Mervyn Cowie

Mervyn Hugh Cowie CBE (13 April 1909 – 19 July 1996) was a conservationist who pioneered wildlife protection and the development of tourism throughout East Africa.

Cowie was a descendant of Scottish farmers who migrated to South Africa. Cowie's father resigned as Chief Magistrate of Johannesburg, South Africa to settle in Kenya. Cowie was born in Nairobi on 13 April 1909. He grew up in a thatched mud hut 30 miles from Nairobi. He had one brother. He was first educated in Nairobi, then moved to England to study at Brighton College and the University of Oxford. He qualified as a chartered accountant and returned to Kenya in 1932.

Cowie married Molly Beaty in 1934. They had two sons and one daughter. Beaty died in 1956. He married Valori Hare Duke in 1957. They had one son and one daughter. He retired to Suffolk in England in 1979. Cowie died on 19 July 1996.

On his return to Kenya in 1932, Cowie was alarmed how the amount of game animals had depleted during his nine-year absence. The complete lack of government policies on conservation was the principal cause of this depletion. Cowie was concerned about human pressure on wilderness areas. He thought that there should be special areas where wild animals could exist without interference from people. He realised that only tourism could generate the revenues needed to establish the infrastructure, including parks, needed to protect animals. He envisioned a series of national parks and an efficiently run system for the preservation of game. However, the governments of the British colonial territories opposed the establishment of national parks.

Between 1932 and the start of World War II in 1939, Cowie was a district councillor in Nairobi and trained as a reserve with the King's African Rifles. He also campaigned tirelessly for the protection of wildlife. He was frustrated by the government's lack of action on these issue, so he used the ploy of anonymously advocating the destruction of all East Africa's wildlife to improve agriculture. Playing devil's advocate to push public opinion against hunting, he wrote a letter to the East African Standard signed "Old Settler" which proposed the slaughter of all of Kenya's wild animals. There was public outcry against this suggestion, and the government was forced to act. The government formed a committee to examine the matter. A national parks board was eventually established with Cowie as its chairman.Nairobi National Park, Kenya's first national park, was opened in 1946. Cowie was its executive director. He opened a series of parks throughout East Africa. He assisted and advised on the formation of parks in Tanganyika and Uganda.Serengeti National Park in Tanganyika was gazetted in 1951. Queen Elizabeth National Park and Murchison Falls National Park were established in Uganda in 1952. He was a hands-on administrator. He learned how to fly an aircraft so that he could patrol the parks he was responsible for. His aircraft was once chased by a rhinoceros when he attempted to land it at a park outpost. He chased an elephant away from Princess Elizabeth's party when they visited the Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park in 1952. (This is not so; Jim Corbett records this incident in his book 'Treetops', with introduction by Lord Hailey, and no mention is made of Mr. Cowie. Hard to explain the detailed story in the obituary, crediting Cowie with distracting the elephant. If this happened, why did Corbett not mention it in his account?)

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