could save our big project. Jim’s Machiavellian lawyer took over to do nothing of our NP development plan for which Jim had 3 ½ years to complete. MZB should have taken Jim’s 99 year lease away. The project was to be built out in stages. NO did nothing of our critical path steps. It was obvious (now from afar) Jim’s lawyer was to fail via default.

GoM signed with Jim in late 1996 to proceed with their 914 Sq Mi CPD-NP. But Jim died in spring of 1999, so GoB belatedly took the project from his estate. There were some legitimate billionaire types interested in the project. But other outside UN politicians, a share of GoM types got involved so the 914 Sq Mi project version was never kicked off. My 2nd book of 2007, then 3rd and 4th books of (2015), then (2016) all proposed that the project as a CPD-wildlife NP still had great CPD-NP merit for resurrection at 4000 Sq Mi to connect N to the GLTP. My 2nd book was titled SAVE MOZAMBIQUE’S ELEPHANT COAST (20O7) in which I 1st proposed the CPD-NP as a target for resurrection at 4000 Sq Mi to connect up N with the now GLTP at 38,500 Sq Mi, all 100% in UN designated Maputoland CPD. By then many positive regional aspects had transpired, mostly positive, some negative in MZB. Two big positive milestones had passed in the region. (1) In 2002-3 the GLTP had happened. I traveled to MZB with my 2nd book in 2007, to find GoM was parceling out building sites on the 50 Mi Indian Ocean Elephant Coast, not cooperating with the UN CPDs restriction to keep CPDs “Native and unspoiled for future generations.” And other similar development of the ‘vultures’ feeding off the dead 914 Sq Mi version of the CPD-NP rather than being interested in saving it, expanding it W and then N to 4000 Sq Mi, to the GLTP?

This was the Grand Limpopo TransFrontier Park (GLTP). It was created thru the urging of South Africa’s Peace Parks (PP) a-not-for-profit created by SA breweries charitable billionaire Anton Rupert with his two cofounders, (a) the then crown Prince of the Netherlands, (b) prisoner-to-President of South African Nelson Mandela. The GLTP was made up of Kruger NP in NE South Africa, connected up with established Gonarezhou wildlife sanctuary in SE Zimbabwe. PP lobbied MZB to create a new Limpopo (a river) NP in W MZB up against the MZB SA-Zimbabwe borders (a mostly former Portuguese wildlife hunting ecosystem in MZB) as a mirror image to the two sanctuaries to the west. The PP principle was to combine the three, take the border fences down, to thus have the largest wildlife sanctuary free for wildlife movements in the world at 38,500 Sq Mi of no interior fences. My 2nd reason my 2007 2nd book wanted to resurrect the Elephant Coast to 4000 Sq Mi was wildlife tourism optimism. SA is the largest economy of any country in Africa, despite several with lots of crude oil. Previously SA’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) listed gold mining as SA’s largest annual income producer, until the year 2005, when GDP #1 became wildlife tourism. Follow the money; develop in international wildlife watching destinations.

So (1), (2) above indicated a tsunami growth in southern Africa as a get our show on the road wildlife watching destination. That’s more favorable for an Elephant Coast’s 4000 Sq Mi version. My 2nd book of 2007 proposed approaching MZB offering to do a new feasibility study (London Bechtel or equal) to see if a 4000 Sq Mi version to the GLTP still 100% in or over UN CPD was go. There were two medium-small game Parks in Natal up against the MZB S border that were (1996) loaded with wildlife that following PP’s model would want to be considered to opening international wildlife fence-borders to be included in any MZB 4000 Sq Mi consideration as a new MZB Elephant Coast 4000 Sq Mi feasibility study. They are Ndumu and Tembe SA wildlife sanctuaries. So what can I say about my MZB experience for knowhow on creating wildlife NPs or Bushman homelands in Botswana’s proposed entire Kalahari sand west takes a feasibility study via a professional like Bechtel or equal to guarantee it is creditable.

I learned tons in MZB in 1995-6 about wildlife and tourism projects. I’ve been there. We unearthed a wonderful MZB project. But a SOB lawyer in New Orleans sabotaged it all. The 914 Sq Mi project should have been built out, wildlife restocked, open for international tourists before 2000, ready to expand to join up with GLTP. What happens in producing a feasibility study? You get input from needed professionals in the region. There are wildlife-tourism PhD’s galore in the Johannesburg region. Major efforts are restocking an ecosystem and getting game lodges established for tourists’ overnights. Is a rail useful to get tourists into the NP? That takes a feasibility study within the overall study. We planned rail for MZB in 1995 for our 914 Sq Mi version. Botswana has toyed with the idea of a Botswana rail in the past. I know of no large wildlife sanctuary that has rail, but it needs to be investigated. My advice is to get a world class international feasibility study which holds water. Bechtel calls it a `bankable’ study that would give sound advice, be accepted internationally. If the feasibility is positive, Bechtel is a good build-out project manager. They’re USA’s largest international construction-engineer.

Once our MZB Bechtel London feasibility study hit MZB streets, GoM and the whole world jumped aboard. SA’s media is very pro wildlife tourism efforts. Before we go back to Botswana to consider my 4th book’s one-total-Kalahari-wildlife NP-Bushman homeland concept needed feasibility study , in 2015 I published my career, tell-all-family-roots 3rd book of over 600 pages. That’s over 40 chapters (sagas), with many Africa chapters. There was Cpt 7, my Kenya man-eater lion, Cpt 15, in New Guinea NY Mike Rockefeller’s 1961 disappearance mystery. Then Cpt 18, TNZ Cape Buffalo `too close’ 14 pace charge, Cpt 20, a 1993 Kilimanjaro climb, Cpt 24 a Coral Sea face off with a man-eater tiger shark, Cpt 31 our N Pole visit with Russian encounter, Cp 32 Kalahari camp out with Bushman clan leading to book BFTB, Cpt 34 putting out 800 Kuwait oil wells set afire by IRAQ’s Saddam Hussein, Cpt 35, an update on MZB’s Elephant Coast CPD-NP saga, Cpt 39, getting international tourist access to ANWR plus many others of varying interests, as several on pipelining in Africa, Alaska, Saudi Arabia, over the Andes, or how about two trips to Tibet in 86, 87 (Cpt 28) or a four day white water rafting trip in the Indian Himalayas all at above 10.,000’. Bk 3 is over 600 pages, 8 ½ by 11” size, 27 color picks on the front and back cover, with like more than 500 inside (black and white) images with published accounts of what happened to our Aunt Vera’s N CA nature preserve, other family yarns. Cpt 6 is “What’s a pipeliner” (not in Webster’s).

Now we go back to Botswana for my 4th book feature Cp2 of only six Cpts, 120 pages. British DNAs scientist Spencer Wells is big on letting the world know the importance DNA (their/our) Kalahari Bushman with which we rest of the world outside of Africa share the same way back DNA we all `outside of Africa’ share with the few surviving Bushman fore fathers that stayed behind in Africa. Here in America we have people on about saving snail darters and spotted owls, good on them. But about special humans, like the Bushman threatened by extinction despite their world’s most known, ancient `out-of-Africa’ DNAs. What does this line of reason bring us to consider. For me, it’s get funding to offer GoB a professional international feasibility study. That’s to see if we can cooperate with GoB to make a double barred total Kalahari Sands (70 % of all Botswana, as (1) needed huge wildlife sanctuary vs. current African wildlife poaching, plus (2) 2nd barrel to make it a Bushman DNA homeland. It’s generally considered just a wasteland now. Make it an international wildlife-Bushman NP tourist destination.

To GoB it would be like renting out a LA unused garage or basement for big bucks in this case to cash-cow income that such a tourist African wildlife development would bring for GoB. Not to forget, since 2005. South Africa’s top GDP earner is in international wildlife tourism. And GoM has just such, the Kalahari sand ecosystem is available. Gift GoB the feasibility study cost for the vast rest of the Kalahari sand entire Kalahari as a consolidated wildlife NP-Bushman homeland is a world class option. Where else can one find such a vast area that in now only speckled lightly with NPs, sanctuaries in a country where wildlife have endured, in a vast region, it can now be restocked. Put in copies of Etosha NP’s water holes, drilled wells, and windmill pumps. Thus increase the wildlife drinking water supply, to be able to restock it with more species. It is a big country, 85% the size of Texas, US’s second largest state (after more than twice as big Alaska). What is GoB now doing with the Kalahari? It is too arid for their thing, beef cattle, more as a waste land where the Kalahari sands is referred to as a place of `thirst and thorn’ or `wasteland’ But with waterholes, wildlife restocking could be GoB’s major tourism GNP cash cow.

I now leave more detailed arguments in favor of a one-whole-Kalahari region NP to the details published in my 4th book as essential for GoB’s gifted land-use-feasibility study the next level of critical path undertaking to here now look at some other peripheral issues from my years in East Africa and later in southern Africa in terms of creating an Africa’s-wildlife-watching-international destination (not with rifles but cameras). Think of how a camera age has made wildlife watching or African wildlife tourism what it is. Here’s one for you. Native black Africans look at their African wildlife differently than we `others’ do. Today probably there are more people outside of Africa that set their sights (like a Muslim to Mecca) on a wildlife watching to Africa trip in their lifetimes. I confess as one who lived-worked in Africa 17 years to spend tons of my time in the best East African or later southern African wildlife NPs.

I’ve noted repeatedly individuals in such NPs are near never native born black Africans? Why would this be? It’s that they grew up with Africa animals. We others had our childhood night mares, but not the same as young native Africans who more likely had fear of African wildlife, be it lions, or hyenas, or what kills more native Africa women, children, even men annually? They tend to live near water, lakes or rivers. That is where the most annual wildlife fatalities are from Nile crocodiles, water resident hippos. Native Africans from their youths are apt to consider their African wildlife differently, and snakes, like mambas, cobras, puff adders, Gabon vipers with horror. In my many days in wildlife NPs (in Africa) I encountered next to no now mature black Africans. African tourism draws its earnings exclusively from international foreigners that did not grow up fearing or competing with African wildlife for land or as threats to their lives over lifetimes as their too often enemies, bored or scared of their wildlife, snakes. Or there’s another native African element, ‘poachers’ who have no respect for Noah Arc’s animals.

Here’s another off the wall Africa subject with a different slant on `climate change? I’ve lived too long in the North African Sahara Desert `sand trap’. It’s so huge our USA (without Alaska) will barely fit inside Sahara’s boundaries. How did it get so big? Deserts put one in mind of `climate’ (too hot). In early recorded history Greeks, Romans reported (in writing) that the African Sahara was a lush green place as now barren Libya? But that’s close by where Romans got lions to turn on early Christians in their Italian coliseums. Early history guys then recorded that the Sahara lost its lush green when Muslim Arabs (7th century on) migrated W across N Africa with their ecosystem destroying goats to spread their Muslim faith to Western Europe. Then I wonder about the Kalahari sands? Are they going the same way as North African Sahara has gone? There are scientists who say if you replant such as the Kalahari semi-desert with greenery, climate will change to more rather than less rainfall, or good climate change.

Or otherwise Is there a longer term risk of outfitting the Kalahari for wildlife, restocking it, then watching it all going the `Sahara’s arid way? I tend to take the advice of climate scientists, to increase the botany and whatever else takes the Kalahari in the opposite `greener’ direction vs. the Sahara. First definitely to go Etosha NP’s way in N Namibia. Create wildlife water holes, with drilled wells, outfitted by windmill pumps. Kalahari could include Etosha pumped water-table water, even piped-pumped water from the Okavango Delta. That’s as Botswana has the Okavango River, its huge wetland Delta which is the world’s largest such wetland delta in such an arid at least semi-desert worldwide. Put Bushman to being green thumbs, helping to provide wildlife water holes, plus planting whatever botanical types rather than humans usual of destroying greenery, trees worldwide. In a Kalahari NP aggressively replant botany. Most wildlife are herbivores except lion, leopard, cheetah, hyena. Greenery supports the basic herbivores, brings carnivores, to brings international wildlife with their cameras, a GoM GDP cash cow.

Here’s another disturbing historical change in the Botswana Kalahari ecosystem. In Botswana’s NW corner is a rare for Botswana significant rock outcrop called Tsodilo Hills. It is a Bushman rock paining site from before historic times, universally referred to as the Bushman’s Louvre. There are literally thousands of Bushman’s well preserved wildlife sketches including hundreds of eland, rhino, et al of such sketches. It is proof rhinos used to be plentiful in the Kalahari. Today rhinos are extinct in all of Botswana. The way things are going, our same-DNA-as-ours Bushmen-will too soon follow the rhino unless there is drastic change. We need to get a whole Kalahari NP, restocked it with lots of rhinos again before there are no rhinos to restock with! Here in Texas when I returned stateside (1988) I joined Game Conservation International (African rifle hunters). Already back then they were importing African rhino to have seed for restocking in Africa against such poaching and species extinction, good on them.

I will close with inviting you to get a copy of my 4th book titled SAVE “NATIVE AND UNSPOILED FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS” from Amazon. Its title is a motto of why we need the proposed finished Brits pre 1966 total Kalahari NP now. Please support this important `green’ cause.

Thanks for your interest.
John Perrott, my address is below:

17321 Lookout Road #2110, Selma,TX, 78154.

Email: savesan@sbcglobal.net

- See net sites: (1) www.savethesan.org (Bushman), www.savemec.org (MZB Elephant Coast), both are USIRS 501 ( c) (3) not-for-profit sites.

Petition Sites

If you want to lend your support to the SAVE MOZAMBIQUE'S ELEPHANT COAST effort to make Mozambique and the world aware of the inimitable CAUSE and OPPORTUNITY to leave an enduring living legacy Elephant Coast Wildlife and Botanical National Park for future generation, please sign petitions on the internet to show support.  That is to preserve the stage—4000 Sq Mi of UN Center of Plat Diversity quality ecosystem—where Mother Nature will put on her Noah's-Arc-kaleidoscope-ofsurviving-endangered-African-wildlife show daily, 365 days a year.

The Care2 site:  www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-mozamiques-elephant-coast Note, the B is missing in Mozambique, but that is what opens the site.  We have failed to get Care2 to correct it, but otherwise, just do it sign up.  THANKS

The ipetitions site:  http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/MZBElephantCoastNationalPark/