Richard Bowen Woosnam, game warden, soldier and naturalist, was the son of Kate Woosnam and Bowen Pottinger. He came to South Africa in 1900 to fight in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1900) with the rank of second lieutenant. In 1903 he resigned from the army and the next year undertook a journey to Ngamiland (now part of eastern Botswana) and other parts of southern Africa to collect natural history specimens for the British Museum (Natural History) and the Zoological Society of London. A list of the mammals he obtained during the expedition, with field notes by the collector, was published by G. Dollman in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History in 1910. His itinerary and field notes on the birds of Ngamiland were published by W.R. Ogilvie-Grant is The Ibis in 1912. Woosnam himself contributed an article on "The melon of the Kalahari desert" to the East African Geographical Review in 1913.

In 1905 Woosnam was the leader of the British Museum Expedition to the Ruwenzori Mountains in present Uganda. Subsequently he wrote a paper on "Ruwenzori and its life zones" (Geographical Journal, 1907) in which he identified six vegetation zones running concentrically round the ridge at altitudes from below 2000 meters to above 5100 meters. The "Zoological results of the Ruwenzori Expedition" was published by W.R. Ogilvie-Grant, Woosnam and several others in the Transactions of the Zoological Society of London in 1909-1910.

In 1910 Woosnam was appointed chief game ranger of British East Africa, a post he held with distinction until his death in 1915. During World War I (1914-1918) he served with the rank of lieutenant in the Worcester regiment and died in action in Turkey.

List of sources:

Europeans in East Africa. Retrieved on 17 June 2021 from http://www.europeansineastafrica.co.uk/_site/custom/database/default.asp?a=viewIndividual&pid=2&person=3096

Venter, R.J. Bibliography of regional meteorological literature. Vol. 1. Southern Africa, 1486-1948. Pretoria: Weather Bureau, 1949.

Who was who, Vol. 1, 5th ed. London: Adam & Black, 1967.

Woosnam, R.B. The melon of the Kalahari desert. East African Geographical Review, 1913, Vol. 3(6), pp. 25-31. Retrieved on 17 June 2021 from https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA19376812_293

Compiled by: C. Plug

Last updated: 2021-06-17 14:09:29