Animals: Jungle into Zoo

The Abyssinian delegate had to consult his government, but representatives of Great Britain, Belgium, Egypt, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, the Union of South Africa and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan confidently endorsed the African conservation treaty drawn up last month at their London conference. Last week the conference's U. S. observer, Chairman John Charles Phillips of the American Committee for International Wild Life Protection, forwarded the treaty to the U. S. State Department for its information. U. S. big-game hunters, trophy dealers and cinematographers scrambled among themselves for copies of the text.

The treaty gave them a jolt. If & when ratified, it will make wild animals almost as safe in Africa's jungle as they are in a city Zoo. The whole continent will be patched with vast game reserves and national parks. Only in restricted zones around the parks and reserves will sportsmen be allowed and here bag limits will be minute.

Protected only by territorial limitations will be lions, leopards (Africa has no tigers). Permission to kill or capture gorillas, pigmy hippopotamuses, white rhinoceroses, small-tusked elephants will be almost unobtainable. A special license will be necessary for hunting chimpanzees, giraffes, big-tusked elephants.

No more will hunters be allowed to trap their game with circling bush-fires, to use poison, dazzling lights, nets, pits, snares, set guns. Gunners and photographers must not frighten animals with snorting automobiles, roaring airplanes.

Chief enemy of African game, decided the conference, is the professional trophy hunter. Traffic in trophies, which may be anything from a stuffed aard wolf to a zebra's skull, will be strictly supervised. Hunters must prove that their trophies have been legally obtained. Ivory and rhinoceros horns conveniently "found" on dead animals will belong to the government.