Southern Africa: To Cull Elephants Or Not?

Mmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone)

April 21, 2006
Patrick Van Rensburg

I was reminded within the last week, by focused stories in a supplement to The Star of Johannesburg, headed JUMBO DEBATE, of my own two columns a while ago, headed How to deal with 130 000 elephants?'

The Star's focus, in an article, sub-titled KRUGER FACES THE ISSUES, by Peter Borchert, founder and publisher of Africa Geographic, was about the need of the Kruger Park to keep its elephant numbers at around 7 000. Initially, it was achieved by an annual cull which resulted in the killing of 17 219 elephants between 1967 and 1996.

As we well know, there is a substantial, international anti-culling lobby which opposed culling as a management strategy. After a public debate, initiated by SANParks which controls Kruger Park, the Parks Board announced a moratorium on culling, which the author reported as having been widely applauded locally and internationally.

The moratorium decision was not only based on the ethics and morality of killing, but also after questioning the 7 000 figure as the "correct number for the Kruger Park", based on low, moderate or high levels in different parts of the Park. The number, 7 000, apparently represents about one elephant per square kilometre.

To cut a long story short, if natural grazing limitations only, were followed, the Park's elephant population could arguably reach 20 000, which could result in deterioration of its savannahs. The Park's conservation managers argue that this could only be prevented by culling. Animal rights campaigners threaten boycotts by tourists if this happens.

South Africa's Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, has to decide whether to cull or not. To cull might result in tourist boycotts, so he has appointed an advisory body of experts. As a result, elephant impacts in the Kruger Park are being monitored. "Another option is that - with the establishment of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which embraces Kruger, and covers a million ha in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, the Kruger elephants may begin to exploit these new lands‚ resulting in a more natural migratory system", writes Borchert.

Sarah Borchert, who edits Africa Geographic, contributed an article to the focus entitled 'Putting elephants on the pill', which had really drawn my attention to The Star focus as a method of elephant birth control that we might look at ourselves, though it is not without problems of effecting.

Sarah Borchert reported that in the 1990s, a Pretoria University research group "unravelled the details of ovarian and uterine function in elephants, and trials took place in the Kruger Park from 1994 to 2000". In other trials, a protein (porcine zona pellucida, or pZP) "proved more effective.

Most recently, Henk Bertsschinger, of Pretoria University" oversaw the application of a new one-shot vaccine that releases the contraception over one to 12 months and may last up to two years a significant improvement on the time and costs associated with pZP". The pZp vaccine is administered by darting.

Several problems of contraception are noted by Rudi van Aarde: contraception does not reduce elephant numbers, it reduces birth rates and relies on natural mortality to decrease the population.

The scale of our problem is vastly greater, in terms of numbers of elephants and the area that they cover, than any neighbouring country. When I last wrote about elephants, they numbered 130 000. There might, now be 120 000, as there has been an outbreak of anthrax which has reportedly reduced their numbers. Another factor causing numbers' reduction may be deterioration of grazing due to excessive numbers.

Daphne Sheldrick, one of The Star's contributors, writes that "Elephants are fragile animals in that they have inefficient digestive systems and are the first species to feel the effects of malnutrition which weakens them, anchors them to permanent water and eventually reduces them to a coma. Like humans, elephants need a varied diet and those that lack it die, not from starvation, but from malnutrition".

Interestingly, what she sees as the only permanent solution to overpopulation is to remove sub-adult females from the entire population, which creates the population gaps that allow the regeneration of vegetation.

This is exactly what happened in the Tsavo National Park in Kenya. "The elephants died in huge numbers, but other species were not affected".

In 1990, we reportedly had 55 000 elephants, and the official view in the Elephant Management Plan - was that their number should be kept at 60 000, which clearly didn't happen. Now we are faced with a huge problem which acceptable, conventional methods cannot solve. Sheldrick points out that it is estimated that a natural elephant die off - due to malnutrition, - only occurs once in 250 years.

I had, in my earlier articles, quoted Graham Child who was responsible for some years for elephant culling in Zimbabwe, as noting that "at a safe carrying capacity, elephants may act as a pruning agent and benefit biological diversity by opening up and altering the age structure of plant communities, but once numbers exceed this level, overpopulation impacts seriously on habitats.

By virtue of their dominance as herbivores, elephant damage has a cascading effect through the ecosystem; degradation is not a uniform process, but is accompanied by deterioration past a series of critical thresholds over which recovery is often, at best, problematical in the short to medium term".

I'm sure the wildlife people of the SADC member countries must be in touch with each other about the inherent problems of excessively large elephant populations in given areas, and what to do about them. How long would we have to wait if we leave it to nature alone?

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