In 1918, long before it became a National Park, Lochinvar ranch was bought in a Nairobi pub over a couple of beers by my good late friend, Len Vaughan (pictured above); he had not seen the place before. It was the ellysian fields, covered from one side to the other with lechwe, buffalo, eland and now and then, the Ipumpe crowned Mushkulumbwe on one of their spearing chilas. Steadily over the years since 1976 it has been neglected, the annual flooding regime on which the ecology depends all but destroyed by the impoundment of Iteshiteshi upstream. Now it is being taken over by the dreaded Mimosa, starving out the grasses, stifling the lekking water meadows on which lechwe depend, driving them into the woodland to meet the hoards of cattle. It is all a national disgrace.
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