South Africa Postpones Elephant Cull Plan

February 17, 2006 — By Jeremy Lovell, Reuters
LONDON — The South African government has postponed a controversial proposal to resume culling elephants from Kruger National Park where overcrowding is causing problems, a leading conservation scientist said.

The proposal last year from the national parks authority to end a 10-year ban had outraged many conservationists who said it was unnecessary.

"They listened to our arguments and have agreed to postpone the cull, but we don't know for how long," said Rudi van Aarde Wednesday. "We want at least three years for more research."

Van Aarde, on a brief lecture tour of Britain, is professor of conservation ecology at the University of Pretoria and a member of a panel of scientists set up to advise the government on the proposed cull.

The SANParks proposal could have meant removing thousands of elephants from the 12,500 in the sprawling park, where the optimal number had been set at 7,000 for about 30 years.

In the years before the ban, more than 14,000 elephants had been culled to keep numbers around 7,000.

A spokesman for the South African Environment Ministry denied any specific figure had been considered, and said consultations on a range of options were still under way.

The elephants have been accused of damaging large sections of the park because they bring down trees and crowd around watering holes placed for the convenience of tourists.

"Remove the artificial watering holes and the elephants will resume their natural behavior of seasonal migration, giving places they have left a chance to recover," van Aarde told a briefing organized by the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

He also discounted a problem with the people who live around the park's borders, noting that population density was very low to the north of the park.

But in place of parks such as Kruger -- which stretches along the border with Mozambique -- van Aarde proposed creating a vast multinational conservation region.

The proposed area runs north of a line across South Africa from the south of Kruger to southern Namibia up to a line crossing from southern Angola to northern Mozambique and taking in Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi on the way.

This area already contains 116 million people and 270,000 elephants, he said.

Seven large parks within the conservation area would house "metapopulations" -- a concept meaning isolated populations of animals which occasionally intermingle.

Not only would this relieve the environmental pressure on restricted game parks like Kruger, but it would also promote biological diversity and could help animal populations to cope better with effects of global warming such as droughts.

"Biodiversity conservation is the concept," van Aarde said, admitting it would be hard to persuade eight national governments to participate in the plan.

Source: Reuters

And I am sure that you could educate those elephants to relocate themselves EXACTLY where they should be in that multi-national park area, so they don't destroy the enviornment. What a crock of bull! They HAVE to be culled. I have seen it firsthand in the Limpopo area bordering Kruger. There is no other way if we are to protect all other animal species as well as the properties of those landowners surrounding Kruger.

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I agree with you ALF. Foreigners and locals have NO PLACE shooting game in a national park. If you read the report that WAS NOT THE ISSUE. Culling was the issue. Moreover, I wouldn't even come close to claiming to be any expert and never did in my post. But I have personally seen firsthand with my own two eyes what damage elephants do and I saw it in the Noveni area bordering Kruger last June, and that extensive damage was done by free roaming elephants coming in from Kruger and the land owner was NOT happy. That very landowner himself discussed the fact that it was being caused by too many elephants in the park and the fences being down allowing them to come in and destroy reserve areas. The same thing was happening along the Olifants River as well. How do you replace trees, some that are over 300 years old? It looked like a war zone to me.

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Alf, the Nhoveni farm sits fairly close, in the Balule Reserve, to the Mathaga farm, owned and run by Danie Mahlan. Having stayed and hunted at Mathaga, and having hunted Nhoveni I did see first hand the destruction. Now it may not have been total deforestation, but I saw the elephant damage done to areas near the water pans in Nhoveni and I saw and heard the elephant damage to areas along the Olifants River running through Mathaga. And I heard with my own two ears the complaints of those who live there, that in their opinions, there were too many elephants in Kruger. In my humble and unscientific opinion people were not happy. If as you say, the elephant were helping, maybe so, but I wouldn't have known it from what was said to me while I was there. In any event, and with all due respect, your opinion and mine on this subject won't count for jack shit in the end anyway, so let's not waste any more time on it.

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Alf,

I get the impression you don't think the cull or not to cull argument is as clear cut as most people...... including me, I've always valued you opinion, esp as you grew up in the area. So perhaps you'll tell us what you think about the whole Elephant problem in the KNP?

Incidentally, I wasn't for a moment suggesting that sport hunters take any part in a possible cull.

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