 Reference Base  Kenya Colony and Protectorate: Game Department, Annual Re... |
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Kenya Game Department, 1937. Kenya Colony and Protectorate: Game Department, Annual Report for 1935. Journal of the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire 31: 31-45
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| Location: |
Africa - Eastern Africa - Kenya |
| Subject: |
Behaviour - Towards Man |
| Species: |
Black Rhino |
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This wholesale killing of rhino will be regretted by game lovers, but one should hesitate before condemning it as unjustifiable. The dwellers in the Nyeri area are just as keen on game and game preservation as any other community, perhaps more so; but they have found, many of them by unpleasant experience, that to treat rhino as foolish and deny them vindictiveness is to make a generalization which is unduly optimistic and certainly not borne out by facts. From my own experience of rhino, I am satisfied that the majority, under normal conditions, are blusterers and bluffers. I am equally certain that any one of them, given reasonable provocation, will charge and charge with intent 'to make a job of it'. In that word 'reasonable' lies the difficulty of predicting what any individual beast will do, for a rhino's interpretation of the word is very arbitrary. One thing I think is clear : if on account of forest fires, climatic conditions, or other causes, a rhino moves from his normal haunts to a strange beat, he is certain to be more bellicose than usual. It may in some cases be direct cause and effect; he may have changed his ground as a result of being driven off by another animal, and this may have affected his temper. Be that as it may, I think the mere fact of being on unfamiliar ground is in itself sufficient to make them more prone to attack.
If this belief is correct it will account for much of the trouble in the Nyeri area, since I think that many of the rhino that were shot there last year are animals that have come down from high on the Aberdares, the burning of scrub above the forest zone doubtless having much to do with the migration.
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