A practical Policy for Tsetse Reclamation and field Experiment

Abstract

The fire-exclusion and hardpan clearing experiment has continued over a period of nine years, but this is no criterion of the length of time the finished method, evolved from the experiment, would take to be effective. It cannot be insisted too strongly that what has been described is an experiment pure and simple. Ample time, allowing for a cycle of years unfavorable to the tsetse, when the population fell naturally (which might have been interpreted mistakenly as success for the experiment) had to be allowed. Then when the time came to clear the hard pans an effort was made to find the minimum of bush it was necessary to cut out and accordingly the measure could only be applied slowly. The aim must be to evolve a method which will reclaim land in three or four years. It is apposite to add that the nine-year fire exclusion experiment has shown that almost the maximum effect that can be obtained from fre-exclusion is reached comparatively quickly, in the fourth year. Thereafter the effect increases but slowly. In practice, of course, clearing of the hardpans would be done pari passlI with fire-exclusion, not after several years of fire-exclusion as was done in the experiment.