The Conservationists and the Killers. The Story of Game Protection and the Wildlife Society of Southern Africa

(Cape Town: T. V. Bulpin / Books of Africa, 1982) 0949956236. Folio; original green boards, with gilt device to upper board and spine lettered in gilt; pictorial dustwrapper; pictorial endpapers; pp. 319, including index; illustrated with maps, line drawings, reproductions of colour wildlife paintings, and photographs. Dustwrapper ever so slightly rubbed to lower panel; merest trace of spotting to top edge. Near fine condition. "When man reached the intellectual divide which separates the killers from the conservationists in Southern Africa, it was almost too late. While there is general acceptance in this world that all countries should preserve at least 10 per cent of their area for wilderness, nature, recreation and purity of watersheds, South Africa today has less than 4 per cent of its once seemingly boundless land conserved and safe from despoliation. The story of how even that small area was conserved is a story of the dedication and inspiration, not of governments, but of individuals, of small associations and of the Wildlife Society which increasingly works today in Southern Africa to guard the heritage of nature, to conserve what is left of the wilderness, to seek out areas where the flowers, plants, trees and all wild creatures can be restored to their former glory with the remarkable resilience of nature when human beings find harmony with their environment instead of destroying it, where the conservationists take over from the killers." .