New Housing Ousts Hippos in South Africa

In a legend popular among many Africans, the great creator allowed hippos to live in the water under one condition: They could not eat fish, which had been promised to the crocodiles. So every night since the beginning of time, the voracious vegetarians have taken to land in search of supper.

But along the lush banks of the Crocodile River on the outskirts of this impoverished black township near Kruger National Park, the sacred deal is running afoul of South Africa’s young democracy.

Long-awaited progress in building homes for blacks here has met an unexpected amphibious obstacle, requiring a massive hippopotamus relocation project for a goal that would have been unthinkable a few years ago in white-ruled South Africa.

The unprecedented animal-control effort puts the pressing needs of black people before those of wildlife. At the same time, it promotes an unsentimental brand of conservation that spills the blood of some animals but saves the lives of many others.

“This is a very mountainous area, and we don’t have enough land for everyone and everything,” said Leon Mbangwa of the Mpumalanga provincial housing department. “In the old days, they would have made the [black] people move somewhere else, not the animals.”

About three dozen Crocodile River hippos are being targeted for capture and sale to game reserves, zoos and private collections across South Africa. Start-up money for the ambitious project came from selling licenses to three big-game hunters from abroad, each of whom paid about $1,500 to track and kill a hippo several months ago. Since the sale of the first captured animals, the program is now self-sustaining and hunting is no longer needed.

“It is a matter of economics,” Gary Sutter, spokesman for the Mpumalanga Parks Board, the regional animal control and conservation agency, said of the hunting licenses. “Like it or not, we are working without much of a budget. If an operation doesn’t pay for itself, we can’t do it.”

Hundreds of acres of riverfront grasslands are being cleared to make way for 2,000 government-subsidized houses for poor blacks, long denied the dream of owning a home under the apartheid system of racial separation. When applications were taken in July for the first 800 units, 7,000 people showed up, many waiting in a line more than a mile long. The development is the first new housing in 25 years in this township of 44,000, which lies about 12 miles southeast of the Mpumalanga provincial capital, Nelspruit.

But the prospect of human neighbors has not scared off the river’s thriving hippo population, which has made itself at home on several vegetable farms beyond the river’s edge. The carefree animals while away their days soaking in the cool water and emerge under the protection of darkness to dine on shrubs, grasses and, increasingly, home-grown delicacies far from the river.

“They love my beet root, spinach, cabbage and okra,” said John Mkhonto, whose family cultivates a small square of hilly soil and routinely drives away their unwelcome dinner guests with giant flashlights.

Farmers have been complaining for years about the pesky trespassers that also have caused car crashes and train wrecks by traipsing their ungainly 4-ton hulks across roads and railroad tracks. Hippos kill more humans than all other animals in Africa combined, wildlife experts say, but they are aggressive only when threatened or scared. As such, animal-control officials say, most problems can be avoided with a low-voltage electric fence or a simple ditch, which the stubby-legged mammals cannot traverse.

Mkhonto said KaNyamazane residents rarely harm the hippos, known as imvubu in the local siSwati language. Residents have come to fear and respect the animals after generations of sharing the Crocodile River.

“If you throw a stone at one of them, the next time 10 people are in the river, he will pick you out of the group and get you,” the farmer said. “The imvubu is like a dog. He won’t forget.”

But the new housing development, almost everyone here agrees, requires extraordinary measures to protect both people and wildlife. In short, officials say, the mile-long stretch of the Crocodile River designated for housing is not big enough for man and beast.

In Search of Food

The river’s hippo population outside Kruger National Park has been growing at a remarkable rate. Drought in recent years has driven many animals upriver from the park in search of food, while the hippos’ greatest predators--humans--have been kept in check by the park’s policy of not culling wildlife. About 600 hippos live in the river inside the park, and an estimated 90 others roam a 40-mile stretch upriver.

A parks board ecologist estimates that the river’s natural vegetation at KaNyamazane can sustain just 10 of the animals; any more, and they will venture into populated areas. At last count, the favorite spot had more than 40 hippos.

“The animals are now tending to go into areas not suitable for them,” said Ertjies Rohm, field services manager for the parks board. “They cause a lot of damage and can be extremely dangerous. We had to destroy six of them last year because it was too difficult to pinpoint them for capture.”

Parks board officials generally keep kills quiet because of the outrage they generate among many animal rights and conservation groups in South Africa and around the world. An official announcement about the hippo capture program, for example, made no mention of the three hunting permits, and a parks official asked that this report also exclude the information.

But conservation in Africa has never been the clear-cut battle between good and evil that many animal lovers like to believe, South African wildlife officials say. Killing an animal is not always wrong, they maintain, particularly in the new South Africa where resources are scarce and priorities shifting.

“In the 1980s it was easy for us to destroy an animal without negative publicity because it was acceptable then,” said Rohm, whose office is furnished with game trophies, including a stool fashioned from an elephant foot. “With the start of the 1990s, all of the animal rights groups started to put real pressure on conservationists to manage the animal populations in a different way.”

Capturing animals always has been part of wildlife management, but that element of the ongoing hippo project here is the biggest effort in this game-rich region.

“This is a hell of a challenge for us,” said animal-control officer Brian Neubert, who is leading the project. “We have never closed off an entire river before. But it is paying off. Why kill the animals when you can give them a new home?”

Since the project began here in July, rangers have rounded up 19 hippos in five batches. The overnight captures have become progressively more difficult as the hippos grow wary of the trap, which is baited with fragrant, freshly cut alfalfa. The ensnared hippos signal their distress by secreting a pungent oil, which acts as a warning to others and can only be masked by smearing dung across the trap after each capture.

“There is a hell of a high stress level for the hippos during all of this,” Neubert said. “When the door closes behind them, it makes a loud noise and stresses them out. They are very clever, much like a jackal. If you catch him once, you won’t ever catch him again.”

Setting the Trap

The hippo snare is set up about 20 yards from the riverbank. The alfalfa is piled around the base of a spindly wild fig tree, which is encircled by heavily fortified walls about 10 feet high and a metal gate suspended overhead.

A half-mile segment of the river is blocked with an underwater steel grid, forcing the hippos to look for food within its confines. The riverbank is ringed with electrified barriers, leaving an opening only near the entrance to the trap, which is known as a boma.

Not far away, animal-control officer Jeffrey Nkosi camps out in a small treehouse with a bird’s-eye view of the riverbank. A cable extends from his hide-out to the gate, which he can release once hippos have taken the bait and moved inside. Nkosi often spends the night in the open-air treehouse, using night glasses to track the animals’ movements.

“It can take a very long time,” he said. “Sometimes they come very close to the boma, but then decide to sleep outside for four hours.”

Once trapped inside, the hippos are shot with a dart gun loaded with a tranquilizer that calms them but does not knock them out. They are then driven with lights and noise down a small passageway into a truck for delivery to their new homes. Frightened and angry, the animals often thrash against the walls, cutting themselves.

On a recent capture, the ordeal lasted until 3:30 a.m., as two hippos--a mature bull and a juvenile bull--stubbornly challenged the script at every juncture. Finally, when Neubert called the buyer to announce the successful captures, the groggy private game dealer refused to take two males, which go for about $1,700 each.

The unruffled ranger pulled out a dog-eared phone diary and started making predawn calls to a list of other prospective buyers. The young bull was easy to unload, but the only taker for the ornery adult was a hunter, who made no secret of his intentions.

“I’d rather let him go,” Neubert said. “It is not a nice feeling to put so much effort into something just to have it killed. And it is canned hunting. That hippo will be dead in two hours.”

The rangers decided to wait until morning, by which time the private game dealer had changed his mind.

“We are very fortunate right now because there is a demand for hippos,” said Sutter, the parks board spokesman. “You have to wonder, though, what will happen when the market dries up.”