By Nicole Dreon

It is early evening in the southeast Lowveld of Zimbabwe, and the path down to the Turgwe River is steep and windy. We quietly follow our guide, Karen Paolillo, and hear the hippos' clamor before rounding a small break in the brush that reveals their pool.

"Hello, Blackface. Hello, Bob," Karen calls to her old friends. She speaks to them the whole time we are there, her familiar voice assuring them that everything is all right. Karen scouts the pool for Blackface, a large cow whose temperamental disposition warrants a watchful eye.

"Ha, ha, ha!" A reverberating grunt erupts like a powerful, frightening laugh from the hippos, a reminder of the tremendous body below the surface. "If I tell you to back off," Karen tells our group, "then you back off."

Karen's stomach churns every time she takes visitors to the river. Having been charged herself, she is well aware of how fast even an awkward-looking hippo can explode out of the water.

A disturbed hippo is rumored to be one of the most dangerous animals in Africa. It is not even bothered by crocodiles. A bull hippo can weigh up to 7,000 pounds and grow up to 5 feet tall and 14 feet long. Still, Karen won't allow anybody to carry a gun when she takes people to see "her" happy hippos. "They are too easy to use," she says in a slightly faded British accent. "Without one, you have to use more caution."

Now, watching these behemoths splashing and roughhousing, it is hard to believe that just a decade ago they were struggling to survive. If not for the efforts of this petite woman--who has focused her nervous energy, candid demeanor, and passion for wildlife to save the Turgwe hippos--things could have turned out very differently.

In 1991, Karen and her husband, geologist Jean-Roger Paolillo, had recently moved to Zimbabwe and were living in the Save Valley Conservancy on land owned by the Humani Ranch, a private game ranch. For Karen it was a return to a land she loves. She had first moved to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in 1977, landing a job as a croupier in a casino in Victoria Falls. After the casino was destroyed by mortar fire during Zimbabwe's struggle for liberation, she was transferred to Kariba. There she met several outdoorsmen, whom she eagerly accompanied into the bush to learn everything she could about wildlife. Eventually she learned enough to lead photo tours, the first female professional safari guide to Zimbabwe.

At one point Karen had the opportunity to work with George Adamson of Born Free fame on lion reintroductions. But after visiting Adamson in Kenya, she met Jean-Roger and fell in love. She wrapped up her affairs in Zimbabwe and accompanied her new husband to his work in the remote forests of Gabon. When Jean-Roger landed a job in Zimbabwe, Karen was elated to return. 
One day in 1991, out of curiosity, Karen walked the banks of the Turgwe River and counted the hippos. When she finished her survey, she was alarmed to find that, of 80 hippos once inhabiting the river, only 27 remained. When the rains failed to come in December, it signaled the start of the worst drought in Lowveld history.

The Turgwe River became meek and depleted. Termite hills stood taller than usual. And it was quiet. A land once abundant with animals could no longer provide for them. Short hairs became apparent on the thick skins of the hippos, and they suffered acute diarrhea both signs of malnutrition and dehydration.

Karen realized that without human intervention these animals would perish. She was determined that the 15 hippos that resided on banks in front of her home would survive. They needed food and a watering hole. But people and livestock were not eating, so the hippos were overlooked.

Karen first went to Roger Whittall, one of the owners of Humani Ranch. He agreed to give her access to a borehole, bulldozers, and a portion of his work force. Clem Coetzee, a game catcher, had an idea of what the herbivorous hippos might eat, and Karen studied the animals' dung to see what else was essential to their diet.

This was all she had to go on as she began to feed the two small schools of hippos by hand. At dusk, Karen would lay out soya bean hay and horse cube concentrate. The hippos ate 100 pounds of hay and 9 pounds of the concentrate apiece. At times food had to be brought from as far as Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, six hours away. Karen, who was funding the project, knew that her money, like the river, would soon disappear.

Then the river flow shrank to a trickle, forcing both families of hippos to share the same watering hole. The two dominant males quickly had territorial conflicts. Bob killed Happy's son, stole Happy's females, and then chased him out of the group. The situation grew more and more desperate.

Karen began to write to magazines and companies, asking for help. A response came from Care for the Wild International, a British wildlife charity, which quickly raised enough money to help fund a dam. Within six and a half weeks, a cement-and-masonry pan, along with a pipeline connecting to a well nearly 10 miles away, was in place. The hippos now had a pool 49 feet long, 26 feet wide, and 5 feet deep to live in. Both Bob and Happy had their own drinking troughs. Other animals, such as waterbucks, kudus, warthogs, and baboons, drank from the same troughs.

By December 1992 the rains fell again, and the hippos slowly began to return to the river. Thirteen of the hippos had survived. For Karen though, it was only the beginning of her relationship with the Turgwe hippos. In 1994 the Turgwe Hippo Trust was formed to ensure a future for these animals. Another cement pan was built, this one three times larger. Two more boreholes were drilled and cased, thanks to the generosity of Drillwell, a company from Bulawayo in the southwest of Zimbabwe. Additional donations made it possible to lay piping and install a pump. If another drought strikes, the trust has sufficient backup water supply for the both groups of hippos. 

Twenty calves have been born since 1991. Because several of the hippos have migrated away, the count now numbers about 22. Karen's ongoing study of the Turgwe hippos has revealed interesting behavioral traits. Female hippos, for instance, appear to avoid inbreeding when choosing a mate. When a calf reaches four years of age, she moves over to the family group of the other territorial bull in the area. Once mated, she may move back to her original group. Grandmother hippos in both groups can be seen close to their female offspring. So, although the territorial bull may protect the group, some type of matriarchal system seems to be in place.

The relationships between hippos and crocodiles are another point of interest. On many occasions, Karen has observed a female hippo grooming a crocodile basking in the sun, licking the reptile's hide for up to 15 minutes, then ending the session with a huge open-mouth gape. Crocs also take advantage of the hippos in the water, swimming underneath to catch fish attracted to the hippos' dung. But hippo behavior doesn't always work in the crocodile's favor. Hippos often warn other animals drinking at the river's edge of an approaching predator. They have even been known to intervene and attempt to wrestle prey out of the jaws of the croc. Elsewhere in Africa where this behavior has been noted, the hippo will take the animal back to shore if it is still alive and stand over it until it recovers. 

Teaching local schoolchildren about these fascinating animals and their ecological role in the wild is an important educational goal of Turgwe Hippo Trust. The trust also hopes to conserve other hippos in the southeast Lowveld and eventually throughout Zimbabwe, perhaps even throughout Africa.

The hippos can use the help. Most estimates place the number of common hippos at about 157,000 across 32 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. But in recent years the species has experienced rapid declines in 18 of these countries. The IUCN World Conservation Union lists the common hippo as vulnerable in Chad and Niger. (The pygmy hippo, whose number was probably never very large, lives a more solitary, reclusive life in the swampy forests of western Africa. This species numbers only 2,000 to 3,000 animals and is also considered vulnerable.)

With a burgeoning human population drawing water from lakes and rivers, and with farmers laying claim to nearby grazing land, the common hippo faces a serious threat. Hippos are also hunted for their meat and their teeth. After the trade in elephant ivory was declared off-limits, poachers became desperate to find a substitute. Unfortunately for the hippos, their large canine teeth, which can grow up to 20 inches long, appear to be filling some of the void. Sales of hippo ivory have soared from 5,600 pounds in 1988 to 30,100 pounds after 1991, when the trade ban in elephants and their parts went into effect. Although currently regulated, trade in hippo ivory is not banned, and enforcing trade quotas remains a prickly problem.

In Zimbabwe, a controversial land resettlement policy has opened up a host of problems that loom over wildlife, including Turgwe's hippos. Aimed at redistributing land owned by white farmers to local war veterans and other indigenous people, the policy has let loose a slew of violent land invasions that opened the door to poachers.

In the Save Valley Conservancy, an estimated 3,000 animals were killed from April to July 2000, and the poaching continues, reports Karen. "In the days before land invasions, the conservancy did have a tiny bit of poaching, but it was the kind of poaching that is more or less understood-that is, the odd man coming in to poach meat for his family," she says. "Since the invasions, every Tom, Dick, and Harry has got on the bandwagon to come in and poach so they can sell the meat."

The conservancy has been negotiating with the government in an attempt to protect its wildlife. Prone to droughts and a scarce water supply, its land may be less appealing for human resettlement. And the conservancy has already offered 90,000 of the most suitable acres to local people and set up a trust in their behalf. What will happen remains to be seen.

In the meantime, the work of safeguarding the Turgwe hippos continues to face new challenges. The cyclone that hit Mozambique last year also caused extensive damage to the river. Three of four weirs in the river broke, and an influx of sand has left water depths of only two to four inches. Karen is once again scrambling for contributions so that the trust can hire an excavator and a suction pump to repair the damage.

Despite the difficulties, Karen would never give up her constant struggle on behalf of these creatures. For their part, hippos are key players in the preservation of Africa's wetlands. Their dung serves as essential nutrients for water plants that provide food and hiding places for small fish. Their hulking bodies move silt, helping to keep river channels open. And their grazing keeps grass down, creating firebreaks and stimulating plant growth for other species.

Africa and its wildlife evolved together, and loss of the hippo would leave a land incomplete and irrevocably diminished. "Hippos are in decline throughout most of Africa, so if one has them on one's doorstep, it's best to get off one's arse and try to help them!" Karen says.

Karen Paolillo Hippo Haven, Turgwe River, Save Valley Conservancy.