Word: africanization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Four years ago, Bentsen turned 80 acres of his 2,200-acre spread into an experimental breeding ground for a pair of endangered black rhinos. Zoos are cramped. Bentsen's expansive pastures offer the South African-born animals most of the comforts of home. "This is fine rhino country," says Bentsen, as he pulls off the highway onto a sandy dirt road. Suddenly you are in south Texas as it was before the developers paved it over. In a soft morning fog, a visitor might mistake the silvery mesquite thickets and rough grass clearings for Africa's Zambezi valley...
...heat of the afternoon, and feed in the evening. It turns out that south Texas not only looks like Africa, it apparently tastes like it too. The rhinos have been thriving on a local bush called huisache (pronounced wee-satch this side of the border), a relative of the African acacia. Macho and his mate Chula chomp down about 40 lbs. of it a day. The two now live in separate pastures because on Feb. 28 Chula gave birth to their first offspring: a healthy female calf...
What interests Calvin Bentsen is wild animals, the stranger the better. About 15 years ago, he joined the growing number of Texas ranchers who are devoting some of their pastures to exotic wildlife. Now Indian axis deer, African eland, wildebeests, Grevy's zebras and sable antelope roam Bentsen's range. To help support his wildlife habit, Bentsen sells surplus animals. His ostrich chicks fetch $7,500 a pair. Several times a year he lets hunters take trophies from the surplus animals on the ranch. Bentsen is a lifelong hunter and also a dedicated conservationist...
...past, African nations have resisted an ivory ban, but increasingly they realize that the decimation of the elephant herds poses a serious threat to their tourist business. Last month Tanzania and seven other African countries called for an amendment to the 102-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that would make the ivory trade illegal worldwide. The amendment is expected to be approved at an October meeting in Geneva and to go into effect next January. But between now and then, conservationists contend, poachers may go on a rampage, killing elephants wholesale, so nations should unilaterally forbid imports...
...determined by the tastes or even the sanity of its rulers. Anti- colonialism, however, is the most common rationale for national renaming. During the 1950s and '60s, anti-colonialism swept through the newly independent nations of Africa. The Gold Coast dubbed itself Ghana, in honor of an ancient African empire that was located hundreds of miles from the modern nation. When the Belgian Congo became independent in 1960, it renamed itself the Republic of the Congo. Eleven years later, President Joseph Mobutu rechristened it the Republic of Zaire. A year later, he took his policy of "authenticity" personally, renaming himself...