ABSTRACT
A 50-year environmental history of tsetse fly is narrated. The vector was responsible for the pandemics of sleeping sickness in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It had forced African populations from large areas, undermining agricultural production and animal husbandry. The challenge to imperial scientific research and control was how to stop the spread of the vector into new areas and destroy those that threatened human populations. The colonial governments embarked on large-scale control of, and research on, the vector. The most drastic methods were extensive destruction of the tsetse habitats through bush clearing and extermination of wild game, in the hope of breaking the trypanosome parasite life cycle with the hosts, without much success. Control of the vector suffered lapses because of conflicting colonial policies. On one hand, there were those that perceived that tsetse flies contributed to environmental conservation by excluding land-use practices, while on the other hand were those who claimed priority should be given to soil erosion control. Evidence from the tsetse fly control methods showed that the so-called scientific methods contributed to environmental crisis in terms of destructions of natural vegetation.
