When the great Kariba Dam on the Zambesi River was finished in 1959, every prospect about it was pleasing. Besides generating 1,500,000 kilowatts of power, the dam would create a lake 175 miles long where protein-starved black Rhodesians could catch fish and white Rhodesians could swim and sail. But Kariba Lake had hardly begun to fill with water when a vicious enemy showed its deceptively pretty face. A delicate, floating water fern named Salvinia auriculata appeared in patches that spread with astonishing speed. By last week dense mats, some of them strong enough...
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