Letter from Leslie Brown to Noël Simon. Karen (Kenya), January 8th, 1964
Creators: name: Brown, Leslie
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 1964
Subjects: Ethiopia
wildlife
National Parks Management

description: Letter from Leslie Brown to Noël Simon. Karen (Kenya), January 8<sup>th</sup>, 1964 (EWCA, “John Blower” collection: BLO/7/Scientific Issues<strong>)</strong>. <em>Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority.</em> <strong>Transcript</strong> Box 24916 Karen Kenya 8.1<strong><em>.</em></strong>64. Dear Noel, Many thanks for your letter of 2nd January. I am relieved to hear that a grant has been approved by the trustees of the World Wildlife Fund. It would be nice to hear from Vollmar (a) how much has been approved (b) whether I can expect to receive it fairly soon. My position is that unless I can get this grant fairly soon I shall have to make a capital transfer from Britain to Kenya, and shall possibly have to sell out shares in order to do it. I am naturally anxious to avoid this if possible. The position is complicated by the fact that the British, working well up to standard, have not yet paid me any pension or any commuted pension, which was due on 26th December. I am now enclosing for you the originals of two reports which I have written covering the Semien and Bale mountains, and giving an indication of the status of thr <em>[sic]</em> three animals in which you were interested, i.e. the Walia Ibex, Mountain Nyala, and Semien Fox. I gather from your earlier letters that you have no recent information of any real accuracy on any of these. While I do not of course claim that these reports give a full answer on the status of each of the animals concerned they are actual records of what I saw, and accurate as far as they go. I will follow up your suggestion to put up more detailed projects on the lines I outlined in my last letter to you, and I will do this in conjunction with Professor Tjonneland at Addis. With each of the proposals I can, if, you like, put up a rough estimate of the cost. The University said that they would be able to share the cost by e.g. providing Land Rover transport from Addis to base camp a not inconsiderable item, and by far the largest part of the cost of my own trip. I had dinner with Armand Denis last night and shall be writing short popular articles on the subject of the Walia and the Nyala. This can do no harm, and may help to focus attention on the possible project by the public. Whether he will publish them in his magazine I don’t know – I had the impression that he was keen to gather facts that he could then make use of himself! I would like to be in a position to be able to regard these investigations on a purely scientific basis but unless I am in receipt of a salary that is not possible. You will understand that I have to try to turn a few pennies on the results for myself, either from photographs, or by articles etc. I have let Lee Talbott have a look at copies of the reports which I have written. As an experienced Game biologist I would value his comments on my population estimates. You will no doubt wish to get the comments of other experts. I would think that the comments of a European export on Ibex would be valuable, as they could indicate, for instance, how accurate or otherwise is my guess that I may have seen 25% of the Ibex that exist in Semien.