THE GREATER KOODOO 
STREPSICEROS CAPE NS IS 
K TT" HETHER or not the koodoo ought to be considered as the 
i handsomest of all African antelopes is a question of 
/ individual judgment, but there can be no dispute as to 
t the magnificent appearance of a fine male of this species 
/ if seen under favourable conditions. 
Once one of the commonest of all the larger African 
antelopes, no animal, with the exception of the buffalo, suffered more than 
did the koodoo from the terrible visitation of rinderpest which swept 
through Africa between the years 1886 and 1897. From the mountains of 
Abyssinia to the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony the koodoo was once 
found wherever the conditions were suitable to its existence; whilst in 
Western Africa, south of the great equatorial forests, its range extended 
southwards to the Orange River. Immediately after the rinderpest had 
swept through Africa it was found that koodoos had either absolutely 
disappeared from many parts of their former range, or that they had so 
diminished in numbers that their speedy extermination seemed only too 
likely. This, however, I am happy to say, appears to be by no means the 
case. I am informed that in South Africa koodoos are now once again 
becoming fairly numerous in many of their old haunts. In the Cape Colony, 
in the Zwart Ruggens district, where they have for a long time past been 
carefully protected, they are said to be now very numerous; whilst in the 
game reserves of the Eastern Transvaal and Zululand, as well as through- 
out Southern Rhodesia and many districts of Nyassaland and Northern 
Rhodesia, they are also said to be now rapidly increasing in numbers. 
In the whole of British East Africa, however, koodoos are, I believe, now 
only found in the neighbourhood of Lakes Baringo and Hannington, except 
near the German border to the south of Mombasa. Further north, on the 
Blue Nile and its tributaries, as well as amongst the mountain ranges of 
Abyssinia and certain districts of Somaliland, these splendid antelopes 
are still fairly numerous. 
Previous to my visit to the Sudan in 1911, I had always imagined that 
north of the Equator the koodoo was nowhere found to the west of the 
Nile, but there can be no doubt that this antelope is an inhabitant of certain 
hilly regions in Kordofan. 
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