AFRICAN INDABA

13    The Luando Reserve in 1969 and 1970 

Richard D. Estes 

From September 1969 to September 1970, my wife Runi and I lived in the village of Quimbango, close to the middle of the 9600 sq. km. Luando Integral Reserve of the Giant Sable.  The warden, J. A. Alves, lived in Quimbango and maintained one of several shops owned by Portuguese merchants who traded with the African population.  Over 16,000 people, mostly of the Songo tribe, shared the reserve with the giant sable and other wildlife. Their staple diet was manioc, cultivation of which entailed cutting down the best miombo woodland in which sable spent the rainy season from October-May.  Five years earlier, to combat the growing insurgency, the colonial government had forced all Angolans to resettle in villages along the main roads. Some 500 Luando settlements were grouped into 61 villages (Alves, pers. comm). However, the Luando residents continued to cultivate the fields they had established near their former homes, often in temporary shelters. Bushpigs were a major pest, against which farmers constructed log fences around their plots. Alves tolerated some trapping and snaring of small game, but hunting of sable risked incurring a $3500 fine.  Besides, only a few policemen had guns; the Songo were armed only with spears, bows and arrows, and had plenty of protein in their diet from fishes that teemed the Luando, Cuanza and tributary streams.  

Quimbango was the best place to live, as two habituated sable herds had home ranges within 10-20 km of our bau-pic house built by the locals within months of our arrival.  Our main study herd, numbering 53 head until the rains began in October, could usually be found in wooded habitat interspersed with drainage-line grassland (anharas) criss-crossed by motorcar tracks (picadas) established for convenient viewing from a vehicle.  This herd soon split in two, of which 29 stayed in a home range of 12 sq km, 23 in one herd (A). The rest moved several km into thicker woodland where they joined other sable to form a herd of 30 females and young (Herd B).  In December this herd moved 10 km west of our study area into high woodland where it remained until after the rains stopped in May. Alves claimed these herds followed the same regime year after year.  

The composition of 74 sable we saw regularly comprised 23 adult females and 5 territorial males, 2 subadult females, 2 females and 6 males 2-3 years old, 5 female and 9 males 1-2 years old, and 6 female, 3 male and 6 unsexed young of the year. The subadult males were seen singly or in bachelor herds of up to five-head.  We had occasional contact with seven other herds.  

The study herds ranged 1-2 km a day and typically stayed in the same area for a week or more before moving a km or two to another grazing area. They remained in the woodland during the rains. Here the grass was relatively short and the soil was well-drained, whereas the anharas were waterlogged with black cotton soil that was impassable for vehicles except on compacted tire tracks.  The grasses and shrubs growing on the large termite mounds were heavily utilized.  Regular visits to salt licks, mostly at the bases of termite mounds, were evidence of mineral shortages in the leached miombo soils. The sable only emerged onto the open grassland after the rains ended, and spent much time in the open after the fires of June and July brought up new grass and a variety of forbs and dicots.  We concluded that sable were dependent on annual fires to provide green pastures in the long dry season.  The sable was the dominant bovid, ahead of the roan, but second in abundance to the warthog. 

Sr. Alves, whose knowledge of the reserve was much greater than ours, estimated the Luando sable population as 1000-2000. But it was a guess, not based on quantitative evidence. The estimated 100 or so sable in Cangandala NP, which we visited a few times in 1969-70, represented counts of known herds by the warden and was more accurate. That was still the estimate when I visited the park in 1982, when I saw some 20 sable.