Zimbabwe:Elephants And Humans On a Collision Course


Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)

February 9, 2006
Posted to the web February 10, 2006

Nhamoinesu Mseyamwa
Bulawayo

Sachikonye Lunga's face twists at the mere mention of the word "elephant", which doubtless evokes memories of his eldest son being trampled to death last year by one of the animals.

"We were not threatened by elephants before, but now they are everywhere," says the 70-year-old traditional healer from Siyabuya village in the Zambezi valley, north-west of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.

According to the 2005 annual report by the Community Areas Management Programme or Campfire, an initiative to ensure sustainable wildlife management, elephants were responsible for 12 deaths last year, an increase from the 10 recorded in 2004.

Edward Mbewe, spokesman for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management, says most of those killed had ventured into elephant habitats in search of food, as Zimbabwe endured its third year of drought.

But, Lunga believes it is the elephants which are encroaching: ôWe no longer bang empty tins to scare elephants away lest we anger them, but just watch as they descend on our fields and graze on our crops."

With drought persisting, the number of deaths may increase still more as elephants and humans compete for resources. Current conditions have also taken a severe toll on the animals: over a 100 elephants died last year - something blamed on serious shortages of water and grazing.

Mbewe says Zimbabwe's national parks are now home to over 100,000 elephants - even though they can only sustain 45,000. The population has more than doubled since 1999, he adds. According to the parks department, 4,200 elephants are born in Zimbabwe every year.

While Mbewe attributes this increase to the country's "ability to protect and conserve" wildlife, a 2005 report from the World Conservation Union warns it could be the result of elephants crowding together in protected zones for their safety after fleeing to escape human pressure.

"Most elephant surveys are restricted to protected areas, and it is precisely to protected areas that elephants flock when their range is compressed by expanding human populations," says one of the report's authors, Julian Blanc.

"A high concentration of elephants in protected areas can give a misleading impression of increasing numbers."

Nonetheless, Environment and Wildlife Minister Francis Nhema believes the current situation is not sustainable, and that culling is necessary.

Zimbabwe has tried without success to offer some of its elephants for free to western countries. In October last year, government also attempted to relocate a number of the animals to Namibia; however, this initiative hit a snag when the Namibian Department of National Parks and Wildlife said it was facing similar problems to Zimbabwe.

Namibia has 16,000 elephants of its own, some of which have been involved in human-elephant conflict in the north-eastern Caprivi Strip, again due to drought.

Elsewhere in the region, Botswana is also encountering difficulties with elephants.

Last year, President Festus Mogae said a growing elephant population was responsible for the destruction of perimeter fences around the Chobe National Park that had made human-elephant conflict an almost permanent feature in the north of the country.

South Africa's recent call for culling to control elephant populations in the north-eastern Kruger National Park -- home to about 12,500 of the animals -- has been dismissed as cruel by certain conservation groups.

A statement from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said the country's reputation would suffer if it killed off elephants. "Culling is a cruel, unethical and scientifically unsound practice," the IFAW brief read.

For Johnny Rodriguez, chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Taskforce (ZCTF), the best method of dealing with high elephant populations lies in the creation of better-managed habitats such as trans-frontier parks, and migration corridors to allow greater movement of animals between countries.

The ZCTF was formed by a group of Zimbabwean nationals in 2001 in response to concerns about poaching.



"The country cannot afford more losses because it has already lost too much valuable wildlife to commercial and subsistence poachers since farm invasions began in February 2000 as part of the controversial fast-track land reform programme," says Rodriguez.

He has also suggested the use of contraception to control population growth; however, the National Parks and Wildlife Management Department claims this would be too expensive.

I am going to do my small part to help with this problem in March.

quote:

Originally posted by N E 450 No2:
I am going to do my small part to help with this problem in March.

Small?????