CENTRAL AFRICA: Operation Noah

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The rescue team's chief, Rupert Fothergill, 46, is mostly concerned with keeping his men alive. Fothergill himself has been bitten by a python and a rufus-beaked snake; one of his staff, while swimming, was bitten on the lip by a hissing sand snake. More than the animals and reptiles, Fothergill fears the dangers of diving into the lake where there is always the possibility of losing an eye on a tree branch or being impaled on a stake. Lions and elephants will be relatively easy to handle. Says Fothergill: "An elephant can swim a long way. It will merely be a matter of shepherding him in the right direction. As for lions—we have nets."

The government of Southern Rhodesia is being censured for having done too little too late to save the Kariba animals. But the government of Northern Rhodesia, across the lake, has done even less. It has sent a single game warden to the scene, and his duties are to kill two elephants each week to provide meat for the Batonga tribesmen evacuated from the lake site. The Northern Rhodesia Game Preservation and Hunting Association last week appealed to its members to devote their holidays to rescue work. It is unlikely that either the holidaying hunters from Northern Rhodesia or the exhausted eleven-man team from Southern Rhodesia can save more than a tiny fraction of the valley wildlife.