Mervyn Hugh Cowie, CBE, ED, FCA[1] (13 April 1909 – 19 July 1996) was a conservationist who pioneered wildlife protection and the development of tourism throughout East Africa.
[3] Cowie's father resigned as Chief Magistrate of Johannesburg, South Africa to settle in Kenya.
He was first educated in Nairobi, then moved to England to study at Brighton College and the University of Oxford.
[2] On his return to Kenya in 1932,[3] Cowie was alarmed how the number of game animals had depleted during his nine-year absence.
He was frustrated by the government's lack of action on this issue, so he used the ploy of anonymously advocating the destruction of all East Africa's wildlife to improve agriculture.
[2] Playing devil's advocate to push public opinion against hunting,[6] he wrote a letter to the East African Standard signed "Old Settler" which proposed the slaughter of all of Kenya's wild animals.
[3][5] There was public outcry against this suggestion, and the government was forced to act, and formed a committee to examine the matter.
He joined the King's African Rifles reserve in the 1930s, and at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 he was commissioned into the Kenya Regiment, and served in Abyssinia, Madagascar, and the Middle East, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
[10][11] The 1951 British-made film Where No Vultures Fly (renamed Ivory Hunter in the United States) was a fictionalised account of Cowie's work.