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John Frederick Walker : Antelope from the Ashes

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John Frederick Walker first shared his experiences searching for the giant sable antelope in war-torn Angola at the Explorers Club in 2002, when many biologists doubted this legendary, critically-endangered quadruped had survived the country’s devastating 27-year-long civil war. He returns to share news of its dramatic rescue from oblivion in 2009.

A sacred animal to the tribal peoples that share its habitat, and kept hidden from Portuguese colonists for four hundred years, the giant sable remained unknown to the West until 1916. That was when skulls and head skins were brought to London by H.F. Varian, a British engineer supervising construction of a railway across Angola. Those specimens were promptly recognized as evidence of a previously unknown subspecies of sable - and the most majestic antelope in all of Africa.

This coal-black animal with breath-taking five foot long curved horns became a natural history prize in the 1920s and 30s, and was collected for various museums on expeditions led by men like Prentiss Gray (an Explorers Club member), and later filmed in the 1950s by Quentin Keynes (also a

member). Field studies were done of the giant sable by biologist Richard Estes (also a member) in the late 1960s, before its habitat became a war zone. But partly because of its symbolic significance to both sides in the conflict, a remnant population managed to survive - only to face hybridization with roan antelopes, dooming the subspecies.

But in August of 2009, Walker joined a last-ditch effort to find this elusive quadruped, which succeeded in capturing ten of the animals and translocating them to a secure breeding facility in Angola’s Cangandala National Park— a conservation triumph. Walker shares photographs he took of the high-risk operation.

John Frederick Walker is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wildlife Conservation, Africa Geographic and numerous other publications. Walker has been traveling to and reporting on Africa since 1986. He is the author of A Certain Curve of Horn: The Hundred-Year Quest for the Giant Sable Antelope of Angola. His latest book is Ivory’s Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants.

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No Charge

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$20

Student Ticket Price:

$5 w/ ID

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