Migrations of humans and animals

Photo shows a refugee camp in Turkey.

MIGRATION can be generally defined as the movement of humans, animals, fish, birds and insects from one place to another. In all cases it is a search for a more favourable and less harsh environment in which to live and perceivably prosper either seasonally or permanently.

To witness on television the harrowing images of Middle Eastern, Afghani, Pakistani and North African refugees trying to make their way to Europe, through the auspices of human traffickers’ and smugglers’ deals in inflatable dinghies and dilapidated boats brings tears to one’s eyes.

From what are our fellow human beings escaping? It is usually because of political oppression, religious persecution, human deprivation, hunger or the consequences of war. The present situation in the Middle East reminds me of the mass evacuation of Jewish people to the USA and Britain during the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Just before the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain were erected, in the early 1960s, some two million Germans fled from communism in the east into what was then West Germany. In the early 1990s, in visiting Peninsular Malaysia, I saw thousands of Vietnamese boat people interred in refugee camps and even prisons. This was no different from today’s situation with the massive refugee camps in Turkey, Greece and on the Syrian border. It is simply human and animal instinct to move to better living conditions in order to survive.

During the last Eurasian continental ice advance, hunter/gatherers in the British Isles moved southwards to occupy southern and southwestern Britain to live in tundra-like conditions. They simply followed the migration of their prey – birds and animals to slightly warmer climes. In the Dark Ages and in Medieval times most of Britain’s population lived in eastern England but with the advent of the Industrial Revolution there was a mass exodus to other parts of Britain where coalfields were located and steel making started. Factories were established and thus jobs and higher paid opportunities were available.

The Bushmen of the Kalahari were the original occupants of modern day South Africa but were ousted by the Bantu speaking tribes, who migrated south from East Africa at the same time as the Dutch and British discovered this land in the mid-17th century. As the result of inter-tribal warfare the bushmen, a pygmy race, were driven out and retreated to live in and adapt to the hostile environment of the Kalahari Desert. The Plains Indians, the indigenous people of North America, for centuries packed up their tepees, migrating seasonally to follow their main source of food and livelihood – the bison or buffalo. With the advance of immigrant settlers into the Great Plains and further westwards, so the development of the ‘Iron Horse’ transcontinental (railway) came through the traditional Indian buffalo grazing territories in the late 19th century. This resulted in the Plains Indian tribes being confined to Native Reservation areas, thus restricting their movements and natural migratory routes in pursuit of migrating bison.

Transhumance in mountainous areas

More peacefully, seasonal migration of cattle and goat herders still takes place in Alpine Europe, no better displayed than in Austria, Alpine France and Switzerland. In summer time, cattle are driven from the valley floor farmsteads up to high alpine meadows on the ‘alps’. These are usually on south facing slopes receiving maximum sunshine, thus allowing verdant meadows to grow. The farmer lives at this high altitude with his cattle and daily sends the dairy cattle milk down to the valley floor dairy via a cable car-like system. He also cuts hay to use as winter fodder as the cattle return down the steep-sided former glacial valleys to the farmstead to winter over.

Wildebeest and zebras cross a river towards greener pastures.

The great migration of East Africa

Ten years ago I witnessed the greatest seasonal animal migration on earth whilst staying in the Masai Mara National Park in Kenya. There, over a million wildebeest, 200,000 zebra and 500,000 Thompson’s gazelles move from this area of the African savannah grasslands to an area in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. This massive migration is related to the seasonal rainfall regimes in these adjoining countries with two rainy seasons, in theory, each year.

Normally from December to June, these animals graze in the southern part of the Serengeti but just before the onset of the dry season they move northwards to the promised pastures of the Masai Mara, returning to the Serengeti in November. They move because of the parched grasses of little nutritional value in whichever park is experiencing the dry season. A gruesome feature of the migration is these animals’ susceptibility to lion and cheetah kills. In their migration route they must cross the Mara River, with its crocodile-infested water. What is perceived as a floating log, when the log suddenly ‘explodes’ and a crocodile seizes a struggling calf or injured adult animal in its jaws the rest of the herd panic and some are trampled to death while yet others drown. It was a sight I shall always remember, with the herd of wildebeest and zebras mixed together stretching as far the eye could see across the plains.

Egrets attached themselves piggyback fashion, literally going for the ride whilst nit or tick picking from the wildebeest hides. There was strength in numbers in such a massive herd and the nearby lions merely watched them from afar, as did the squabbling vultures perched on the occasional acacia tree.

North American caribou migrations

There are four subspecies of caribou (Rangifer tarandas) but one of these, the woodland caribou, is somewhat more sedentary in its movements, confining itself to the northern (boreal) forests of Canada and the United States. The barren ground caribou species lives in the summer months in northern parts of the tundra, feeding on marshland vegetation and in lake and river habitats, once the ice and permafrost begins to melt. They thrive in this season upon fruticose deer lichen, which constitutes 70 per cent of their diet.

In autumn the small herds amalgamate to herd sizes of between 50,000 and 500,000 animals and travel at between 60km and 80km per hour covering daily distances of between 19km to 55km. They move to their winter feeding grounds along the tundra coastline where sea temperatures ameliorate the local climate. Initially feeding on vegetation above the treeline, as winter takes its grip they descend to the lower forests, feeding on reindeer moss, leaves from willow and birch trees as well as nibbling at any available grass and sedges.

In springtime they move back to their northern calving grounds, covering distances in a year of up to 5,000km. Whilst their main predator is the wolf, unless injured they can outrun a wolf pack. Wolves, however, have become an increasing threat to less swift woodland caribou. Interestingly, caribou are the only deer species where both males and females sport impressive antlers. Thus both animals and humans have one thing in common, in that they move from place to place to instinctively survive.

Migrants are rescued from an overloaded boat.

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