to recreate a romanticised American ‘fron-
tier’ experience (although often this was
just a thin veneer over luxury tourism).^6
This engagement of wealthy East Coast
Americans in game conservation is epito-
mised by Theodore Roosevelt. He hunted in
the Adirondacks and in Maine in the 1870s,
and became a leading advocate of a manly
outdoor life. In due course, he went west to
hunt buffalo in Dakota Territory in 1884,
and returned there repeatedly to hunt,
shooting elk, bear, buffalo and cougar.
Roosevelt is well known for his enthusiasm
for the whole adventure of hunting, his
keen delight in finding and killing game, and
the broader pleasure in wilderness.^7 He was
one of many such elite hunters, and led the
establishment of the Boone and Crockett
Club in 1888, which lobbied for the estab-
lishment of a national zoo and the extension
of the Yellowstone National Park (created in
1872).^8
Sporting conservation
To the wealthy sportsmen of industrialised
countries, conservation was a matter of self-
control, of curbing unreasonable amounts of
killing. In 1921, William Hornaday wrote of
the USA “the great mass of worth-while
sportsmen are true protectors and conser-
vators, who sincerely desire the perpetua-
tion of game and hunting sport, and the
conservation of the rights of posterity there-
in”.^9 However, there were hunters who were
just “game hogs”, and they were “just as
brutal, savage and relentless as it ever was
in the worst days of the past”.
The same argument inspired the hunting
members of the Society for the Preservation
of the Wild Fauna of the Empire, founded in
London in 1903 to put pressure on the
Foreign Office not to de-gazette a Game
Reserve in the Sudan.^10 Edward North
Buxton believed the disappearance of
‘game’ from Africa was primarily the result
of ‘reckless shooting’ and bloodthirstiness
(shooting of excessive
numbers of animals).^11
An editorial in the
Saturday Reviewin 1908
had attributed the
decreases in game in
Africa to big-game
hunters and to rich and
irresponsible young
Englishmen amassing
large game bags.^12 In an
article in the SPWFE’s
journal, Sir Henry Seton-Karr argued that
“British sportsmen, as a class, have done
nothing in any wild country to reduce or
wipe out any kind of wild big game”.^13Colonial conservationists saw the chief prob-
lem with European hunting in Africa (as in
the USA) as primarily a failure of ‘true
sportsmanship’, especially the killing of
excessive numbers of animals, where “an
otherwise sane man runs amuck”.^14 There
were problems with hunters “whose sport-
ing instincts are undeveloped”^15 , those
“who get bitten by the ‘buck fever’, and who
fire away far more shots than they need”.^16
There were problems too with white set-
tlers, who in East Africa (as in the
Nineteenth century in South Africa) treated
game either as a subsidy for farm establish-
ment, or as a pest. Settlers did not share
the ideals (or the money or leisure) of the
traditional traveling sportsman. When a
motion was proposed to the Colonists’
Association in Kenya In 1909 that restric-
tions on killing game in settled districts
should be removed, one correspondent to
the SPWFE wrote “I am of the opinion that
under modern conditions, given trade in
horns and skins, the fauna of the high open
plateaux here would be completely extirpat-
ed within five years”.^17Conservation and wilderness
American ideas of wilderness added a per-
verse element to the cocktail of ideas
about people and nature in early twentiethConservation aas ccultural aand ppolitical ppractice
“the ggreat mmass oof
worth-wwhile ssportsmen
are ttrue pprotectors aand
conservators, wwho ssin-
cerely ddesire tthe pper-
petuation oof ggame aand
hunting ssport, aand
the cconservation oof tthe
rights oof pposterity
therein”