Old stories give accounts of herds of springbok that were so large that they would take days to pass. They moved swiftly through the landscape, surging forward like a wave. Today, those spectacles are forgotten, the massive springbok migrations of yesteryear just stories of long ago.
In the 1800s explorers recorded springbok herds in their millions. In 1888 a herd of springbok estimated to comprise ten million animals was recorded near Nelspoort in the Cape. In 1896 another herd recorded at Karree Kloof on the Orange River was estimated to be 15 miles (24km) wide and more than 100 miles (160km) long. When the Schanderl brothers arrived by train in Klein Karas near the Fish River Canyon in the late 1800s, they travelled by horse-cart and wrote in their journals how they passed through a herd of springbok that was 20 000 strong.
The narratives continue. Author Lawrence Green met the old men who remembered the great springbok migrations and listened to their stories. In his book ‘Karoo’ he recounted Gert van der Merwe’s experience of a springbok migration. The family was moving their sheep and cattle between grazing lands with their shepherds when a San wagon leader warned them: ‘The trek buck are on their way, and we’ll be trampled to death if we stay in the riverbed.’ They cut down thorn trees and made a barrier around the oxen and wagon. Dry grass and green sticks were set alight as a further deterrence. When the herd was three miles (five kilometres) away, Gert could hear the stampede. Small animals sought refuge. The dust cloud was so thick it became difficult to breathe. He covered his wife and children with blankets. Some of the springbok collided with the thorn tree barrier and the injured were often trampled by others. The barrier could only last so long and soon the springbok ran among the cattle.
Green wrote: ‘I once met a man, who kept a store on the banks for the Orange River late last (18th) century. He saw the springbok form a living bridge over the river as they raced towards the Kalahari ‘to reach better pastures. Many perished so that the main body might cross with dry hooves on their backs.’
The San of the Northern Cape, the /Xam, had a special relationship with the springbok and understood that they could detect the smell of rain from far away with their exceptional sense of smell. They compared the springbok to the stars of the Milky Way they were so numerous.
Where have all the springbok gone? Springbok are still around, of course, but a fraction of the numbers that once took days to journey over the plains.
Hunting in those days was rife. Hunters’ trains would arrive from South Africa and leave with thousands of carcasses strung on the sides of the train. A black-and-white photograph in an article that appeared in ‘The illustrated London News’ shows a wagon strung with carcasses and many more lying on the ground, while hunters with their rifles sit nearby.
Green spoke to an ex-trooper from the Cape Police who told him how he watched thousands of springbok trekking through Kenhardt in the Northern Cape. ‘Everyone in the place seemed to be shooting from his stoep. It was probably the most devastating migration in living memory. Police gave the alarm and distributed ammunition to farmers at half-price. The damage was tremendous, but it might have been worse for the invasion ceased suddenly. The springbok horde turned and raced back to the Kalahari. It was said that rain had fallen behind them, and the north wind had brought them, over hundreds of miles, the irresistible smell of damp earth and young grass.’
Biographer Cronwright-Schreiner describes how hundreds of thousands of springbok were shot in the Prieska district of the Northern Cape, and nearly as many wounded.
There is a story of thousands being drowned in a mass momentum in the sea, driven by an intense thirst. Poet Wiiliam Charles Scully described the springbok migration in 1892 when springbok ran into the southern Atlantic. They crossed the mountain and raced into the sea where they drank the salt water in the waves and perished. Their bodies covered the beach for thirty miles. He explained this unusual event as being caused by a great thirst that they develop once every decade or so.
Wildlife migrations are a natural wildlife phenomenon, an instinctive and innate drive, when a variety of herbivores follow the rains and travel to areas with better grazing. Fencing played a large part in closing off the chapter of massive springbok migrations in history by restricting wildlife from moving to greener areas, dividing the land with fenced-off farms. Roads, urbanisation and human developments would have also had an effect on curtailing the springbok’s ability to migrate, while diseases like rinderpest would have played a part in reducing their numbers.
The late 1800s saw the last of the great ‘trekbokke’, as they were then known. Gert and his party would never have believed that the mass migration that they witnessed would be one of the last to grace the planet. We can only imagine what it must have been like to see wave after wave of the sleek animals move through the landscape as one.
Although the migrations left little in their path, their ecological benefits are now being recognised. Among those who acknowledge the advantages of the migrations is the Samara Karoo Reserve. They explain how, seemingly destructive, the animals rather pruned and fertilised the land as they passed in an age-old grazing pattern. They had an ecological purpose of breaking up the soil and laying seed-filled droppings on the land for the next season. Before fences restricted their routes, they most likely would not have returned to the same land for many years, giving the land time to regenerate with the new seeds deposited. Reversing decades of livestock grazing, they have reintroduced springbok to their reserve and are rewilding the land, recreating a self-sustaining holistic ecosystem. Being in the midst of conservation-friendly land, there is the potential to create wildlife corridors for animals to follow the rainfall.
Today people flock to see the wildebeest migration in Kenya, adding the dramatic event to their lifetime bucket-lists, while only small herds of South Africa’s national animal, the springbok, remain. Although springbok are regarded as common, with the world-champion Springbok rugby team receiving much more attention than the humble animal, to witness springbok pronking in the wild as they run, springing into the air with all the vigour of life, must be one of the most beautiful and life-affirming sights.
The mass springbok migrations are now only dreams in a dry landscape and narratives in old story books. Therein however lies the seed and hope that one day there will be large enough herds to once again draw people from near and far to stand in awe and wonder.
(References: The mighty springbok migration, David Johnson, Africa Geographic, 14June2013; People were once springboks, Pippa Skotnes, January2022; The Springbok Migrations, Tony Jackman, Daily Maverick, 14Jan2022; Springbok on the move, Samara Karoo Reserve, 25 April 2018).
.png)
SUBMIT YOUR COMMENT