Don’t run over an elephant

by Dr. M. Nicholson

A road sign on the Tanzam Highway near Mikumi, Tanzania

Some people will fly from London to LA for a Taylor Swift concert; others will fly across the planet to follow their sports hero or favourite team but as a tree-hugger I am always keen to travel to look at a tree I have never seen before, particularly when it is new to science.

My assistant and I set off on a long safari to Tanzania to look for a tree ‘discovered’ about five years ago[1] by an Italian botanist who was wandering round the edge of a little-known massif in southern central Tanzania. Having said that, let me make it clear that just because a species is new to science doesn’t mean it’s new to humanity. Small groups of these trees were found in two isolated locations, one of which happened to be near a village where apparently some grandmother admitted to having hung her washing on the tree ever since her own grandmother did the same. The other location was deep in the largely unexplored forest so it is no surprise to me that even big unknown trees had not been seen.

The three-day drive through central Tanzania is long and monotonous.  Six hours from our home north of Nairobi to Moshi to collect another rare tree under what remains of Kilimanjaro’s snow glinting in the afternoon sun; a further eleven hours to Morogoro, and then a good six hours driving through Mikumi National Park to the Udzungwa Mountains National Park gate.

Tanzania has much more habitable land than Kenya but it is a smaller economy (though growing fast) with a smaller middle class. High-end tourism is the norm with many camps charging $800-1200 a night and upwards but there are very few mid-range hotels. So we stayed in cheaper accommodation ($10-20), which is usually much more fun as one meets ordinary people in small villages, often including the local drunk and the village madman. Tourists from overseas seldom experience the real country as many fly in and fly out of reserves. What always amuses me is how Kenyans struggle with the pure Swahili of Tanzania, which has a vocabulary ten times of that used in up-country Kenya.

The road through Mikumi is extremely busy as it is the Tanzam highway that goes south to Zambia with thousands of trucks every day. Main roads through national parks are not a good idea. It’s not surprising therefore there are often collisions between the trucks and animals. Even elephants are killed, especially at night, and the human culprits must pay the fines accordingly.

Tanzania in the 20^th century probably had more elephants than any other country in Africa. The nearby Ruaha National Park and Selous Game reserve had 200,000 elephants in 1976 of which half were poached for ivory over the next 10 years, and halved again to 25,000 by 1989. Today fewer than 30,000 elephants remain in Ruaha and Selous. Only Botswana and South Africa have managed to maintain elephant numbers, to the extent that in many places there are far too many.

The Udzungwa massif in central southern Tanzania is usually ignored by tourists, who visit the huge national parks and reserves (Selous, Ruaha and Mikumi) surrounding it, which together cover over 70,000 sq.km - roughly the size of Scotland. The Udzungwa forest (now also a national park) covers about 2000 sq. km. (500,000 acres) and lies in between the three of them.  It rises from the low plains of miombo woodland to over 2500m (8500ft). At higher levels, it is dense forest, very steep with plenty of buffalo and elephant to surprise one. There are plenty of waterfalls with great wild swimming.

Udzungwa is the largest montane forest in Tanzania. The massif is one of six or so mountains that make up the Eastern Arc chain that stretches from south-east Kenya to northern Mozambique. They are far older than the basaltic volcanic flows that cover much of Kenya which are relatively young (2-3 million years). The crystalline bedrock on the Eastern Arc mountains is over 100 million years so it is not surprising that the endemism of both flora and fauna is so high. Over 25% of the plants are endemics and many species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates are unique to the mountain and have been described only in the last 30 years, including the Red Colobus, the Sanje Crested Mangabey, Kipunji monkey and two species of dwarf galagos (Bushbabies). The Rufous-winged Sunbird was discovered in 1984 and the Udzungwa Forest Partridge in 1991, both endemics. A sighting of the Red Colobus was particularly exciting for me. Only three months earlier I had been on safari with another friend where we slept in the forest by the Tana River and saw the only other Red Colobus species in East Africa.

There is so much to discover in Udzungwa but it is tough walking. We were the only guests in the park guesthouse, a sad reflection of how African forests are ignored as tourist

destinations. The park guides were disappointingly uninformed but the research

department tends to find new species almost every month. An Italian intern noticed some

huge trees near a village in 2019 and the species has been named Tessmannia princeps. Another group was then discovered in a remote part of the forest.  There are over 40 species of chameleons in East Africa which vary in size from the 5-9 cm long Rosette-nosed Chameleon^[2] from another Eastern Arc mountain chain, the Usambaras, to the Giant One-horned Chameleon, which is over 50 cm long but we failed to see it in the forest. We did spot the bizarre Spiny-flanked Chameleon (Chamaeleo spinicristi, above). For some reason, many Africans are terrified of chameleons and will not handle them, convinced they are venomous, which they are not. I have been bitten by a large one which can be painful but otherwise they are mostly gentle. 

Having failed to see a Giant One-horned Chameleon (Chamaeleo melleri), an old friend sent a picture of one on his arm in southern Tanganyika in the mid 1950s. 

It was only in the final two days that we were given permission to go and see the Tessmannia princeps. We were given two choices. First, to go into the deep forest on a 10- hour walk or to drive 8 hours towards Iringa to a village. As we were heading back via Iringa anyway and were short of time, we sadly opted for the village. Again, the drive was long and tiring through baobab country which are dotted about that part of Tanzania. In Kenya, large baobabs are getting rare as they make way for agriculture but in the drier areas of south Tanzania they still exist in their millions as far as the eye can see.

We were stymied at the last moment as we needed a local official to take us to the site but she demanded for 4 hours work twice what I pay my staff in a month and I didn’t have the cash. So we never found the Tessmannia trees but it didn’t matter because they are there and one day, inshallah, we will be back to go and see them deep in the forest. Large fluted and buttressed ones are reputed to be 3000 years old but I remain sceptical.

If you want to make a name for yourself in conservation, go off and do some research in the Udzungwa and you are bound to find some new species.

[1] It can take many years for a new species to be described starting with a detailed comparison of the physical and molecular data against related species, peer review and then publication of a formal description including a proposed scientific name. This tree was identified in 2019 and publication of the name was in 2025.

[2] The world’s smallest chameleon is Brookesia nana from Madagascar is 2 cm. long