Peter Moss
Former colonial district officer who became a wildlife biologist and pioneer of the ‘ecosafari’
PETER MOSS, who has died aged 78, was a colonial officer who switched career to become an eminent wildlife biologist, devoting himself for more than 30 years to conservation in Zambia; he was also a pioneer of the “ecosafari”. Peter de Vere Moss was born in Shillong, Assam, on August 2 1938, the son of Lt Col Harry de Vere Moss of the Punjab Frontier Regiment. Peter was seven during the break-up of India and the subsequent partition, when his family left for England.
He was brought up in the colonial tradition, attending Glen Gorse prep school near Battle in East Sussex, where he and David Dimbleby opened the batting, then Malvern. At the age of 19 he joined the provincial administration of the Northern Rhodesia Government as a learner district assistant.
In 1961 he attended the one-year Colonial Service course at Cambridge. He was then posted back to the northern province of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, to work as a district officer. He was not a stereotypical colonial officer, however, and the local tribespeople gave him the Bemba name, “Kaole”, meaning “someone very easy to deal with”.
One of his duties was to police the violent clashes between followers of the Lumpa church, led by the fanatical prophetess Alice Lenshina, and the United National Independence Party of Kenneth Kaunda, who would soon become president of independent Zambia. Moss attempted to negotiate with members of the church to encourage them to leave their new settlements and return peacefully to their former homes.
But matters came to a head in July 1964 in an eruption of civil disobedience. The military was sent in and about 1,000 men, women and children were killed before the new
administration managed to quell the rebellion.
Moss’s recollection of those times is recorded in a book of essays, From the Cam to the Zambezi: Colonial Service and the Path to the New Zambia (2014),
edited by Tony Schur: “I was profoundly shocked by the whole thing … After the Lumpa campaign I vowed never to have anything to do with public administration again.”
In 1965 he took a job at the Department of Game and Tsetse Control in Chilanga, 20 miles south of Lusaka. Realising, however, that if he was to progress he needed to gain some credentials, he returned to London to take A-levels at a crammer, then embarked on a degree in Fish and Wildlife Biology at Guelph University in Canada, graduating with a First.
Returning to Zambia, he established himself as a park ranger for the National Parks and Wildlife Service in the Kafue National Park in western Zambia. The Zambian government commissioned him to produce the first park management plan for Kafue, covering every aspect from roads and dams to wardens and rangers. His plan encompassed an area larger than Belgium. Particularly close to his heart was a verdant area in the south, rich in wildlife, called Nanzhila.
During this period he struck up a friendship with Ian Manning, a game ranger and biologist working for the park services. In 1976, by which time both Moss and Manning had left the parks service, they travelled to Wales to meet up with David Lloyd, a big-game hunter turned conservationist who was trying to make a going concern of what remained of Coedmore, his family’s estate in Cardiganshire.
With Lloyd, Moss created the Cardigan Wildlife Park, on the banks of the river Teifi, introducing animals such as bison, deer, wild boar, wildcats and wolves alongside rare breeds of sheep, cattle and horse. It proved to be a success when it opened in 1978, winning awards and attracting 50,000 visitors a year. Within four years, however, it had achieved notoriety after eight wolves escaped and roamed over the surrounding area, killing some 30 sheep, goats, deer and other creatures over 10 days before being shot by police and local marksmen. The park, now the Welsh Wildlife Centre and a Site of Special Scientific Interest, continues – but without the wolves.
After the Welsh project Moss turned his energies to the travel business, setting up Eco-safari (now the Ultimate Travel Company), providing exotic holidays around the world that would also benefit local communities.
Through the 1980s and 1990s he was consulted by aid agencies on projects in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Philippines, India and Botswana. In all he was involved in more than 25 major projects, and published at least 40 papers. He was an honorary associate at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology; a scientific fellow at the Zoological Society of London; and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Peter Moss’s first marriage to Judy was dissolved. He is survived by his second wife, Jill, by their daughter, and by a son and daughter of his first marriage.
Peter Moss, born August 2 1938, died April 22 2017