The cinderella that is the Cape warthog

Imagine having a conspicuous, diurnally active mammal, weighing as much as the human species and sporting a prehistoric-looking face with teeth as scary as those of a big carnivore, in your regional fauna - and overlooking its existence.

This is the curious situation in which most otherwise well-rounded naturalists in South Africa find themselves.

The dictionary definition of 'cinderella' is 'a person or thing that is undeservedly neglected or ignored' (https://www.bing.com/search?q=define+cinderella&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&ghc=1&pq=define+cinderella&sc=3-17&sk=&cvid=CA28FD3A0CC54C908495AEBB9163C455).

Given that the animal referred to is a particularly warty, dusty, lop-eared type of warthog (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/79876386 and https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/71001971), it may be hard to visualise as a cinderella. However, this word seems apt enough for a member of the indigenous fauna regarded with indifference/apathy by virtually everyone concerned with wildlife research and utilisation in South Africa.

The Cape warthog (Phacochoerus aethiopicus aethiopicus, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_warthog) is directly analogous with the quagga (Equus quagga quagga) in at least two ways. It is a subspecies restricted to the southern parts of South Africa, and it became extinct before scientists realised its distinctiveness and the need to protect it from hunters.

Indeed, the quagga and the Cape warthog presumably lived side-by-side over a considerable area.

However, the difference is that the quagga, far from being a cinderella, has become a virtual icon to the wider world of nature conservation. Its loss is deeply regretted and there have even been attempts to re-breed its phenotype (see several previous Posts).

And the most important difference is that, while the quagga cannot actually be brought back, the missing warthog can - in a literal sense.

This is because the species called the desert warthog - of which the Cape warthog was a disjunct southern subspecies - not only survives in Kenya and the Horn of Africa but is common there (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232678198_Rediscovery_of_the_Cape_Warthog_Phacochoerus_aethiopicus_A_Review and https://www.inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/264075).

It became possible decades ago to translocate the northern subspecies to South Africa, restoring the species to its southern range. However, nobody in a position to do so, seemingly, took the slightest interest in this project.

Meanwhile, any possibility of such reintroduction has been complicated by the careless introduction of the other, inappropriate species of warthog, namely the common warthog (Phacochoerus africanus), to what is the rightful habitat of the Cape warthog (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228896843_Warthog_as_an_introduced_species_in_the_Eastern_Cape and https://core.ac.uk/reader/145054140 and https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/145052915.pdf). The common warthog has accepted this southwards extension of its natural range so well that it is regarded as vermin in the Eastern Cape province (http://www.secheresse.info/spip.php?article54613), where the other species of warthog belongs.

Most would assume that restoring the appropriate species of warthog to the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces is out of the question unless the despoliating species is removed first. And this removal is assumed to be impracticable, partly because warthogs breed rapidly and dig under fences.

So in South Africa today, we are left with a situation in which not only is an indigenous, extant species of large mammal unnecessarily missing from the fauna of national parks and game ranches, but a falsely-introduced relative has so devalued all warthogs that there is little, if any, interest in restoring the desert warthog in the first place. Indeed, few of those concerned even know that there is more than one species of warthog to choose from.

What can we learn about human attitudes to nature from this history of missed opportunity?

Well, here we have a 'megafaunal' species which, had it occurred in e.g. Australia when Europeans arrived, would have qualified as the biggest and fiercest wild animal on a whole continent. Yet in southern Africa it is treated as quite redundant - the subcontinent being so faunistically rich that nobody noticed when this species went missing, and few miss it still today.

Readers may never hear about this double standard again, because hardly anyone is paying attention to this topic. The unfortunate reality is that, in a land as spoilt for choice of game species as South Africa, the desert warthog - regardless of its analogies to the quagga - is not about to be invited to the Ball by either conservationists or the hunting industry.

Posted on Σεπτέμβριος 30, 2021 1234 ΜΜ by milewski