

German East Africa, 121 



game which is now taking place in German East Africa, and the urgent 

 need of prohibitive legislation in order that a remnant of the fauna may be 

 saved. 



Game reserves like those which have been established with such marked 

 success in British East Africa, as well as restrictions on the number of head 

 of game shot by individual sportsmen, and likewise regulations prohibiting 

 the export of undersized ivory and trophies and skins for commercial 

 purposes are apparently wanting in the adjacent German Protectorate, and 

 it is to the lack of these that Professor Bein, who has lately returned from a 

 tour in German East Africa, attributes in a great measure the rapid 

 destruction of the fauna, which he designates a scandal to civilisation and 

 a heartrending disgrace to the German Empire. 



The slaughter on a big scale is not attributed to sportsmen who visit the 

 country on hunting trips, and are for the most part men of culture and 

 lovers of nature. 



Nor is it due to collectors of specimens for legitimate scientific purposes, 

 neither of these classes causing any appreciable diminution in the number 

 of the game. 



The touring sportsmen who spend from two to six or more months in the 

 country are, indeed, an advantage to the country, for they bring and spend 

 a large amount of money, which is much needed. 



The real culprits are those who shoot for the purpose of obtaining record 

 heads, and the professional hunters, who sell their trophies, and shoot every 

 living thing they come across, from elephants to the smallest birds. 



Many of these professional elephant hunters belong, it is said, to an 

 extremely undesirable class, who in many instances have left their own country 

 for urgent reasons. Worse even than these are colonies of South African 

 Boers, who get their living by shooting rhinoceroses, elephants, and other 

 animals yielding spoils of commercial value. Many of these Boers, it 

 appears, were settled in the country at great expense by the Government in 

 order to act as " pioneers of civilisation." Whereas the European sports- 

 man, whether scientific or otherwise, travels with a big train and a large 

 amount of impedimenta, the Boer goes about accompanied only by a single 

 negro, with little more than his rifle and blanket, and lives on the flesh of 

 the game he shoots and a handful of maize. Thus lightly equipped, he gets 

 far away from the haunts of Europeans, and for some ten months in the 

 year shoots to his heart's content without fear of interruption. 



The remaining two months are spent oh his small farm or field, which he 

 pretends to cultivate to a certain extent, in order that he may figure as an 

 industrious settler. 



As the result of the destruction inflicted by hunters of the above types, 

 Professor Bein states that whereas in a district in the heart of the Masai 

 plateau, which he visited in 1907-8, elephants were then abundant, when he 

 revisited it in 1909-10, scarcely a single elephant was to be seen. The 

 Boers, it appears, had been hunting in the district during the interval, and 

 from a single herd had obtained no fewer than sixty pairs of tusks. 

 During a five months' march through the same country, only five 

 rhinoceroses were observed. Again, he states that in Lake Mweru district, 



