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| Winter 2003 Issue |
Alumnus, Author Returns for Friends Group Event Ernest Hemingway wrote romantic stories
about hunting wild game in Africa during the early 1900s. Thomas Ofcansky offers a less attractive
story about the dwindling green hills of Africa. His new book, Paradise
Lost: A History of Game Preservation in East Africa, chronicles the drastic
environmental changes that have occurred in a few decades. "The biggest thing is the impact people
have on wildlife. It's a very negative impact," said Ofcansky, an
analyst for the U.S. Department of State and WVU alumnus. "In less
than a century, it went from something none of us could believe today
to just a few little endangered pockets." The author will return to campus this fall
to discuss his book. The presentation, the first for the newly formed
Friends of WVU Libraries, is scheduled for 7 p.m. Sept. 12 in the Downtown
Campus Library's large group viewing room. The book, published in May by the WVU Press,
began more than 20 years ago as Ofcanksy's dissertation. He traveled to
East Africa several times as a student and worked on temporary duty assignments
in several U.S. embassies in East Africa, including Tanzania, Uganda,
Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan after receiving his doctorate. Ofcansky names mass tourism and population
growth as the major contributors to the environmental woes East Africa
is facing. A problem with tourism is that people who
visit the national parks want to stay in five-star hotels rather than
tents. The luxury first means clearing land for the hotels. Hotels, in
turn, require frequent deliveries of water, food and other supplies, and
people need to relocate to the parks to work in the hotels. More roads
soon follow to carry the increased traffic into the formerly pristine
areas. Apart from this environmental degradation,
massive deforestation has destroyed the habitats of bird and small animal
populations. While Ofcansky believes the process is
slow, it's also irreversible. "This is probably the final phase
of what we think of as wild Africa," Ofcansky said. "It's not
a happy story. Americans don't like unhappy stories. They like to think
there is a solution. If there is, I can't see it." Ofcansky is also the author of Uganda:
Tarnished Pearl of Africa, Historical Dictionary of Kenya, Historical
Dictionary of Tanzania, Annotated Bibliography of British East Africa,
1865-1961 and Ethiopia: A Country Study. For more information about Friends of WVU
Libraries, go to the website:
www.libraries.wvu.edu/friends | |
| Ex Libris is published quarterly
by the WVU Libraries | |
