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Del Benson, a Professor and Extension Specialist for the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at CSU and a member of the Rotary Club of Fort Collins, gave an excellent presentation about Namibia, a country located in Africa. Mr. Benson covered such aspects of Namibia as its desert, animals, peoples and opportunities and threats. He stressed that in many parts of the world, it is difficult to get people to want wildlife in their communities whereas in places in the world like Namibia, it is commonplace and an accepted part of the environment. Interestingly, Del also mentioned that his Rotary story and Africa are closely connected as he was the recipient of a Rotary Ambassadorial Fellowship when he was younger and that opportunity and experience kept Rotary near and dear to his heart. He credits his long involvement with Rotary to the fellowship. Del has also spoken at International Conferences in Africa and has made many friends there with which he stays in touch. We saw many pictures that effectively “toured” us through Namibia. There were pictures of the South Africa Tram, various Maps of Africa, tribal locations, a recap of languages, the Quiver Camp, ostriches, elephants, water buffalos, safaris, lions, sand dunes, the Welevitschia plant, oryx (known as the “clowns of the desert” due to their face color construction), southern fur seals, the Himba people and Sesrem Canyon. The official language in Namibia is English. Europeans came to Namibia in covered wagons to the Namib Desert which is the oldest desert in the world and was originally settled by bushmen. In 1990, Namibia became an independent nation. Its economy is based on agriculture, diamonds, uranium (5th largest producer in the world), tourism, hunting (helps manage the volume of animals) and manufacturing (mostly textiles and rugs). Mr. Benson spent some time explaining the continuum of classification of geographies where animals are predominantly in a wild environment, semi-wild environment, semi-domestic environment and domestic environment. He pointed out the concept of wildness nodes, where the animal environments range from captive to roaming free. He believes it is more responsible to move animals toward their natural environment of the wild environment. He has written a white paper recently in which he recommends a rating system for these environments. Del closed with several vignettes of a tour of Windhoek (Namibia’s capital), the skeleton coast (named based on remnants of shipwrecks and whale bones), the fact that the Tropic of Capricorn runs through Namibia, a 70,000 hectare (very large area) where cheetahs roam free and locating lions on safari via tracking necklaces. All in all, a wonderful presentation by one of our own! Submitted by Kelso Kelly |
