The scientific basis of the control of Glossina morsitans by game destruction / by the Trypanosomiasis Committee of Southern Rhodesia.

  • Southern Rhodesia. Trypanosomiasis Committee.
Date:
[1945?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The scientific basis of the control of Glossina morsitans by game destruction / by the Trypanosomiasis Committee of Southern Rhodesia. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    LIBRARY | rai Collections » fw, The Scientific Basis of the dntrol of Glossina Morsitans by Game Destruction By The Trypanosomiasis Committee of Southern Rhodesia. It is the policy of the Government of Southern Rhodesia to create and maintain game-free zones of country, for the purpose of preventing the extension, and ultimately causing the retrogression of Glossina morsitans tsetse-fly belts. These measures have been operative for twenty- five years; at first in the Gwaai-Shangani area from 1919-1922 and later in the Lomagundi (Doma) area from 1925 onwards. When these experi- ments had succeeded the method was applied wherever this tsetse menaced important stock areas or wherever land was required for native or Buropean settlement. To-day, doubt no longer exists concerning the efficacy of intensive and sustained hunting in so ridding the kind of country inhabited by G. morsitans of most of the food animals on which this tsetse depends that the fies themselves disappear within a few, usually less than ten, years. Where other species of tsetse are concerned, it is by no means so certain that game destruction alone suffices to eliminate or even effectively check the spread of the insect; the nature of the country favoured by, say, G. pallidipes, and the kind of animals usually fed upon by this fly, may make game destruction for its control a measure of real value only when employed in conjunction with some clearing of vegetation. It is because the Trypanosomiasis Committee realise how successful have been the anti-tsetse measures sponsored by the Government, and how lamentable might be the results if these were discontinued, that they think it desirable to review in this memorandum the reasons why control of G. morsitans, at least, is possible through intensive shooting of game alone. They then wish to touch on the wider aspect of the subject, namely, whether this policy really threatens to deprive Southern Rhodesia of an important national asset. Diet of Tsetse Flies. “It can be positively asserted that animal blood taken directly from the living body is the normal diet of all species of tsetse flies. There is no evidence whatsoever that tsetses can survive for any length of time in the complete absence of animals. In captivity they are easily kept alive and made to reproduce on a diet of blood, while all attempts to breed or keep them on any other diet have failed.” The above extract is from p. 32 ofa report, published in 1931, on the available evidence showing the relation of game to the spread of tsetse-fly-borne diseases in Africa. The report forms a special publication (Wol. 1, No. 1) of the American Committee on International Wild Life Protection, and is a model of impartial scientific objectivity. Within recent years tsetses have been studied in detail by very many scientists, all of whom, without exception and whatever they may have previously thought or said, now accept as proved the fact that animal blood is the only important source of food for tsetses. It is true that AAO TA 22502861374