Operation Noah

"We expected big trouble when the season's main flood waters hit the dam--and we have got it," said a dispirited game warden last week as he stood on the banks of Rhodesia's man-made Kariba lake. Before his weary, red-rimmed eyes lay a vast tract of drowning land. Two hundred yards away a dozen monkeys clung to the rocky crown of a tiny island that was being swallowed up in the dappled waters. The monkeys' ribs showed through their shrunken skin, their liquid, pleading eyes turned desperately this way and that.

Brown Fruit. The artificial lake, formed by the mighty Zambesi River, stretches back 110 miles toward the pluming spray of the 350-ft. Victoria Falls. It is held in check by the towering new Kariba dam, hailed as the greatest piece of masonry in Africa since the days of the Pharaohs. The simple Batonga tribesmen who lived in the valley for centuries had--with difficulty--been evacuated to higher ground (TIME. Dec. 15). Now it was the turn of thousands of animals, in one of the world's richest game sanctuaries, and there were only eleven men and two boats to do the job.

As the waters rose, hills became islands crowded with panicky beasts. In the topmost branches of submerging trees, baboons and monkeys clung like lumpy brown fruit. Snakes swam blindly in circles. Guinea fowl, who are inept flyers, paddled around vainly like ineffectual ducks. Civet cats, porcupines, ant bears, rabbits, wart hogs, lizards, boomslangs, and many bushbucks of many types crowded together on bald hilltops. During the day the equatorial sun beat down mercilessly, and birds of prey swooped in for unprecedented feasts. There are few baby monkeys or baboons--most have been eaten, some by their own species. The desperate monkeys gnaw the bark of their tree roosts and even attack the poisonous black mamba snake, from which they ordinarily flee in terror.

To save the trapped game and reptiles, the Southern Rhodesian government assigned a total force of three white game wardens and eight native trackers, who are working from dawn to dusk. Wearing bathing trunks and frogman flippers, armed with sheath knives to protect themselves from crocodiles, they grapple in the water with the terrified wildlife. A baboon weakened by hunger and privation can easily be captured by hand. Monkeys are more difficult, especially the vervets, who can swim underwater for as long as two minutes. The technique of capture is the same for both--one hand grabs the tail, the other the back of the neck. Otherwise the would-be rescuer is in danger of literally losing his face. The apes are then thrust into cages on the boats and later released on the shore of the lake.

In the Pillowcase. To capture the deadly black mamba, the wardens use a fishing rod adapted to pull a noose around the snake's neck; the snake is then gingerly deposited in a pillowcase. Dassies (shrill-voiced, rabbity creatures, distantly related to the elephant) and porcupines are deliberately driven into the water since, despite their small size, dassies bite when cornered and porcupines are armed with quills. Even in the water, it takes three men to outwit a porcupine.

The rescue team's chief, Rupert Fothergill, 46, is mostly concerned with keeping his men alive. Fothergill himself has been bitten by a python and a rufus-beaked snake; one of his staff, while swimming, was bitten on the lip by a hissing sand snake. More than the animals and reptiles, Fothergill fears the dangers of diving into the lake where there is always the possibility of losing an eye on a tree branch or being impaled on a stake. Lions and elephants will be relatively easy to handle. Says Fothergill: "An elephant can swim a long way. It will merely be a matter of shepherding him in the right direction. As for lions--we have nets."

The government of Southern Rhodesia is being censured for having done too little too late to save the Kariba animals. But the government of Northern Rhodesia, across the lake, has done even less. It has sent a single game warden to the scene, and his duties are to kill two elephants each week to provide meat for the Batonga tribesmen evacuated from the lake site. The Northern Rhodesia Game Preservation and Hunting Association last week appealed to its members to devote their holidays to rescue work. It is unlikely that either the holidaying hunters from Northern Rhodesia or the exhausted eleven-man team from Southern Rhodesia can save more than a tiny fraction of the valley wildlife.

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