312 ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 38 



The increase of human population has been accompanied by an 

 even greater increase in the numbers of livestock, which in the old 

 days had been effectively kept under by raiding. "What are you 

 looking at?" said a district officer, who had climbed up to the crest 

 of the great Nandi escarpment, to two old chiefs he found gazing down 

 at the plain of the Nyanza. "Our cattle," was the answer, with a 

 wave of the hand toward a settlement of one of the weaker tribes below. 

 But with these checks gone, the animal population has outgrown the 

 means of sustenance, and even in some districts is destroying the 

 vegetation in uncultivated areas, which should be regenerating against 

 their turn to be brought into cultivation. The Native Economic 

 Commission of South Africa, reporting in 1932, stated: "With the 

 exception of certain parts of Zululand and Pondoland, every native 

 area is overstocked," and estimates that between 1918 and 1930 

 cattle increased from seven to seventeen hundred thousand, and sheep 

 from two and one-fourth to nearly four million. The Kenya Land 

 Commission, reporting in 1933, wrote: "Probably about 1920 the 

 main stock areas of the native reserves had attained their optimum 

 carrying capacity, and although fully stocked, were not overstocked. 

 Since then the cattle population has, roughly speaking, doubled itself." 

 Again of the Kamba reserve: 



Mr. Scott Little estimates that the reserve contains 190,000 cattle, with 57,000 

 calves, though he estimates its grazing capacity at no more than 60,000 head. 

 There are also 260,000 goats and 150,000 sheep. A journey through the area 

 east and south of Machakos reveals that over large stretches of hillsides vegetation 

 has been almost wholly removed. The soil has been eroded down to the subsoil, 

 and its removal will continue at an ever-increasing rate. On less steep slopes 

 and on better land vegetation still persists; and though the Wakamba are pri- 

 marily a pastoral tribe, patches of cultivation are in evidence. But even there 

 grazing has been so persistent that the ground is all beaten down into little stock 

 paths and has become in turn open to erosion. 



I have been over this area and seen the hillsides bared down to the 

 yellow, red, and purple hardpan, where within the memory of the 

 headmen with whom we talked there had been useful grazing. 



A Basutoland report states: 



Overgrazing has so far failed to destroy the grazing on the lower levels, up to, 

 say, 7,500 feet, but above that level the concentration of stock driven out from 

 the lower levels has resulted in the replacement, over some hundreds of thousands 

 of acres, of the grass by the almost inedible Chrysocoma, commonly known as 

 "Bitter Karoo." 



Mr. Hobley, giving evidence about Tanganyika, said: "The native 

 occupier, if space permits, moves on, leaving exhausted soil and desert 

 behind him." Professor Stebbing has uttered strong warnings of the 

 encroachment of the Sahara upon northern Nigeria, due to shifting 

 cultivation and overstocking in the forest. Major Grogan put the 

 matter brutally when he said before the Kenya Land Commission: 



