THE FORMATION OF ZANZIBAR AND EXTINCTION OF ITS RICH FAUNA

Here's the abstract of 'Continental Island Formation and the Archaeology of Defaunation on Zanzibar, Eastern Africa' by Mary E. Prendergast, Hélène Rouby, Paramita Punnwong, Robert Marchant, Alison Crowther, Nikos Kourampas, Ceri Shipton, Martin Walsh, Kurt Lambeck, and Nicole L. Boivin, 'Continental Island Formation and the Archaeology of Defaunation on Zanzibar, Eastern Africa'. It's published by PLOS ONE and can be viewed online or downloaded via the links embedded in this paragraph.

Abstract

With rising sea levels at the end of the Pleistocene, land-bridge or continental islands were formed around the world. Many of these islands have been extensively studied from a biogeographical perspective, particularly in terms of impacts of island creation on terrestrial vertebrates. However, a majority of studies rely on contemporary faunal distributions rather than fossil data. Here, we present archaeological findings from the island of Zanzibar (also known as Unguja) off the eastern African coast, to provide a temporal perspective on island biogeography. The site of Kuumbi Cave, excavated by multiple teams since 2005, has revealed the longest cultural and faunal record for any eastern African island. This record extends to the Late Pleistocene, when Zanzibar was part of the mainland, and attests to the extirpation of large mainland mammals in the millennia after the island became separated. We draw on modeling and sedimentary data to examine the process by which Zanzibar was most recently separated from the mainland, providing the first systematic insights into the nature and chronology of this process. We subsequently investigate the cultural and faunal record from Kuumbi Cave, which provides at least five key temporal windows into human activities and faunal presence: two at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), one during the period of post-LGM rapid sea level rise and island formation, and two in the late Holocene (Middle Iron Age and Late Iron Age). This record demonstrates the presence of large mammals during the period of island formation, and their severe reduction or disappearance in the Kuumbi Cave sequence by the late Holocene. While various limitations, including discontinuity in the sequence, problematize attempts to clearly attribute defaunation to anthropogenic or island biogeographic processes, Kuumbi Cave offers an unprecedented opportunity to examine post-Pleistocene island formation and its long-term consequences for human and animal communities.

DISPLAYING KEPT LEOPARDS

Earlier this week we presented our paper on 'Chasing imaginary leopards' to the VIII European Swahili Workshop on Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography  in the University of Oxford. The core of the paper describes the way in which researchers and other visitors to Zanzibar have fallen for local beliefs about the Zanzibar leopard and have been drawn into futile searches for the leopards that are allegedly kept by witches on Unguja island. This section on 'Kept leopard chases' is followed by another that describes local proposals for the display of  leopards.  Here's the draft text in full:

Displaying kept leopards

Whereas foreign researchers have sometimes been beguiled into believing that leopard-keeping is really practised on Unguja, some Zanzibari researchers and others have sought to reconcile their own witchcraft beliefs with conservation science in a quite different way, by proposing that kept leopards be displayed to the public and tourists in particular. Zanzibar had a zoo (of sorts) in the period after the Revolution, and exotic animals have been displayed from time to time. In the mid-1990s a small private zoo, Zala Park, that houses mainly reptiles and amphibians, was established in Muungoni village near to Jozani Forest. But it seems most likely that the modern idea of displaying leopards arose in response to the research that was being undertaken at that time. One of the questions that SIT (School for International Training) student Benjamin Selkow asked his interviewees in 1995 was: “Hypothetically, how would you feel if a zoo or holding pen with a Zanzibar leopard was built somewhere in Zanzibar?” (1995: 12). He reports:

I received a mixed response to the proposal of a Zanzibar leopard holding pen. The majority supported the hypothetical plan and thought it was a good idea for a variety of reasons. Some said the present generation (those under forty years of age) has only heard about and had never seen a leopard and probably would not unless there was a zoo. Others said it was a good way to educate people about its history without them feeling threatened because it would be in a cage (and there would be some gratification in seeing “the pest” caged). Many supported the idea because it would attract more tourists which would help the local businesses as well as being a source of government revenue.
  Several interviewees were against this proposal or would support it with some reservations. One man suggested breeding leopards to increase the population, and then distribute them to zoos at hotels around the island for educational and revenue purposes. A hunter from Upenja was quite adamant against breeding them, saying that only two to four should be kept. He wanted all offspring to be killed because he believed that they should only be for exhibition and not re-introduced into the wild. Another man said it would be a good idea for future generations, but not for the present because there is still too much “aggressive fear.” A hunter from Paje supported this and said that exhibiting a Zanzibar leopard would [be] touching too sensitive an area with locals. He proposed exhibiting a mainland sub-species as a first step. Finally, several interviewees thought it would be a bad idea because the zoo would shame hunters, exhibit a creature that had too many superstitious and magical issues associated with it, and make owners vengeful because the respect by fear status that owners enjoy would be downgraded. (1995: 20)

Did Selkow help to plant the idea of a leopard pen or zoo? We may never know, but certainly by the time that we began joint fieldwork in July 1996 it wasn’t a new idea. MTW’s field assistant, who was an experienced hunter and former Secretary of the government-subsidised Wasasi wa Kitaifa (National Hunters’ organisation), enthusiastically asked a number of our interviewees whether it would be feasible to persuade leopard keepers to display their leopards to the public and fee-paying tourists. The same idea also came up in the discussion that followed our end-of-fieldwork presentation to JCBCP and other government staff (Walsh 1996). We were careful in that meeting not to overtly criticise the beliefs of the many people in the audience who believed in leopard-keeping, and we didn’t question the display proposal as directly as we might have done otherwise.

In October 1996 HVG and a colleague in the Commission for Natural Resources, Wahira J. Othman, were assigned to investigate a proposition that had been made to the Commission. They drove down to Kizimkazi to meet with four men who were proposing to capture and display leopards. At that time Kizimkazi was just beginning to become known for its dolphin tourism. They claimed to have seen a leopard in the area in recent months, and were firm believers in leopard-keeping, expressing the possibility that all leopards might be kept leopards. But they weren’t worried by being associated with witchcraft, because they planned to keep leopards in the open, in a zoo along the lines of Zala Park. When pressed, they didn’t have a clear idea of how they would obtain the animals. Perhaps they would buy them from a keeper whose leopard had given birth to cubs, and who could then instruct them on how to take care of the growing animals. In this case they’d also make use of the knowledge of ‘experts’ at the Commission. Or they might capture wild leopards using a cage trap with live bait. They opined that it would cost around Tshs 300,000 to purchase or capture a single leopard. Once they had a leopard in captivity, they would display it in an enclosure among bushes near the shore. This would be some 30 m x 20 m, and quite high. They also planned to build a reception area and small restaurant, at a cost of some Tshs 700,000. At this point in the conversation it seemed that they might be angling for support from the Commission, but they didn’t ask for this explicitly. Leopard keepers would show them how to train leopards. They wanted to start with two: a male and a female. One of the group of men suggested that they might kill surplus leopards, and sell the skins, but, sensing HVG’s unspoken disapproval, one of his colleagues countered that they would set them free in the bush. Before taking leave, Wahira let them know that the Commission would consider their idea, but that if it was approved, it would only be on a trial basis. The men agreed. On their way back to Zanzibar town HVG expressed her doubts about the proposal to Wahira, and did not hear about it again.

The leopard display idea clearly didn’t wither and die after the dissemination of our final report, in which we made it clear that we thought leopard-keeping to be wholly imaginary (Goldman and Walsh 1997). Indeed it surfaced in a quite unexpected place, in a debate in the Zanzibar House of Representatives in April 2003, when the Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Co-operatives declared that his ministry would be happy to buy leopards to display them to tourists. At least this is how it was reported in the press:

Government is ready to buy Leopards

  THE MINISTRY for Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Co-operatives in Zanzibar has said that it is ready to buy Leopards if people come forward to sell them, reports MWANTANGA AME.
  This announcement was made the day before yesterday in the hall of the House of Representatives in Zanzibar town. It was made by the Deputy Minister and Representative for Uzini constituency, Tafana Kassim Mzee, when he was contributing to the debate about starting a special fund.
He declared that his Ministry was ready to buy Leopards so that they could be displayed in tourist areas.
  The Representative pointed out that some tourists already came to Zanzibar to see snakes. If Zanzibar had enough Leopards for the purpose then revenues could be raised accordingly. Tafana said that if the country had these animals they would increase government income, and he asked for citizens to sell them to the state.
  He let it be known that the long-held fear that anyone caught with a Leopard would be punished was a thing of the past, and that the government had no plans to do that again.
“There’s a fear that if anyone appears with a Leopard, then he’ll feel the noose around his neck. Get rid of that fear: my Ministry is ready to buy Leopards; I declare that we will buy those Leopards”, he said.
  Another Representative who contributed to this debate, Brigadier-General (Rtd.) Adam Mwakanjuki, said that in the past Zanzibar had a lot of Leopards, but that now they had disappeared.
  He said that it was good that the Ministry was thinking of obtaining these animals so that they could be put in a special reserve and the government make money.
  He said that it was sad that Zanzibar now only had one specimen of that animal in the museum at Mnazi Mmoja in Zanzibar town. (Ame 2003)

To anyone who has studied the history of Zanzibar leopard-killing since the Revolution, this statement represents an ironic turnaround. Adam Mwakanjuki was one of the original revolutionaries, and for many years the Minister of Agriculture responsible for a policy that classed leopards as vermin and contradicted the legal protection that the law was supposed to offer to them. As far as we are aware no one has yet come forward to sell a live Zanzibar leopard to the government.

References

Ame, Mwantanga 2003. Serikali iko tayari kununua chui. Zanzibar Leo, Sunday 13 April 2003, 6.

Goldman, Helle V. and Martin T. Walsh 1997. A Leopard in Jeopardy: An Anthropological Survey of Practices and Beliefs which Threaten the Survival of the Zanzibar Leopard (Panthera pardus adersi). Zanzibar Forestry Technical Paper No. 63, Jozani Chwaka Bay Conservation Project, Commission for Natural Resources, Zanzibar.

Selkow, Benjamin 1995. A Survey of Villager Perceptions of the Zanzibar Leopard. Unpublished student paper, prepared for the SIT Study Abroad program, Zanzibar.

Walsh, Martin T. 1996. The Zanzibar Leopard: An Anthropological Survey. End of Fieldwork Summary. Report to Jozani Chwaka Bay Conservation Project, CARE Tanzania, and Commission for Natural Resources, Zanzibar.

Walsh, Martin T. and Helle V. Goldman 2010. Chasing imaginary leopards: science, witchcraft and the politics of conservation in Zanzibar. Paper prepared for the VIII European Swahili Workshop, Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography, University of Oxford, 19-21 September 2010.

See also Martin Walsh's blog post on the 'Imaginary animals of Zanzibar', East African Notes and Records, posted 25 September 2010.

CHASING IMAGINARY LEOPARDS

Here's the abstract of a paper we're planning to present at the VIII European Swahili Workshop (whose theme is Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography) at the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 19-21 September 2010:

Chasing imaginary leopards: science, witchcraft and the politics of conservation in Zanzibar

The Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi) is (was) a little-known subspecies endemic to Unguja island. Rapid population growth and the expansion of farming in the 20th century destroyed leopard habitat and decimated their natural prey, bringing them into increasing conflict with people. Villagers explained the growing number of attacks on their children and livestock by theorising that the leopards responsible for them were owned by witches and sent by them to do harm. Following the Zanzibar Revolution in 1964, localised efforts to act on this theory culminated in an island-wide leopard eradication and witch-finding campaign, supported by the government. By the 1990s state-subsidised hunting had brought the leopard to the brink of extinction, and most zoologists now presume it to be extinct. However, many islanders believe that witches and their kept leopards are still active in rural Unguja, and leopard sightings continue to be reported. Beguiled by leopard-keeping narratives, visiting researchers and local conservationists have continued to pursue these elusive felids in the field. In this paper, based on joint ethnographic research begun in 1996, we describe and analyse a series of unsuccessful ‘kept leopard chases’, including abortive calls by government officials for the capture and display of domesticated leopards. The result is a case study of conflicting knowledge claims and the politics of conservation in Zanzibar that exposes contradictions of cultural practice and belief that remain to be resolved.

Le léopard de Zanzibar (Panthera pardus adersi) est (était) une sous-espèce endémique peu connue de l'île de Unguja. Une croissance démographique rapide ainsi que l'expansion de l'agriculture au 20ème siècle a détruit l'habitat du léopard et a décimé leurs proies naturelles, les amenant à rentrer en conflits avec les êtres humains. Les villageois expliquaient le nombre croissant d'attaques sur leurs enfants et sur le bétail en émettant l'hypothèse que les léopards qui en étaient responsable appartenaient aux sorcières et ont été envoyé par ces derniers à leur faire du mal. Suite à la révolution de Zanzibar en 1964, des efforts localisés à agir sur les bases de cette théorie ont abouti à une campagne d'éradication du léopard et chasse aux sorcières à l'échelle de l'île, soutenue par le gouvernement. Aux années 1990, la chasses au léopard, subventionnée par l'Etat, avait apporté le léopard au bord de l'extinction, et la plupart des zoologistes considérera maintenant qu'il soit éteint. Toutefois, de nombreux insulaires estiment que les sorcières et leurs léopards conservés sont encore actifs dans les régions rurales d'Unguja, et les observations de léopards continuent d'être signalés. Séduit par des récits de maintien de léopard, les chercheurs en mission ainsi que les écologistes locaux ont poursuivi ces félidés insaisissables sur le terrain. Dans cet article, basé sur une recherche ethnographique conjointe commencé en 1996, nous décrivons et analysons une série de "chasse au léopard conservé" sans réussite, y compris les appels sans succès de la part des représentants du gouvernement pour la capture et l'exposition des léopards domestiqués. Le résultat est une étude de cas de revendications contradictoires des connaissances et la politique de conservation de Zanzibar, qui exposent les contradictions d'une pratique culturelle et la conviction que doivent encore être résolues.

ELUSIVE LEOPARDS, ELUSIVE SPECIMENS

Tourist guides and internet sites frequently describe the Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi) as "elusive". Much the same can be said of specimens of this rare and possibly extinct island endemic. When we starting working together in 1996 we knew of the existence of four museum specimens. In the course of investigating these we discovered another two, bringing the total to six. There are three specimens, including the type, in the Natural History Museum in London, two in the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a single mounted skin in the Zanzibar Museum. In Autumn 2008 we published an article in the Newsletter of the IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group outlining what we know about each of the museum specimens and their provenance (Martin Walsh and Helle Goldman, 'Updating the Inventory of Zanzibar Leopard Specimens', CAT News, 49: 4-6). We also included a section on material to be found (and lost!) outside of museums, and this is reproduced below:

"All of the museum specimens that we have identified were collected in the first half of the 20th century, during the British colonial period. We know that significant numbers of leopards were killed in the second half of the century, many of them in a government-sanctioned campaign of leopard extermination that began after the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 (Walsh & Goldman 2007). What happened to all of the skins? In the 1970s at least some of them were delivered to the state shoe factory, which processed hides and skins (Halsted 1979), but their ultimate destination is obscure. Some pieces of skin and other leopard body parts believed to have magico-medicinal properties must have remained in Zanzibar (see below). Local leopard skins that found their way onto the international market were presumably mixed up with others from East Africa and the Horn. It is possible that complete skins found their way into private collections, but we have no evidence for this at present.

When we began our research on the Zanzibar leopard in the mid-1990s we occasionally heard of skins being offered for sale by local hunters, and of some being taken to the African mainland or the Persian Gulf (Marshall 1994, Selkow 1995, Goldman & Walsh 1997, Palmer 2005). In his dissertation for the College of African Wildlife Management at Mweka, Khamis A. Khamis (1995) claimed that he had photographed the skin and claws of a Zanzibar leopard killed (at an unspecified location) in September 1993, having paid for permission to do so. At least eleven leopards are reported to have been killed in Zanzibar in 1993 (Goldman & Walsh 2002), and it not possible using available records to determine which if any of these Khamis was referring to. We also do not know the current whereabouts of his photograph.

The only leopard skin that we have seen ourselves outside of a museum are two rectangular pieces in the possession of the former Secretary of the Zanzibar National Hunters (Wasasi wa Kitaifa), who assisted us in our research in July 1996. These two fragments were said to have been taken from a leopard that was killed by hunters at Muyuni, on the south-west coast of Unguja, in 1986. Photographs of the two pieces that appeared in our original report (Goldman & Walsh 1997) were later lost in the offices of the Jozani-Chwaka Bay Conservation Project (JCBCP), but pictures of one of the pieces [see photo] survive and have been used in subsequent publications (the pdf version of the report and Walsh & Goldman 2007).

A number of Zanzibari hunters claim to be able to identify leopard faeces, but efforts to collect and preserve specimens for later analysis have so far proved unsuccessful. On 12 March 1997 HVG collected dessicated scat, said to be leopard, in the vicinity of Hazungukwa cave in Kitogani, south-east of Jozani Forest. However, this specimen was also lost in JCBCP offices before it could be properly analyzed. A similar fate befell a relatively fresh specimen that was collected by forestry staff on 19 August 2001 at the site of a reputed leopard kill (or kills) at Wangwani within the boundaries of what is now Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park. A search for this specimen at Forestry headquarters in Zanzibar town, undertaken for MTW on 5 April 2002, proved fruitless, and it was presumed that a cleaner or other staff member had thrown it away.

It was suggested that these losses might not have been accidental, but a consequence of the fear that many Zanzibaris have for the leopard and anything associated with it. The Zanzibar leopard is widely believed to be used for nefarious purposes by witches, and unprotected contact with leopards and leopard parts is thought to cause serious illness, one of the symptoms of which is the vomiting or excretion of fur (Goldman & Walsh 1997). But hunters and others who have taken out magical insurance against this kind of harm are more relaxed about handling leopard products, which have their own magical and medicinal uses. An American student, Scott Marshall (1994), was shown the claws of a leopard said to have been killed three years earlier; and in September 1994 the adventurer Lajos Jozsa (a.k.a. Louis Palmer) photographed leopard claws in the possession of a man in a village near Jozani (pers. comm. 2005, Palmer 2005).

It may still be possible to obtain fragments of leopard skin and other material of local provenance in Zanzibar, if not complete specimens. Leopard products are no longer sold openly in the traditional herbalists’ shops in Zanzibar town, though they are alleged to be available in some of them ‘under the counter’. Our own experience suggests that Zanzibar leopard parts might be more readily obtained from hunters and herbalists in rural Unguja, though the possibility of securing fresh or near-contemporary material is surely diminishing, if it has not disappeared altogether."

References

Goldman, H. V. and Walsh M. T. 1997. A Leopard in Jeopardy: An Anthropological Survey of Practices and Beliefs which Threaten the Survival of the Zanzibar Leopard (Panthera pardus adersi). Zanzibar Forestry Technical Paper 63, Jozani Chwaka Bay Conservation Project, Commission for Natural Resources, Zanzibar. 59 pp.

Goldman, H. V. and Walsh M. T. 2002. Is the Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi) extinct? Journal of East African Natural History 91 (1/2), 15-25.

Halsted, D. C. 1979. Birds and larger mammals of Zanzibar. EANHS [East Africa Natural History Society] Bulletin (March-April), 41-45.

Khamis, K. A. 1995. Report on the Status of Zanzibar Leopards from 15th Dec. 1994 to June 1995 in Different Times at Zanzibar. Unpublished certificate student’s dissertation, College of African Wildlife Management, Mweka, Tanzania. 9 pp.

Marshall, S. 1994. The Status of the Zanzibar Leopard. Unpublished paper, School for International Training, Tanzania, and Commission for Natural Resources, Zanzibar. 17 pp.

Palmer, L. 2005. Verrückt nach dieser Welt: Abenteur zwischen Himmel und Erde. Delius Klasing Verlag, Bielefeld.

Selkow, B. 1995. A Survey of Villager Perceptions of the Zanzibar Leopard. Unpublished paper, School for International Training, Tanzania, and Commission for Natural Resources, Zanzibar. 28 pp.

Walsh, M. T. and Goldman, H. V. 2007. Killing the king: the demonization and extermination of the Zanzibar leopard / Tuer le roi: la diabolisation et l’extermination du leopard de Zanzibar. In Le symbolisme des animaux: L'animal, clef de voûte de la relation entre l'homme et la nature? / Animal symbolism: Animals, keystone in the relationship between man and nature? Dounias, E., Motte-Florac, É. and Dunham, M. (Eds.). Éditions de l’IRD, Paris. pp. 1133-1182.