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Series looking at three of the world's most iconic wild places and how they have been shaped over time by man. More than anywhere, the Serengeti is synonymous with wilderness and has even come to represent Africa, but the story of the Serengeti is just as much about humans as it is about wildlife. Right from the origin of our species in Africa, humans have been profoundly shaping this unique wilderness.
探讨了塞伦盖蒂如何因一种殖民时期传入的疾病而变得“荒野化”——该疾病导致动物数量锐减，使其总数在20世纪80年代初降至不足20万只..
探讨了塞伦盖蒂如何因一种殖民时期传入的疾病而变得“荒野化”——该疾病导致动物数量锐减，使其总数在20世纪80年代初降至不足20万只..
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AnimalsTranscript
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.
03:25And 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.
04:46And, in particular, the removal from the national park of the spectacular Ngorogoro 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.
05:08Serengeti'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 wildebeest 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 then since 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.
15:56The family
16:06What the pastless is trying to do is get rid of the tree cover and create more grassland.
16:12So fire for them becomes a very important tool in making the savannas more savannah-like.
16:19And this is the irony to me.
16:20If you take away fire and you take away pastless,
16:23you end up with lots of thickets and bush over much of Africa.
16:28The nature of the savannah's wildlife.
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,
17:05we 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.
18:33The Maasai's have really perfected the act of making sure that they use the ecosystem in a way that they
18:40do not necessarily replete it.
18:42But 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,
19:04but 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.
19:14Would change all that.
19:21In 1891, an Austrian explorer, Oskar Bauman, was one of the very first Europeans to travel through the Serengeti.
19:30His 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.
20:09A 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, in the
21:22best 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. I 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,
22:40and I would say even the independent governments, had on the role of people in the savannahs.
22:49With the shutting out of the local people from the landscape,
22:52the way was now open for a completely new vision of the African savannah.
22:58Wild, savage, and pristine.
23:04It is the strong attraction of the silent places.
23:08Of the large, tropic moons and the splendor of the new stars.
23:12Where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth.
23:20Unworn of man.
23:22And changed only by the slow change of the ages through time everlasting.
23:29In 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 during his administration.
23:47The largest amount of public lands was set in forest reserves and national parks than 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. Hunt.
24:32Roosevelt just lined up with specimens. This 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, but it had become something
27:35of 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,
27:51like 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, for some
28:14of 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.
29:41Led 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.
29:53And size of these wildlife populations.
29:59Though still in black and white, these extraordinary scenes from the early 1930s
30:04show a surprisingly familiar image of Africa emerging.
30:08One that we can recognise 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.
30:33And 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.
31:24He 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 saying wildlife was endless to realising, 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
32:23that to control hunting in Serengeti would be futile without the creation of a protected air.
32:31And that park stretched from Lake Victoria in the west,
32:34and then eastwards to include Ngorongoro Crater and across the plains.
32:39So it was largely an east-west-oriented park.
32:47But this new national park included people.
32:51There were still human settlements.
32:54The Sukumas were still present.
32:56The Ngorome, Kuria and the Maasai.
32:59But their activities were seriously curtailed.
33:02In 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,
33:53and 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.
35:04The 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 to one of ecological splendour,
36:08and really to seeing man as a threat.
36:11Flying over game country is the best way to realise the wealth of wildlife which 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,
36:28before man the enemy, man the ravager and destroyer had been born.
36:32This scene really represents a pristine wilderness, a nature in its purity,
36:41before man the destroyer had entered the scene.
36:47And that really sets up this dichotomy, if you will, between humans versus nature,
36:53that humans can't exist alongside nature, and that humans are always a threat,
36:58and that nature needs 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 conservationists,
37:30the 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
38:01that the Serengeti should be freed from the threat of humanity for the future.
38:07Their attention was drawn to another national park for inspiration.
38:12Not an African park, but an American one.
38:30Yellowstone, the 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.
39:12So Serengeti is the best example of the Yellowstone idea, an area of fantastic ecological wonder being emptied of the
39:23social presence that had been part and parcel of that ecology.
39:29For the new hard line, 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 who understood these people's relationships to place
40:01and what their livelihoods were about.
40:04We're telling people, you're crazy, you can't just throw these people out of this park, it's going to be catastrophic,
40:10plus they're going to hate it.
40:11You know, if you really want people to hate animals, then, you know, go ahead and throw these people out
40:15of this park.
40:16It grew between the powerful conservationists in London and the local colonial government.
40:21The 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 and therefore what we should do is draw a
40:47line down the middle of the plains and have the Maasai where they currently are and the wildlife on the
40:55western side.
40:56The proposal was a clever compromise.
41:00To create a Serengeti without people, they would shift the park boundary to the west and so avoid having to
41:08evict the 6,000 Maasai who lived in the east.
41:14Because this made the original park much smaller, they would add an extra extension to the north up towards the
41:21Kenya border.
41:22The habit of the human being to try to create boundaries around that which is infinite, around that which he
41:33or she cannot really understand the 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 to
41:57try 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, but as soon as
42:06the rain falls and the wide areas of plain in the middle turn green, the herds begin to move and
42:11spread 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 and actually remain outside them for
42:24weeks and months.
42:27It looked like his findings supported his worst fears.
42:32The wildebeest would be exposed to the 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, it will be too late
42:49to change boundaries.
42:52But just as he was completing the final scenes of Serengeti Shall Not Die, filming was cut short by tragedy.
43:00Michael, his son, and director of the film, was killed.
43:04A griffon vulture had collided with the wing of the zebra-striped aeroplane.
43:12Michael's death had a profound impact upon Bernhard Jemeck.
43:16Michael's body was actually buried on the side of the Ngorongoro crater.
43:22And so Bernhard's feeling was that completing the film, throwing himself into the completion of the film, was the best
43:29way to honour his son's memory.
43:31In the film, Jemeck took the best of filmmakers before him, the visual innovation of the Johnson's and the passion
43:39of the Dennis's, to 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, and it brought the plight of
44:03the Serengeti to the world at large.
44:07Before it is too late, cannot we at least preserve the Serengeti, this last refuge of the giant herds of
44:14the African plains, as God created it, for the animals, and for the people who come after us.
44:29But by now, the British colonial authorities had moved on.
44:37Just three hours' drive to the north of Serengeti, the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya was at crisis point, giving
44:44a terrifying glimpse of just how fragile the colonial hold on Africa could be.
44:49Tanzania was not a colony.
44:51Tanzania was not a colony. It was a mandate handed over by the League of Nations at the end of
44:54the First War to Britain to 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 to create Chimek's ultimate pristine park was not something they could seriously consider.
45:24So despite Chimek's pleas for the wildebeest, in 1959, on the dawn of independence, the new boundaries of the national
45:33park were imposed.
45:37Chimek thought that the colonial government's decision was a catastrophe, and he remained angry about it pretty much throughout his
45:45career.
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, we now
45:58know that completely by chance, the 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. It is
46:15their refuge.
46:19And in many ways the most significant point, and that, ultimately, would be the defining factor in shaping Serengeti's future.
46:31The Maasai had avoided the worst-case scenario, the majority now able to stay put outside the park.
46:39But to finalize the new people-less Serengeti, a thousand Maasai, along with their 50,000 cattle, were now moved
46:48out.
46:50For them, this marked the end of a life, based 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, which we
47:08have habitually used in the past.
47:11We agreed to move ourselves, our possessions, our cattle, and all our other animals out of this land by the
47:20advent of the next rains.
47:25Less 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.
47:40So the process of creating Serengeti National Park was not a peaceful affair.
47:48There was resistance, but the colonial armed force, the armed might of the colonial state did the job.
47:57The 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.
48:38So 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.
49:21But he very quickly moved into the notion that there was something called African Socialism,
49:26which 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.
55:57Bye.
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