Ian Player dies
NATURE conservationist Ian Player has died at his home in the Karkloof Valley in KwaZulu-Natal at the age of 87.
“Dr Ian Player passed away peacefully on November 30, after a short illness,” the Wilderness Foundation said yesterday.
Player, who is credited with saving the white rhino from extinction in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1950s, had a stroke on Thursday.
During his career, Player served on a number of parks boards including that of SANParks.
On Friday, rumours of his death arose after his brother, golfer Gary Player, tweeted: “My beloved brother, Ian, has cast his canoe on to the river of life that will shortly take him across to the other side. I will miss you. Love.”
Player leaves his wife, two sons and a daughter. – Sapa
THE NAME Ian Player will always be rooted firmly in the African wilderness. He initiated the Wilderness Leadership School, the Wilderness Foundation and World Wilderness Congress and also played a key role in establishing the first wilderness zones in the world.
Yet Player started life as a city boy. Born in Joburg on March 15, 1927, Ian Cedric Player was the son of a gold miner.
Despite a humble background, Player and his younger brother, Gary, rose to world prominence – Ian as a conservationist and Gary as an international golf champion.
Ian enlisted with the South African Armoured Division at 17. On his return to civilian life, he found South Africa in the middle of an industrial depression. Work was scarce and Player had no qualifications, so he found himself working in a gold mine, 1 800m underground.
But he quickly rebelled against the lack of sunlight and moved to KwaZulu-Natal. First he worked on the docks in Durban harbour, then as a fisherman and an accountant’s clerk. Soon afterwards he found himself back on the Reef, working night shift in an aluminium factory.
He was also a dreamer, and in December 1950 he took off for KZN again to initiate the first Dusi Canoe Marathon. He won the race three times in succession and he recorded his adventures in his first book, Men, Rivers and Canoes.
In 1952, his career in conservation began when he was offered a job as a relief ranger with the Natal Parks Board. ”The gods had smiled upon me… I had a feeling that forces beyond my control and only dimly understood were having a hand in my destiny,” he reminisced many years later.
Player said that just before getting the job, he had spent seven nights in total darkness except for a flickering candle. “Someone had told me, or I probably read, that if I did this my life would undergo a dramatic change. From being a lost soul I would be ensouled.”
His first posting was to Lake St Lucia, followed by stints at Ndumo, Hluhluwe, Imfolozi and Mkuze.
At Imfolozi, the 25-year-old cadet ranger met Qumbu Magqubu Ntombela, a veteran 52-year-old game guard. They were to develop a close relationship which ended with Ntombela’s death in 1993.
Player set up the Magqubu Ntombela Foundation in his honour and paid eloquent tribute to his old Zulu mentor and second father in his book Zululand Wilderness: Shadow and Soul.
Ntombela was also part of the original “Operation Rhino” game capture team which included Player, John Clark, Owen Letley, Nick Steele and veterinary scientist Dr Toni Harthoorn. Originally feared to be extinct, a small remnant population of the southern white rhino was rediscovered in the Imfolozi district in the 1890s, prompting the decision to declare the area a game reserve. By the early 1950s, the population had increased slightly, but there were fewer than 500 of these animals.
This led to the decision in the early 1960s to spread the eggs out of a single basket, and in the decades that followed, more than 3 000 of the animals were captured and translocated to other game reserves in South Africa and Africa as well as to zoos and safari parks in Europe and America.
From an initial population of somewhere between 20 and 200 of these animals at the turn of the 19th century their numbers swelled to more than 20 000.
Player began to collaborate with several documentary film-makers. He served as a technical adviser to the Metro Goldwyn Mayer motion picture group during the filming of Rhino and also raised funds and helped with the production of Trails to Survival and Trial by Wilderness. During this period, he started to strike up friendships and strategic alliances with leading decision-makers, politicians, donors and journalists. He lobbied members of the local Rotary Club, the Women’s Institute and “anyone else who would listen” to drum up support to prevent the threatened deproclamation of some of the Zululand game reserves.
Yet in 1974, having risen to the rank of chief conservator, Player decided to leave the organisation he had served for more than two decades.
“On my last day of work, as I gathered my papers in my office at the Natal Parks Board headquarters, I wept. So much of my life’s energy had gone into serving the board and wildlife conservation. The political battles had been unending.”
After he left the Zululand reserves to work at head office in Pietermaritzburg in 1969, he was able to buy a small farm in the Karkloof area.
Gary came forward to help establish the Wilderness Leadership School by donating his winnings from the Transvaal Open golf championship.
But after leaving the board he found himself with no income and spent two years travelling to and from America to fund the work of the fledgling Wilderness Leadership School.
In 1989, he initiated an awards scheme to nurture environmental journalists, in collaboration with South African Breweries. He also wrote a regular column for the Daily News, “Voice from the Wilderness”, and several books.
He was awarded honorary doctorates in philosophy and laws from Rhodes and Natal universities, the Game Rangers Association’s gold medal and the title “Knight in the Order of the Golden Ark” from Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.
He is survived by his wife Anne (née Farrer), who he married in 1957, his children Kenneth, Jessica and Amyas, and their families.