“The Only Good Crocodile Is A Dead One”: Contradictions in Conservation Policies and Agricultural Activities in the Gambia, 1938 -1965 A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Sana Saidykhan December 2018 © 2018 Sana Saidykhan. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled “The Only Good Crocodile Is A Dead One”: Contradictions in Conservation Policies and Agricultural Activities in the Gambia, 1938 -1965 by SANA SAIDYKHAN has been approved for the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences by Assan Sarr Associate Professor of the Department of History Joseph Shields Interim Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT SAIDYKHAN SANA, M.A., December 2018, History “The Only Good Crocodile Is A Dead One”: Contradictions in Conservation Policies and Agricultural Activities in the Gambia, 1938 -1965 Director of Thesis: Assan Sarr In 1938, the colonial office in Bathurst appointed a forestry management committee to design and implement an aggressive reforestation plan. The committee planted imported tree species and conserved [native] wild bamboo and rhun palm trees. It also created forest and wildlife parks in the colony of Gambia. During this time, the administration’s Department of Agriculture initiated several projects: rice and other food grain cultivation for food sufficiency; peanut cultivation to develop a viable cash crop; and exploitation of forest timber products and huntable exotic game. The outcome of this contradiction was stringent conservation policies often with severe consequences for the African residents of the colony. This thesis offers new sources that demonstrate how agricultural activities and resource exploitation undermined conservation, and the colonial conservation policies neglected the local ways of forest and wildlife conservation in the Gambia. It hopes to contribute to the growing environmental scholarship of West Africa most of which neglect conservation. This is a study of forest and wildlife conservation in the Gambia, examining the colonial conservation policies, and how agricultural policies and activities, particularly the introduction of animal drawn-plow, mechanized rice farming, and exportation of wild animal species undermined conservation. 4 DEDICATION To my family: Fatoumatta, Dawda and Omar 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my profound gratitude to all those who one way or the other contributed in the successful completion of this thesis. I appreciate the support and encouragement from my committee: Professors Assan Sarr, Paul Milazzo, and Ziad Abu- Rish. I am grateful for the support I received from the History Department and the Contemporary History Institute. Professors Katherine Jellison, John Brobst, Steven Miner, Ingo Trauschweizer have been a source of encouragement and support. History Department and CHI Travel funds supported my travel to The Gambia for this research. I have also been a beneficiary of African Studies Association/Air Maroc Student Travel Award 2017 which paid for my ticket for Washington to Banjul. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Staff of The Gambia National Council for Arts and Culture: Mr. Hassoum Ceesay, Lamin Nyangado, Dr. Catherine Pfreifer, and Mr. Siaka Fadera, and Ms. Jarrata. I wish to express the support I received from Mr Wassabo Darboe and Lamin Manka of National Archives, Banjul, and Mr. Bakary Sanyang of National Library. I am also grateful to my informants across the Gambia: Seyfo Ebou Kolley, the Chief of Foni Bondali, Mr. Yunus Gibba, The Gambia College, Mr. Landing Nyassi, Yusupha Ceessay and Sulayman Ceesay, all of them at the University of the Gambia. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Dedication ........................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 1: Gambian Society, Ecology & Indigenous Resource Management ................. 30 Geographic Features and Indigenous Resource Management .................................... 33 The Sacred Sites and Indigenous Resource Managment ............................................ 38 Rites of Passage and Indigenous Resource Management .......................................... 45 The Stratified Society and Utilization of Resources ................................................... 49 Chapter 2: Colonial Conservation and Control in The Gambia ........................................ 53 The British Colonial Rule in the Gambia ................................................................... 56 The Forestry Committee and the Conservation Policies ............................................. 58 The Local Response to Conservation Policies ............................................................ 68 Chapter 3: The Colonial Agricultural Activities in The Gambia ...................................... 78 The Rice Mechanization Schemes (Jenoi, Kudang & Walli Kunda).......................... 80 The Introduction of Animal-Drawn Plow ................................................................... 88 The Cattle Improvement Scheme and Grazing Disputes .......................................... 302 The Colonial War on Pest ........................................................................................... 95 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 100 References ....................................................................................................................... 104 7 INTRODUCTION During his royal visit to the Gambia in 1957, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, embarked on crocodile hunt upstream on the River Gambia and its many creeks. When the prince and his personal secretary each made a kill, the Imperial War Museum film commentator accompanying the royal tour remarked that, “The only good crocodile is a dead one and Prince Philip was too keen a sportsman to miss a chance like this.”1 This event is important because as hunting offered the British imperial rulers an elite outlet for pleasure, demonstrations of imperial masculinity, and above all symbolic domination of the environment, it contradicted the stiff colonial conservation policies in the Gambia2 that aimed to preserve the colony’s dwindling fauna and flora.3 Significantly, this is an example of numerous colonial activities and policies that contradicted colonial conservation drives in the Gambia. By the first quarter of the twentieth century, the fauna and flora of the Gambia had significantly diminished, largely because of expanding peanut and rice cultivation. Although the local farmers’ slash-and-burn method of farming was mostly blamed for environmental destruction, the British colonial administration’s extensive mechanized agriculture, as well as the massive exploitation of forest resources was more destructive to the forest and wildlife.4 The British colonial government in 1938 appointed a committee that would work to protect and conserve the fauna and flora of the Gambia.5 1 CSO 84/324 Royal Visit 1957 (Duke of Edinburgh), NRS, Banjul, The Gambia. The Duke of Edinburgh himself coined a term for his hunting trips, “bolong bashing after crocodiles,” see and Imperial War Museum film, source Gambia Historical Photography available at https://www.facebook.com/Gambiahistoricalpictures/ 2 This thesis uses “the Gambia” when referring to the British colony, and “The Gambia” when referring to the independent state. 3 John M. Mackenzie, The Enpire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism, (Manchester and New York : Manchester UP, 1988), 80. & Neumann, Roderick P. “The Postwar Conservation Boom in British Colonial Africa,” Environmental History, vol. 7, No. 1 (Jan. 2002): 22 – 47. 4 Richard A. Schroeder, ““Gone to their Second Husbands”: Marital Metaphors and Conjugal Contracts in the Gambia’s Female Garden Sector,” Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 30, No. 1 (1996): 69-87 & James L. A. Webb Jr, "Ecological and Economic Change along the Middle Reaches of the Gambia River, 1945-1985." African Affairs, vol 91, No. 365 , (Oct 1992): 543-565. 5 CSO 2/1655, Forestry Control-Legislation under Protectorate Public Lands and Native Authority Ordinance 1938, NRS, Banjul, The Gambia 8 The Forestry Committee under the Department of Agriculture passed ambitious policies and programs to conserve the forest and wildlife. It created sixty-nine forest and wildlife parks, and designated hunting areas, along with licenses for hunters and hunting periods to control the indiscriminate killing of the wildlife, except animals considered pest to crops or danger to humans. The committee also initiated permits for cutting trees for commercial use and some forms of domestic use, as well as licenses for tapping of palm trees.6 By 1950, a major reforestation exercise of planting many tree species began: neem tree (Azadirachta indica), yemane tree (Gmelina aborea), rhun palm (Borassus falbellifer), santango (Daniellia oliveri), African mahogany (Khaya senegalensis), she- oak (Casuarina equisitifolia), Afara (Terminalia