Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Bummer: CO2 has killed off so many Serengeti animals that only "endless, countless" numbers of them remain

To See the Animals: Our Safari to Tanzania, part 4 | City Brights: Ken White | an SFGate.com blog

Day 6:  Global climate change appears to have hit here as well, which is of course no surprise but is painful to learn....

Reliable annual rainstorms, called the “Long Rains,” are the source of life-giving waters which should mean the migrating animals massing here now in the southern Serengeti. This year, however, the Long Rains have proven unreliable and have not yet come. They are late, worryingly late we are told...

I suspect that absent experiencing it there really is no way of fully appreciating what it is to find oneself among tens of thousands of Zebra and Wildebeest. I know that my own imagination and powers of description are not up to creating the scene. And even though I’d seen plenty of pictures and video, they were of course only images.

Perhaps it is helpful to know that Serengeti comes from the Maasai word “siringet” which means “endless plain”. This is indeed an endless plain, densely covered by endless, countless numbers of animals. I suspect if you tossed a pebble you’d not only hit a Zebra but the stone would then also bounce off one Zebra onto the back of another and then a couple of Wildebeest butts before it actually touched the ground. We are within a sea of these animals.

No comments: