Angola and Brian Huntley go back a long time: over 45 years. Their relationship has been a tumultuous one: through early infatuation with the richness of Angolan nature during what he terms Angola's belle époque of the 1960s and 1970s, the subsequent internecine wars of independence, the death and destruction of civil war, and disillusionment at the currently reigning kleptocracy. With his wife Merle, who was clearly an important contributor to this effort, Huntley lived and worked in Angola, starting in 1970 when he was hired to the post of ecologist for the country's national park system. To this very year he has continued to visit, consult, conduct research, and work with a global network of Angolans and Angola-fans on a variety of issues connected with Angolan conservation.
Using what must be a masterful filing system Huntley draws on extensive correspondence, minutes of meetings and a remarkable memory to quote communications, conversations and e-mails that all illustrate his long and rich history with Angolan conservation. Whether it was the ongoing struggle for conservation of the endemic giant sable, attempts to address poaching (including by the South African military), efforts to bring the national park system to a level of national representation of ecosystems, or a bitter fight for reasonable budgets for the national parks, the Huntley attention to detail and the proudly personal recounting of battles fought—and mostly lost—are recounted. Sometimes the detail threatens to overwhelm the reader, who occasionally might have liked a bit more succinctness. But each reader may choose different details; I enjoyed Huntley's constant recounting of the menus at the numerous social events that were such an important part of getting work done in Angola.
This is an important book for several reasons, perhaps the most important of which is the relative absence of Angola from the global conservation scene. A country rich in biodiversity, Angola has not assumed its rightful position on the international stage. Huntley helps to explain why this is, and perhaps to give added impetus to Angolans and those outside Angola to lend a hand for conservation there. Brian Huntley is a global treasure as a Southern African conservationist with international credentials and decades of experience in many countries and settings. What he has to say deserves a wide reading.
In a world of conservation books written based on 2, 3 or even 10 years of experience, the decades of Huntley's experience provide an important, albeit deeply personal, perspective on Angola. In its final paragraph the author writes: ‘The writing of this book had a simple objective: to record the past in the hope that a new generation of Angolans will seek a better future for their natural environment. But evidence-based criticism is not popular in Angola. I have been warned not to return to Angola in the wake of this book's publication’. This is not an easy book to read because the author is pessimistic about Angola, but hope was the last thing left in Pandora's box and we must hope that with a new generation of Angolans and strong support from outside that the situation will change and conservation will assume its rightful place there.
