The Idler, Thurtsday, May 16, 2019

The flying

game

ranger

HEY, a blast from the past. I find myself reading Spirit of the Wilderness, a book by ecologist Paul Dutton, who I first met many moons ago in Mozambique.

Spirit of the Wilderness is the name of Paul's Super Piper Cub open cockpit light aircraft, in which he has flown hundreds of missions in the cause of conservation – game counts, vegetation surveys - mainly in Zululand and Mozambique, often landing on beaches and the most appalling airstrips.

He was a founder member of the Bateleurs, a group of private sector flyers who put their aircraft and their time at the disposal of nature conservation.

I count myself privileged to have flown with Paul in Spirit of the Wilderness, a flip in which we playfully buzzed anglers on the rocks at the tidal pool at Umdloti. But we didn't land on the beach, we flew back to Virginia.

This is a book of high adventure and high good humour but, more importantly, an incisive look at the science of ecological management. Dutton is especially strong on the hydrology of wetlands, their interplay with terrestrial life, animal and human.

Can humanity survive its destruction of the global ecology – global warming and global swarming (over-population)? It's an open question.

Paul worked first for the Natal Parks Board, then on contract for the Mozambique government, both before and after decolonisation. He spent time being interrogated in Machava Prison after being falsely accused of being a CIA/South African agent, but subsequently built up a good personal relationship with President Samora Machel.

He became a freelance ecological consultant and returned to Mozambique to study and advise on the Bazaruto Archipelago. Somewhere he also squeezed in the time to get an MSc in Coastal Management from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in England.

He also had jaunts to places as far removed as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Alaska (where he learned to fly a light floatplane).

The book – and the aircraft – are both of them well named. Wilderness is a spiritual experience as the wonder of the untouched regions is revealed. This is a great read.

 

 

Electric moment

I'D NO idea until now that Paul had been bunged up in Machava Prison.

It was a grim, forbidding fortress. I happened to be there when, a few days after the coup in Portugal, its hundreds of Frelimo prisoners were ordered on to the parade ground with all their belongings. They had no idea of what had been happening in Portugal, the move toward decolonisation.

The commandant announced they were free to go. They came to attention and sang the Portuguese national anthem. Electrifying stuff. Then they sprinted for the prison gates that had swung open.

Then – whoops! – a glitch with the TV cameras set up outside. The gates swung closed again. Pandemonium. Then they opened and the Frelimo prisoners left with the pent-up velocity of a giant fire hose. Wonderful TV.

That evening many came back. For many, their homes were almost 3 000km away just beneath the Tanzanian border. Transport still had to be arranged. But this time Machava was just lodgings.

Tailpiece

Hippos can run faster than humans on land, and swim faster than humans in water. Which means the bicycle is your only chance of beating a hippo in a triathlon

Last word

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking. - John Maynard Keynes