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Unnatural Histories
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00:01The last remaining wild places on Earth.
00:05Primordial.
00:07Timeless.
00:08Untouched by humans.
00:11But are they as pristine as we think?
00:17Ancient cities in the heart of the Amazon.
00:21The most iconic wild places shaped by man.
00:27Is wilderness just a figment of our imagination?
00:32How natural is the natural world?
00:51Nowhere speaks of wild nature more powerfully than the savannas of East Africa.
00:58And here one place has become iconic.
01:02Serengeti.
01:09For many, Serengeti is the embodiment of wild Africa.
01:18The Serengeti is that which is infinite, that which is tremendous, that which is beyond control.
01:28But is this place what it seems?
01:31A national park is typically an artificial setup.
01:34It's just a zoo magnified.
01:38Is this primordial wilderness as timeless and unchanging as we imagine?
01:44There's an assumption that if you put a line around a park, it's going to stay like that.
01:49Nothing stays the same.
01:54Is Serengeti as natural as we think?
01:58Humans did have a very big influence in shaping the savannah fauna, and almost certainly the plants as well.
02:06Behind the popular image of a pristine wilderness hides a far less natural history.
02:15A story that charts the fortunes of hunters and hunter-gatherers.
02:21Of devastating disease, war, and battles for political dominance.
02:30Taking us right back to the origin of our species, and the very nature of existence.
02:37The story of how a particular view of the wild came to shape Africa.
02:56In 1957, a small zebra-striped aeroplane left Frankfurt in Germany on a 6,000-mile journey to East Africa.
03:06Inside was Bernhard Chimek, the curator of Frankfurt Zoo, and his son Michael.
03:13Their mission to save the Serengeti.
03:16The Serengeti in Tanganyika is a wilderness of about 8,000 square miles.
03:21That is practically the size of Northern Ireland.
03:24And yet, the Serengeti is one of the seven wonders of this earth.
03:29To the east lies the plateau of the giant crater.
03:32The Ngorongoro crater is the most magnificent natural zoo on earth.
03:37God created it for himself, and fenced it in with mountain walls 1,800 feet high to protect its inhabitants.
03:48The Serengeti at that time was headline news.
03:52It had recently been made a national park to protect its natural wonders.
03:58But the British colonial government had just announced plans to make the park smaller,
04:03to allow more room for a rapidly expanding human population.
04:08When the Gimek's went to the Serengeti in 1957, there was a controversy brewing over the borders of the national
04:16park.
04:16The British colonial government decided to create a conservation area that would include Maasai herders,
04:25and separate that off from another part of the park that would be devoted solely to the animals.
04:32Though animals would still get some protection, leading conservationists the world over were up in arms.
04:40They opposed any reduction in size of what they saw as Africa's last great wilderness.
04:47And in particular, the removal from the national park of the spectacular Ngorongoro crater.
04:56Bernhard Schimek was determined to prove the case for a bigger national park.
05:01He believed the key lay in the world-famous wildebeest migration.
05:09Serengeti's annual migration is a true wonder of the natural world.
05:13Two million wildebeest, along with 500,000 zebra, following the rains across two countries.
05:28You encounter an immensity that you almost imagine cannot be real.
05:35So many wildebeests, and everything moving towards a certain direction.
05:42And you're also overwhelmed by the sense of mystery, the vastness, the awesomeness.
05:50The wildebeest migrations happen in a pattern that's linked to the patterns of rain and desiccation on the Serengeti.
05:59They're young, as well as those of zebra and gazelle, are prey for a number of the iconic predators.
06:05Lions, hyena.
06:09So in a sense, they're an indicator for the broader health of that entire ecosystem.
06:21The migration was known about it.
06:25Bernhard Schimek believed that the colonial government's new plans to cut Serengeti in half
06:30would leave the wildebeest completely unprotected for a large part of the year.
06:37He was deeply concerned that this would spell the end for Serengeti's wildlife.
06:47With the plane, Schimek would be the first to follow the migrating herds
06:52and to prove that Africa's wild animals needed more space to survive.
06:59The plane was also the key to bringing a completely new and dramatic perspective on Serengeti.
07:12The film Serengeti Shall Not Die would show the splendor of this wilderness as never before
07:19and bring the plight of the Serengeti to the world.
07:24And so he became, if you like, the voice of Serengeti.
07:28He became the one that went out there to the Western world, to North America and so on,
07:31through his films, to say, Serengeti is in trouble.
07:35This is the greatest place on Earth.
07:37And what we don't know, it's about to be lost very quickly.
07:42And Schimek would show the world what he perceived to be the real threat to Serengeti's survival.
07:48Humans.
07:50It was this last great Eden, so to speak, which he championed.
07:53But at the same time, it was this dark, stalking menace in the background,
07:57which is about to overwhelm it.
07:59And so he put those things together very effectively to create a crisis of the Serengeti.
08:07The bigger argument was these natural wonders have to be kept
08:12against these hordes of human predators, if you will.
08:17And therefore, human beings were seen as a problem, as a threat.
08:22They were not part of the argument, were not part of the picture.
08:25The broader picture was nature has to be kept pristine.
08:32Over the next few years, it was this idea of a pristine nature, timeless, unchanging,
08:38and most of all untouched by humans, that came to determine not only the future of Serengeti,
08:45but of wild Africa as a whole.
08:48A national park must remain a piece of primordial wilderness to be effective.
08:54No men, not even native ones, should live inside the borders.
08:59The only problem is, beneath the hooves of the wildebeest, there is a much older story,
09:07the story of human beings, actually the story of life itself.
09:13The complete account of the shaping of Africa's landscape,
09:17that has been hidden from us by the dominance of just one way of looking at the world.
09:31Almost 50 years earlier, an entomologist called Katwinkel
09:36was chasing butterflies through the wilds of Serengeti
09:39when events took a remarkable twist near the edge of a rocky gorge.
09:49He had spotted a butterfly that he particularly wanted and Katwinkel followed it down into the bushes
09:55and presumably he found a number of butterflies,
09:58but he also found fossilised remains of extinct mammals.
10:04Katwinkel had stumbled upon Olderpie Gorge,
10:07one of the most famous sites of early human history known today.
10:15The real significance of Olderpie wasn't immediately clear,
10:19not until after the Second World War,
10:21when a controversial paleoanthropologist and his wife
10:24focused their attention on Katwinkel's scrubby, remote gorge.
10:33It wasn't long before Louis and Mary Leakey revealed a sensational new find.
10:42Xenxanthropus boisei, as they called it,
10:45was estimated to be nearly two million years old,
10:48at the time the oldest human-like creature ever found.
10:54And that got the world very excited about the great antiquity of humanity
10:59and the presence of humanity in one form or the other in Africa
11:04and presumably in some way relating to the spread from Africa
11:09to other parts of the world.
11:12And just 30 miles south of Olderpie is Laitoli.
11:16Here Mary later found footprints,
11:19three apes walking upright across the savannah,
11:23three and a half million years ago.
11:29Clearly, bipedal apes,
11:30creatures that walked habitually on two lakes,
11:33from which we are descended in one way or the other,
11:37were in Africa at least four million years ago
11:40and it's the oldest record of bipedalism
11:43that's been found anywhere in the world
11:44and clearly the African apes, of which we are one,
11:48were derived from that ancient fauna.
11:53The very latest evidence suggests
11:56that the presence in Serengeti of humans
11:58and the ancestors of humans from so far back in time
12:01is no coincidence.
12:06It's a different way of turning sunlight into food.
12:09When they die,
12:11they leave slightly different forms of carbon in the Earth.
12:16Analysis of these signature traces
12:19has led to startling conclusions
12:21about the true nature of the African savannah.
12:27Over time,
12:29the amount of tree cover
12:30has fluctuated drastically between two extremes.
12:33On one hand, a forest.
12:35On the other, a grassland.
12:39And the main force behind these cycles
12:41is the climate.
12:50What we've seen, major changes in rainfall conditions,
12:55so that we have had droughts,
12:57some of them have lasted for 30,000 years,
13:01where clearly this whole system
13:03would have been completely different.
13:08and the other thing that we've known from all of this
13:10is that they change incredibly fast.
13:13It could take only 20 years
13:14for it to flip from one to another.
13:22What it means in terms of what we see today
13:24and the future
13:26is that nothing stays the same.
13:36And it is this changing nature of the savannah
13:39that in turn influences everything.
13:43It is the dynamic of habitat change
13:46that drives evolution.
13:48If everything had remained pristine
13:50whenever that moment was,
13:53then we probably,
13:54certainly wouldn't be here anyway
13:56because there would have been no pressure
13:57for an ape to stand up in the first place.
14:00The more we find out,
14:02the more a picture of humans
14:04as an integral part of the savannah ecosystem
14:06from the earliest times
14:08begins to emerge.
14:13And soon,
14:14early humans started to exert
14:16their influence on the landscape.
14:22With fire,
14:23they could start to tip the natural balance
14:26of the savannah to their advantage,
14:28pushing back woodland
14:30to open up grassland.
14:33I think it's been shaped
14:34and reshaped
14:35time and time again
14:36for the last
14:38at least a million years.
14:39And certainly since fire
14:40became a factor
14:41because I think
14:42even the early hunter-gatherers
14:44would have used fire
14:45to get rid of some
14:46of the course of grazing
14:47to create these patches of greenness
14:49that then attracted them wildlife.
14:54So I have no doubt
14:56whatsoever
14:56that the hunter-gatherer
14:58going back half a million years plus
14:59was a major agent
15:01of using fire in the Serengeti.
15:04As geological time
15:06gave way to historical time,
15:08the human influence
15:09over the environment
15:10moved into a new phase.
15:17When cattle came down
15:18into that area
15:20some four,
15:21four and a half thousand years ago,
15:23they would have had
15:24a huge impact
15:24on opening up the countryside.
15:27And I think herders
15:27would have frequently set fire
15:30to bush,
15:31to clear areas for grass.
15:34Yeah,
15:35make sure they relate
15:36to theライja
15:37to
15:37the mg
15:38and dhati.
15:39Again,
15:40have следed
15:41to have for
15:42the pim
15:42and birds
15:43while they have
15:54with a
15:55new
15:55earth.
15:56Mannos
15:57as
16:07I don't know if I'm going to get rid of the tree cover and create more grassland.
16:12So fire for them becomes a very important tool in making the savannahs more savannah-like.
16:19And this is the irony to me.
16:20If you take away fire and you take away past list,
16:24you end up with lots of thickets and bush over much of Africa.
16:30And it's going to increase the ratio of the grazing animals like the zebra and the wildebeest
16:37compared with the browsing animals like impala and giraffe.
16:45Though ultimately it's the climate that drives places like Serengeti,
16:49over time humans became a key part in fine-tuning its characteristic nature.
16:59By the time the earliest maps started emerging from Victorian explorers of the late 1800s,
17:06we can see the extent to which people had begun to dominate the landscape around Serengeti.
17:14In the eastern side of our system we have pastoralists.
17:18Now you can't conduct agriculture on the plains, they cannot support that sort of thing.
17:22They're not the right soils and it's far too dry.
17:24So it's really only for pastoralism.
17:27In contrast to that we have agriculturalists in the west.
17:32And these people are largely from what's called the Bantu group.
17:36And they came from the Congo.
17:38They arrived in the 1500s.
17:43And in between, the Wanderobo, with a specialism for elephant hunting.
17:54The most recent people to arrive in the area have in many ways become the most iconic, the Maasai,
18:00arriving from the north of Kenya and Sudan, as recently as the 1800s.
18:06They later won the respect of the colonials, largely as a result of their fierce warrior reputation.
18:16But their success was much more to do with the way they saw their cows and the wild animals of
18:22the savannah,
18:22as part of the same fabric of survival.
18:26And for wildlife and Maasai alike, the key to survival here is movement.
18:32The Maasais have really perfected the act of making sure that they use the ecosystem
18:38in a way that they do not necessarily pleat it, but they move about.
18:44For instance, they've got a dry season area where they graze the animals during the drought period.
18:49They have got an area where they move to when it is rainy.
18:54Well, they use the hooves of the cow to cultivate the ecosystem.
18:58So without that, what can happen very quickly, it can change to not necessarily a grassy area,
19:03but to more of a thicket and bushy that will not have a lot of value for your livestock.
19:09So you try to move about so that you can continue balancing the shrubs, the trees, the grasses around your
19:14ecosystem.
19:15Would change all that.
19:22In 1891, an Austrian explorer, Oskar Bauman, was one of the very first Europeans to travel through the Serengeti.
19:31His account records first-hand evidence of what turns out to be nothing short of the worst human catastrophe ever
19:38to befall the African continent.
19:41There were skeleton-like women with the madness of starvation in their sunken eyes.
19:48Warriors who could hardly crawl on all fours.
19:52There were refugees from the Serengeti, where the famine had depopulated entire districts.
20:01What he was describing were the effects of a colonial invasion, not of an army, but of something ultimately much
20:08more destructive.
20:10A virus called Rindapest.
20:14Rindapest arrived in Africa, as far as we know, for the first time in 1890.
20:20Brought in with cattle from Egypt when the Italians invaded what was called Abyssinia, Ethiopia now.
20:29It took six years to spread from Ethiopia to the Cape of Good Hope and to West Africa, and killed
20:35off 95% of the cattle.
20:37With this cattle virus, the whole socio-economic fabric of pre-colonial Africa collapsed.
20:45Without meat, without milk, without even the means to pull a plow, mass starvation quickly followed on a scale matched
20:53in global terms only by the Black Death.
20:57Parents offered us their babies in exchange for meat.
21:01Swarms of vultures followed them from high, awaiting their certain victims.
21:06Such affliction was from now on, daily before our eyes.
21:13I think the reason why Rindapest was a signature impact is that it swept through Africa so fast.
21:21In the best part of a decade, it moved from Cape to Cairo.
21:26And it devastated livestock populations, and therefore it devastated pastoral people.
21:34It was much more than a virus.
21:36I think it was the loss of a way of life.
21:39I think there was a loss of a certain meaning.
21:42If everything you ever imagined life to be was suddenly swept away, and swept away so drastically, what else is
21:51there to hold on to?
21:53And I think it was such a struggle to reconstruct life again.
21:57Grasslands were now swallowed up by the wild African bush.
22:02Most critically, just at the time...
22:07And I think the unfortunate thing is that that was true for that time.
22:12But looked at in the bigger historical picture, going back maybe 200 years, these would have been prime areas.
22:18And they would be prime areas again once the populations of people and livestock built up again.
22:23So we were looking at a very low ebb, ecologically, for the relationship between people and wildlife.
22:30And it had a huge bearing on the way in which conservation went.
22:35And the perception, or let's say the misperception, that the colonial governments, and I would say even the independent governments,
22:42had on the role of people in the savannahs.
22:49With the shutting out of the local people from the landscape, the way was now open for a completely new
22:55vision of the African savannah.
22:59Wild, savage, and pristine.
23:04It is the strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic moons and the splendor of the new
23:12stars,
23:12where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth,
23:20unworn of man and changed only by the slow change of the ages through time everlasting.
23:28In April 1909, ex-US President Theodore Roosevelt arrived on the shores of East Africa for his now famous safari.
23:39Theodore Roosevelt was probably America's greatest conservation president.
23:45During his administration, the largest amount of public lands was set in forest reserves and national parks
23:55than probably any other president since.
23:58Roosevelt was very much of this generation that saw nature as an antidote to civilization.
24:07And in coming to East Africa, I think that it was part of his effort to recapture that long-gone
24:13pioneer spirit.
24:14He was this great open landscape, very few people, and he had a whale of a time over that period
24:20of a year.
24:22Immediately, the great American conservationist set out doing what conservationists in those days did.
24:29Hunt.
24:32Roosevelt just lined up with specimens.
24:35This is the ultimate He-Man, sort of big hunter image.
24:41But as his lust for the primitive urges of the hunt propelled him on, Africa started to stir deep emotions
24:48for an age lost to the modern world.
24:52When I went to Serengeti for the first time and saw all those wildebeest, the first thought that came into
24:57my head was,
24:58this is what the American West must have looked like before we destroyed all the bison.
25:03So I think when someone like Roosevelt saw all this game running around, he was like, oh, we have a
25:09second chance here.
25:10You know, it hasn't all been squandered. It's still here.
25:13Here was a last, primordial wilderness that urgently needed preservation, atonement for the losses of the civilized world.
25:24All civilized governments are now realizing that it is their duty here and there to preserve unharmed tracks of wild
25:32nature,
25:33with thereon the wild things, the destruction of which means the destruction of half the charm of wild nature.
25:43And that's certainly a big part of how conservation in East Africa is talked about.
25:47It's like something to be protected for all of humanity because it's unique and special now because this is a
25:53place where it hasn't been destroyed.
25:55And therefore, this is a place that we should be especially concerned about, right?
25:59On his return, however, Roosevelt's adoring public were captivated not by fledgling thoughts of global conservation,
26:07but by the heroic exploits of the great white hunter.
26:17Roosevelt's 1911 safari really created a cascade of hunters coming out.
26:27In East Africa, the British colonial government's initial reaction to controlling this slaughter was to create hunting licenses.
26:37But in a place as big as this, with just a handful of administrators, their power to actually control anything
26:44was severely limited.
26:47Licenses were much more effective against the local people.
26:52With one fell soup, native hunting became illegal because not many natives could go to the towns, the colonial towns,
27:03the colonial bombers,
27:04where the colonial administrators were, to obtain hunting licenses.
27:08So the only form of hunting that then became legal was European hunting.
27:16So there was this complete divide between the trophy hunting colonials and, if you like, the subsistence hunters trying to
27:24get at those same animals for meat.
27:25And the local populations felt very alienated that wildlife had become not their customary right,
27:33but it had become something of a sport, something of a pleasure for the colonial government.
27:38So again, that became a deep antagonism.
27:42As traditional hunters were branded poachers, hunting and the safari now became the noble pursuit of foreign dignitaries and kings,
27:52like the future George VI.
27:56But very soon, wild Africa would be available to all, with the invention of the portable movie camera.
28:07Martin and Orsa Johnson were among the first to lay down their guns and pick up a camera.
28:13For some of the time, at least.
28:19On the trail, Orsa's eye suddenly catches a slinking figure ahead.
28:23A lion has caught the scent of his favorite delicacy, zebra.
28:27While he stalks his prey, guns are dropped, cameras take their place, and Martin starts photographing the action.
28:34They spent a couple years in Africa filming wild animals.
28:39And part of it very much conformed to a vision of Africa of ecological paradise.
28:47They talk about this place that they discovered, Lake Paradise.
28:52Well, they of course hadn't discovered it.
28:54It had been known by African people around that area for a long time.
28:59They very much portray it as this Garden of Eden.
29:03Through the camera lens, the animals of Africa took on new meaning.
29:09Transformed by technology, from savage beasts to things of extraordinary beauty.
29:21And the Johnsons were the first to film from the air.
29:26Aerial scenes becomes very important because it's a kind of God's eye view of the world, if you will.
29:33And portrays the immensity of the landscape.
29:38Wildebeest, hundreds upon hundreds of wildebeest, led on by overpowering thirst, driven on by the lions that follow.
29:46If you're filming wildebeest migration, you begin to capture the awe of the sheer scale and size of these wildlife
29:56populations.
29:59Though still in black and white, these extraordinary scenes from the early 1930s show a surprisingly familiar image of Africa
30:07emerging.
30:08One that we can recognize in wildlife films today.
30:13Roosevelt's savage primordial wilderness was evolving into a land of awe-inspiring, majestic beauty.
30:22Even if, ultimately, the audience's need for thrills and spills required every scene to climax with a large dose of
30:31false jeopardy.
30:32And end up with Osa shooting the main subject.
30:38Osa, let's go another bullet.
30:41And Osa Johnson has scored the first lion kill of her life.
30:46But attitudes were beginning to change.
30:49And soon a few of the more enlightened hunters began to see the impending end of what had once seemed
30:55endless.
30:56Even in the vast expanses of Serengeti.
31:02There was almost no control of this hunting.
31:05It was a free-for-all.
31:06And there was, on some occasions, as many as a hundred lions were shot in one trip.
31:13This enraged some of the more conscientious professional hunters.
31:19One of which, Finch Hatton, who features in Out of Africa.
31:23He wrote a letter to the Times, complaining and saying that there has to be regulation.
31:30And what shall one say of the two gentlemen who went to the Serengeti by motor car and killed between
31:36them 80 lions?
31:38Can we think of anything more nauseating?
31:41And this is considered sport.
31:44The last of great hunters actually ended up in southern Tanzania where I grew up.
31:48People like Rushbee and many others.
31:51And they had been the great elephant hunters of the 1920s.
31:55That whole era came to an end in the 1930s.
32:00And ironically, they became the first game wardens.
32:04They switched from seeing wildlife as endless to realizing, in fact, this was not an endless resource.
32:11It was coming to an end, and it was coming to an end very quickly.
32:17Over the following decades, it became clear to these early hunter-turned conservationists that to control hunting in Serengeti would
32:26be futile without the creation of a protected area.
32:30And that park stretched from Lake Victoria in the west, and then eastwards to include Ngorongoro Crater and across the
32:39plains.
32:39So it was largely an east-west oriented park.
32:47But this new national park included people.
32:51There were still human settlements. The Sukumas were still present. The Ngorome, Kuria and the Maasai.
32:58But their activities were seriously curtailed.
33:03In the eyes of the local people, this new protection was incomprehensible.
33:08What once belonged to everyone, now became Shamba Labibi, the Queen's Field.
33:38Not to say the Queen wouldn't allow them into her field. At first, anyway.
33:43Now, the concept of a national park was actually quite alien to the British government.
33:48The interesting thing is that they had in mind that local people could and had lived with wildlife,
33:54and therefore all you had to do is set these areas aside so they would not be invaded by settlers,
33:59and they would not be hunting areas, and everything would be fine.
34:03It simply didn't work.
34:07What had been a low-level subsistence hunting, now became more a commercial hunting,
34:13because the towns were growing, there was an urban African population with a demand for meat,
34:18and so the call went out of the bush, we need meat.
34:22And where was the largest source of free meat? The Queen's Field.
34:28It was just a question of taking traditional methods and scaling them up.
34:33Actually, what was far more effective was the line trap, the miles and miles of traps that people laid,
34:40and the pit traps and many other traditional means of killing animals,
34:44which were now multiplied by a factor of ten or twenty.
34:47Those became extremely effective.
34:52At the same time, modernisation was also challenging the colonial's harmonious view of the pastoral population.
35:03The government's own vaccination programmes had all but eradicated Rinderpest,
35:09and as the Maasai in particular began to move back into lands that they traditionally used,
35:14they too were beginning to exert a new level of pressure on the wild.
35:19The role of local people as a dominant force in the environment could no longer be brushed aside.
35:26The scene was now set for the prevailing image of the African landscape to evolve once more.
35:37It's in the films of another couple, Armand and Michaela Dennis,
35:40that this next reinvention of wild Africa first appears.
35:46In Below the Sahara, the modern picture of a fragile paradise threatened by evil man first came into popular culture.
35:58Below the Sahara represents this transformational shift in the representation of Africa
36:05to one of ecological splendour and really to seeing man as a threat.
36:11Flying over game country is the best way to realize the wealth of wildlife
36:16which still survives in immense Africa.
36:19You feel as if the pages of time had been turned back to a more primitive age
36:24when animals roamed the tropical earth and their countless thousands
36:27before man the enemy, man the ravager and destroyer had been born.
36:33This scene really represents a pristine wilderness, a nature in its purity, before man, the destroyer,
36:45had entered the scene.
36:47And that really sets up this dichotomy, if you will, between humans versus nature, that
36:54humans can't exist alongside nature and that humans are always a threat and that nature
36:59needs to be protected from them.
37:04The Denises were, by now, part of a growing international movement that saw the future for African wildlife
37:11only in the separation of pristine Africa from the dark forces of humanity.
37:22The political champions of this emerging view were a London-based group of well-connected hunter-turned
37:28conservationists, the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire.
37:36Some people called it the Penitent Butcher's Club because it was made up of a lot of hunters.
37:43The Serengeti was to be the first and the crown jewel of Britain's national parks within the Empire.
37:51And so there were a lot of people who felt very passionately about its preservation.
37:56The SPFE now looked for a way to enforce their growing conviction that the Serengeti should be freed
38:03from the threat of humanity for the future.
38:08Their attention was drawn to another national park for inspiration.
38:12Not an African park, but an American one.
38:28Yellowstone.
38:31The world's first national park had itself been through a difficult history of uncontrolled poaching
38:37and conflict over indigenous rights and had long before established the precedent that human rights and conservation don't mix.
38:51Largely as a result of its high-profile relaunch by none other than Theodore Roosevelt,
38:56it had long ago become the shining example of world conservation.
39:03Yellowstone National Park in the United States provided a model that was then applied all across the colonial world.
39:13So Serengeti is the best example of the Yellowstone idea,
39:18an area of fantastic ecological wonder being emptied of the social presence that had been part and parcel of that
39:27ecology.
39:29For the new hard line concept, a park without people.
39:35But back in East Africa, the local colonial administration wasn't convinced that moving people out of Serengeti was a good
39:43idea.
39:45More and more, the debate came to focus on the fate of the most numerous people in the park, the
39:51iconic Maasai.
39:53There was actually quite a bit of tension between the local colonial administrators
39:57who understood these people's relationships to place and what their livelihoods were about.
40:03We're telling people, you're crazy, you can't just throw these people out of this park.
40:08It's going to be catastrophic, plus they're going to hate it.
40:11If you really want people to hate animals, then go ahead and throw these people out of this park.
40:16It grew between the powerful conservationists in London and the local colonial government.
40:22The future of two completely different visions of wild Africa, one with people, one without, was held in the balance.
40:32In 1956, the British government tasked a special committee to come up with a solution.
40:40That recommendation said the Maasai are living in the eastern side,
40:44and therefore what we should do is draw a line down the middle of the plains
40:48and have the Maasai where they currently are and the wildlife on the western side.
40:56The proposal was a clever compromise.
41:00To create a Serengeti without people, they would shift the park boundary to the west
41:06and so avoid having to evict the 6,000 Maasai who lived in the east.
41:14Because this made the original park much smaller,
41:17they would add an extra extension to the north up towards the Kenya border.
41:23The habit of the human being to try to create boundaries around that which is infinite,
41:31around that which he or she cannot really understand,
41:36the assumption of control of nature.
41:39I think, you know, one of those exercises in futility and nonsense.
41:48By early 1959, Bernhard Jemeck and his son Michael had been studying the wildebeest herds for over a year
41:57to try and stop the plans for the proposed new boundaries.
42:00During the dry season, the majority of the animals are to be found near Lake Victoria,
42:04but as soon as the rain falls and the wide areas of plain in the middle turn green,
42:10the herds begin to move and spread out over them.
42:12And they always come back to the same place as soon as the prolific grass starts to grow again.
42:18In so doing, they wander far across the new frontiers of the National Park
42:22and actually remain outside them for weeks and months.
42:27It looked like his findings supported his worst fears.
42:32The wildebeest would be exposed to the...
42:34The areas around the Serengeti are sparsely inhabited.
42:38But Africa's coloured population is now increasing as rapidly as the rest of humanity.
42:43Once the wilderness surrounding the present borders of the National Park fills up with people,
42:48it will be too late to change boundaries.
42:52But just as he was completing the final scenes of Serengeti Shall Not Die,
42:57filming was cut short by tragedy.
43:00Michael, his son, and director of the film, was killed.
43:05A griffon vulture had collided with the wing of the zebra-striped aeroplane.
43:12Michael's death had a profound impact upon Berhan Jemek.
43:16Michael's body was actually buried on the side of the Ngorongoro crater.
43:22And so, Benhart's feeling was that completing the film,
43:26throwing himself into the completion of the film,
43:28was the best way to honour his son's memory.
43:31In the film, Jemek took the best of filmmakers before him,
43:36the visual innovation of the Johnsons and the passion of the Denises,
43:40to create a visual masterpiece, an appeal from the heart for pristine Africa.
43:56It was an instant box office hit, winning the 1959 Oscar for Best Documentary,
44:02and it brought the plight of the Serengeti to the world at large.
44:07Before it is too late, cannot we at least preserve the Serengeti,
44:11this last refuge of the giant herds of the African plains as God created it?
44:17For the animals, and for the people who come after us.
44:29But by now, the British colonial authorities have moved on.
44:37Just three hours' drive to the north of Serengeti,
44:40the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya was at crisis point,
44:43giving a terrifying glimpse of just how fragile the colonial hold on Africa could be.
44:49Tanzania was not a colony.
44:51It was a mandate handed over by the League of Nations at the end of the First War to Britain
44:56to lead towards independence.
45:00The overriding concern for the colonial government right now was not conservation.
45:06It was to avoid conflict on the road to independence.
45:13Moving 6,000 Maasai from their homeland
45:16to create Chimek's ultimate pristine park
45:19was not something they could seriously consider.
45:24So despite Chimek's pleas for the wildebeest,
45:28in 1959, on the dawn of independence,
45:31the new boundaries of the national park were imposed.
45:36Chimek thought that the colonial government's decision was a catastrophe,
45:41and he remained angry about it pretty much throughout his career.
45:47All was not lost for the wildebeest, however.
45:52Though they do spend a large part of the year on the eastern plains outside the new park,
45:57we now know that completely by chance,
46:00the new northern extension has become the most important factor for their survival.
46:08And that was entirely fortuitous, because that's actually where the wildebeest go at the worst time of year.
46:15It is their refuge.
46:19And in many ways the most significant point,
46:23and that ultimately would be the defining factor in shaping Serengeti's future.
46:31The Maasai had avoided the worst-case scenario,
46:34the majority now able to stay put outside the park.
46:39But to finalize the new people-less Serengeti,
46:43a thousand Maasai, along with their fifty thousand cattle,
46:47were now moved out.
46:50For them, this marked the end of a life,
46:53based on the freedom to move across the savannah.
46:59We understand we shall not be entitled henceforth to cross the boundary of the new Serengeti National Park,
47:07which we have habitually used in the past.
47:11We agreed to move ourselves, our possessions, our cattle,
47:16and all our other animals out of this land by the advent of the next rains.
47:24Less is known about the effects on the other people who traditionally used the Serengeti.
47:30The Sukuma peasant farmers and pastoralists were pushed westwards.
47:36The Ngoreme and the Kuria were also pushed further north.
47:39So the process of creating Serengeti National Park was not a peaceful affair.
47:49There was resistance, but the colonial armed force, the armed might of the colonial state did the job.
47:56The people moved out.
47:59By drawing another line on a map, this compromise had effectively drawn a line between people and animals in the
48:06Serengeti.
48:08Pristine Africa to the left, people to the right.
48:20Those rural populations now saw wildlife as government animals.
48:26And so coming up to independence, it was said by most people that I knew in the rural areas,
48:31as soon as independence comes through, we will take our own back on wildlife, we'll take our own wildlife back.
48:37So there was this incredible threat that independence would be a release of the rights to go back and kill
48:46wildlife.
48:52No nation has the right to make decisions for another nation.
48:57No people for another people.
49:02In the same year Serengeti's new boundaries were fixed,
49:06a young history teacher, Julius Nureri, was preparing to lead his country to independence.
49:16Tanzania didn't start up under President Nureri as a socialist state,
49:20but he very quickly moved into the notion that there was something called African Socialism,
49:25which should be adopted in the development of the state,
49:29because he was very concerned about the inequity that had emerged under the colonial governments.
49:34He was very firmly committed to leveling the playing field for all his people in Tanzania,
49:40and I think that's what he did effectively.
49:42So he saw the vehicle of doing that African Socialism, because it would create that equality.
49:50It was clear from the start that Nureri's priorities lay with his people.
49:56But what would he make of the new national park, and a vision of Africa that excluded them?
50:02In September 1961, as independence loomed, the conservation world held its breath and focused its attention on the Tanzanian town
50:12of Arusha.
50:14Here, a conference of 21 African countries and five international organizations
50:21had gathered to debate the future of conservation in Africa.
50:26Julius Nureri delivered his address to the assembled dignitaries.
50:32The survival of our wildlife is a matter of grave concern to all of us in Africa.
50:38We solemnly declare that we will do everything in our power to make sure that our children's grandchildren
50:46will be able to enjoy this rich and precious inheritance.
51:03In the years following independence, there was an explosion of park building, resulting in almost a third of Tanzania's land
51:13set aside for wildlife, more than any other country today.
51:23Even in the new socialist Tanzania, the value of tourism would come before human rights.
51:30The creation of national parks was a grand success.
51:34It was a great benefit to the nations of Tanzania and Kenya in creating this fabric of national parks and
51:40reserves,
51:40which then became the basis of a tourist industry, which rose to number one in the export economy of both
51:46countries.
51:47So those have really been the fuel, if you like, for a lot of our economic growth, and they're recognized
51:52as such.
51:57Today, Serengeti National Park sees half a million visitors a year who generate $10 million for the state.
52:05It not only supports conservation of the animals within the park, but helps finance some of the other less profitable
52:12parks in the country.
52:15But as the parks have become more and more successful, the expectations of tourists have come to reinforce the pristine
52:22vision of Africa.
52:31Let's start with the morning. It is a most splendid orange sunrise.
52:39You raise your eyes and right across the plains dotted with acacia trees, giraffes kind of lollop over.
52:50To your left, elephants' brows. To your right, the distant roar of lions.
52:58And no people, no human beings to disturb the space save the observer of that particular landscape.
53:10Serengeti is the essence of wild Africa. This is the real wild Africa. This is timeless.
53:15Yes, this is something that is absolutely outside of any human influence.
53:21And it's one of the few places left in the world that's like that. That's its theme.
53:27Our obsession to preserve wild Africa has created a pristine fantasy world, a place without people, preserved behind invisible walls.
53:39It may well work for tourism. And it has played an important role in the preservation of animals.
53:46The problem is that it's a vision that doesn't take into account the bigger picture.
53:54Serengeti is not a theme park. It is a real place.
53:58A place whose true nature is one of constant change.
54:08For many, the symbol of primordial permanence.
54:13But the latest evidence suggests that not so long ago, the climate was very different.
54:19And the migration went in a completely different direction to today.
54:28And the bigger ecological picture says that the climate will drive change again.
54:35We get serious changes in the climatic regime, which is highly likely as a result of global warming.
54:44Then there may be required a change in direction of the wildebeest migration.
54:50And if that's the case, then we need to make provision for that.
54:57In the future, if the place where the animals of Serengeti need to be falls outside the boundaries of parks,
55:06their chances of survival would seem slim without a vision for wild Africa
55:11that transcends the unnatural divide between people and wilderness.
55:24In the next program, we discover how a European idea led to the creation of the original pristine wilderness
55:33in the unnatural history of Yellowstone.
55:46Stay with us here on BBC4.
55:47Imagine is coming up next with a 2011 profile of author and neurologist Oliver Sacks,
55:52who passed away earlier this year.
55:54We'll see you next time.
56:03Bye.
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