The other day I was having a discussion with a non-hunting friend and the subject of elephants came up. I was trying to explain that they are not, in fact, endangered of extension and that more were shot/killed because of problem animal control or population control than are taken by sport hunters. My friend, quite properly, challenged my numbers and my assertions. Now I need to back up what I said. Is there any data that shows the relative numbers of elephant taken by sport hunters vs. problem animal control vs. population control vs. poaching? If so, please provide. Thanks.
kh

Kevin,

Elephant management is a very complicated and thorny issue and the only real way you could get accurate figures for what you want is to contact the individual game dept of the African countries concerned...... and frankly, I'm not sure some would/could disclose that info.

You could consult the CITES website (which is a pig of a thing!) to get figures for individual national quotas of sport hunted Elephants but they won't have figures of culled/PAC etc animals.

If you want a broad overview of Elephant management and problems caused by lack of management, you could do no better than consult the books by Ron Thomson which you can buy here: http://www.shakariconnection.c...book-collection.html

Although more technical than the others, his 'Game Warden's Report' is especially good and brilliantly informative.

If you want an example of the problems an overpopulation of Elephants can cause, you might like to read Ron's article on the KNP here: http://www.shakariconnection.c...lephants-in-knp.html

Hope that helps.

Steve,
Thanks for the input. This sounds like a problem for a grad student.
kh

For Zimbabwe...

Hwange/matetsi complex (ie the mish mash of Hwange National Park, Zambezi National Park, Kazuma Pan NP, Matetsi Safari area, deka safari areas and the forestry resverves panda masuie and Kazuma - one solid block of wildlife land comprising 21000sq KM belonging to National Parks and about 4000sq KM belonging to forestry commission)

This area is treated (correctly) as one population. Unfortunately it is also 'one population', in part at any rate - with Chobe NP over the border in Botswana.

This area has been counted every year since 1984 using the same methods and largely I might add, by the same air crew. When the qualified parks officers had all quit, we re-hired them through WWF to continue the survey...i

In conclusion- the survery is precise (it may not be accurate but that is a different argument). As a back up, the wild life society conducts annual 24hr counts at 1/3 of the water points in Hwange every year. (elephants drink virtually every day). The wild life society routinely see 1/3 of the elephant that the air survery results come up with...so actually the count is pretty accurate as to numbers as well.

In 1984 we had 25,000elephant in the Hwange matetsi complex, and a programme was initiated to reduce the population. Between 1984 and 1993 we culled c42,000 elephant - almost all of them in Hwange NP (no culling in the hunting areas) - this was in addition to the sport hunting in Matetsi, Deka and the forestry reserves.

Last year we had 120,000elephants in the Hwange Matetsi complex...Zim parks cannot afford the ammo, let alone the fuel and salt to cull the elephant populatioon down to a level where the vegetation might survive let alone recover.

Those are amazing numbers that Ganyana has reported. Esp. when you consider that those numbers of elephant are not corrected for visibility bias as he said, i.e. (it may not be accurate, but that is a different argument). We have shown that intensive helicopter winter surveys for deer, elk, bighorn sheep and moose only see around 65% of the animals in the survey areas. If the same would hold true for elephant (and I am not saying that it does) there could be around 200,000 elephants in that complex. Now add in all the Zambezi and Gonareshou complex eles and the numbers could be awesome.

465H&H

Absolutely right and I'd bet those figures would pale into insignificance if compared to some other places.........

LLet me start the posting with some mood guidance:

Good evening esteemed Ladies and Gentlemen. Please allow me to introduce myself and my organization. I’m A N Other, a Founder Member of the “Save The Zillions” organization. This is an Animal Welfare [or Rights] Organization in the true sense of the words.

To understand the name of my organization you will need to understand the concept of Life a bit better than just knowing about living animals and those that cruel hunters have killed. A very simple definition of what LIFE is needs to test for the presence of a few aspects: [See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life]
1. All life is associated with the ability to GROW: A cuddly big-eyed baby baboon will grow into a fierce fighter that will lay down his life in a fight against a leopard to protect the troop. But the poor little baboon is itself the product of months of pre-natal growth from a single fertilized egg cell. Note that a crystal of some substance, say common table salt suspended in a saturated solution of table salt will also grow as the solution slowly evaporates.
2. Living things REACT TO STIMULI: An alert gazelle will flee from a potential predator. But the reaction to stimulus may be much more subtle: A pot plant in a window still will also react to a stimulus by growing towards the light.
3. The third major characteristic of living thins is that they can REPRODUCE. Such reproduction may be by simple cell division in ancient bacteria through a continuum of degrees of parenthood to the ultimate (?) as found in humankind.

Now the important result of being alive is that anything that is alive can, and eventually does, also DIE. A rock cannot “die”, as it is not alive to start off with. Only living things can die, and death is a natural occurrence, and the eventual fate, for all living organisms. There simply is no life without death!

Animal Rights Organizations hold that animals have the “RIGHT to live, and not be killed by human interference, until DEATH COMES AT ADVANCED AGE FROM NATURAL CAUSES”.

Do you not agree that such a right to live and die naturally is a basic “human” right? I most certainly subscribe to the notion that no-one may take away the right of humans to live and die naturally. Now what can be wrong if an ARO stand up and speak on behalf of the animals that they too have a right to live and die naturally? The “Save the Zillions” organization is an ARO that stand and fall by the fact that I claim that every single living creature has the right to live and die naturally! Man has no right to alter the natural scheme of things.

What does make my organization a bit different from other ARO’s is the fact that we really also attempt to be truly democratic and realistic in our dealings with the rights of animals to live and die naturally. We consider all life as sacred; and not only some artificially selected species, as do many other ARO’s! The beautiful baboon baby referred to earlier has the right to grow up into a strong and fierce male that will risk his own life in a fight with a leopard, and maybe even die, in such a natural way. But we equally believe that the horrifically ugly horseshoe bat baby has the exact same right to live a natural life until a natural death comes to it by whatever means. As said, we consider all live as sacred and worthy of being protected: Big elephant, through mid-sized baboons, to minute bats and mice. But to this list we also add those millions of free-living very small creatures: The microscopic ones! The amoebae, the bacteria and even the viruses! They are all living creatures that have the right to live lives unmolested by humans until their individual deaths come about by natural means. [A press statement is currently being drafted about the stance of Save the Zillions about the H1N1 and HIV living entities: Please be patient; we admit that we have a bit of a problem here!] By and large we claim that all life is sacred! All living things have a right to live and die naturally!

With this background I can now explain the meaning of my organization’s name: Save the Zillions. A handful of common soil taken anywhere in the Kruger National Park [KNP] or the Greater Hwange/Matetsi complex, or really anywhere on earth, contains millions of barely visible very small living organisms and zillions upon zillions of microscopically small living micro-organisms. These are all living and have a right to continue living without human interference until they die naturally. My organization stand and fights for the rights of these zillions of true living organisms that is so threatened and killed by human interference! I, and the rest of my organization, fight for and on behalf of those microscopic and larger living things that cannot fight for themselves!

Man is currently destroying zillions upon untold zillions of these living creatures every day by his lack of proper management action! Man has interfered with nature and as a direct result zillions of zillions of trillions of these innocent living organisms, that wants nothing other than to live and die in peace, die unnatural man-caused deaths each day as a direct result of man’s misguided interference!

We want man to reverse the situation where such vast numbers of organisms die each day due to man’s interference.

We fight directly, not for a few billion of living people, but for zillions and zillions of microscopic living organism and the equally unfathomable zillions of zillions of other higher and bigger living organisms, that are in turn dependent on the basis of such simple living soil micro-organisms.

A natural question that an enquiring mind may formulate at this point in our discussion is: “How does man’s action cause the deaths of all these many living creatures?” The simple reply is that man’s wrong and misguided actions cause them to land in an environment that is totally unsuited for their continued life: They die in droves counted in zillions! Soil microorganisms can simply not survive in sea water! A simple and indisputable fact! The soil organisms washed daily [actually only on rainy days, but averaged over a long period] together with the topsoil from these famed National Parks land in the sea. Here they die and unnatural death as a direct result of man’s allowing the topsoil to be washed away.

We want man to reverse the situation where such huge quantities of topsoil is lost to the sea and the associated vast numbers of organisms die each day due to man’s interference.

But it is not only about the soil organisms that we are concerned. The disastrous effect of the unnaturally fast accumulation of topsoil, sand and silt on fish breeding grounds in river estuaries and inshore seabed are other factors that could and should be considered. But let us confine this discussion to the zillions of living organisms in the topsoil of the KNP and other similar reserves.

To reverse the situation that is currently prevailing, one should firstly accurately define: What is the current situation? Then the immediate next question to be addressed is: Whereto should it be reversed?

The current situation in the mentioned National Parks is that the plant communities that should protect the topsoil is unhealthy. Very unhealthy! The basic cause of the poor state of the topsoil-protecting plants is over-exposure to sunlight due to over-exploitation of the shade-giving so called ‘top canopy’ trees. Once man has over-exploited the top canopy trees, the shade-requiring undergrowth, and all the animals, birds and other like insects that require a healthy undergrowth to live, disappears and topsoil is subjected to unnatural loss through erosion. In the Kruger National Park, and elsewhere, the loss of topsoil and undergrowth following the loss of top canopy trees is very far advanced.

We want man to reverse the situation where the loss of top canopy trees results in the loss of undergrowth and results in a situation where such huge quantities of topsoil is lost to the sea and the associated vast numbers of organisms die each day due to man’s interference.

How are we to achieve such a reversal? The question is very easy to reply to: By managing and overcompensation on the factors that caused to loss of top canopy trees in the first instance! By now only totally ignorant and unintelligent ARO’s will not yet have realized that I and my organization want to remove the excess elephants that have caused the loss of up to 95% of the top canopy trees in the KNP. How do I advocate removing the 10000 or more elephants from KNP? Also easy: Translocate them to suitable agricultural land in such low numbers that they will not overexploit the available top canopy trees there.

You may question: Where are you going to get enough suitable land from, and at what cost? Easy: Expropriate land without compensation from the estates of members of other ARO’s who, through their support for stopping the at least reasonable management of the elephant population in the KNP have caused the problem in the first instance! Why from the estates of such ARO members? Because I and my organization stand for killing the stupid and misinformed ARO members that have resulted in such serious and difficult to reverse damage to the ecology of the KNP and other wildlife areas in which elephant cause the total collapse of the ecology. What would you rather have: 10^7 raving living lunatics that advocate the destruction of our national parks through stopping sensible elephant number management plans, Or enough land on which to translocate about 10 000 or so KNP elephants and 10^7 dead ARO’s? Remember that the second option comes with the savings [ by my rough thumsuctiomate only] of 10^40 lives of soil bacteria saved daily, and about 10^ 35 soil multi-celled microscopic soil organisms saved daily, and 10^ 30 insects and other small creatures saved daily, and all the plants, field mice, bats, baboons and antelope that depend absolutely on a healthy top canopy cover and the associated undergrowth keep on living. Do you realize how many living organisoms can be saved every year by simply just once killing about 10 million raving lunatic ARO’s? You can do the mathematics yourself: Simply multiply the sum you get when adding all the bacteria, plus other soil micro-organisms, plus insects plus all others that are saved daily with 365.24, being the number of days in a year. That result will give you the number of living things saved yearly if the destruction of top canopy trees by an excess of elephants can be avoided. All these living creatures can then live natural lives, as is their right, until they die a natural death!

You say the once–off killing of about 10 million lunatic ARO’s is not in balance with the saving of about 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 living organisms that have a right to a natural life every year? If you do not agree, I ask if you would please explain your understanding of “intra-species democracy”: A life saved to live a natural life and eventually die a natural death, must most certainly be worth just as much as any other life? My point of view is that every single living cell in the body of a multi-cellular organism is worth just as much as a single living cell of a unicellular micro-organism. Is that fair? A single living cell is worth as much as any other living cell? Fine. Now do the comparisons: A human body contains about 10 000 trillion, or 10^16 living cells. So killing 10^7 stupid uninformed ARO’s will result in the death of about 10^23 living cells. Now, that is a lot of living cells: But how many will be saved if you consider the number of individual cells of all the soil bacteria, single celled eukaryotes, and all the cells in the multi-cellular soil micro-organisms, insects, birds and other animals that will be saved by stopping the elephants from destroying the top canopy trees. The killing of 10^23 human cells once is very small fry compared to the annual saving of maybe 10^46 other living cells annually!

Should someone be so clever as to point out that it is unconstitutional to kill humans for the sake of saving animals, then I ask that same person to suggest another way in which we can save the 10^46 or so living cells that all have a right to a natural life and death that we are now killing annually by our poor [in fact non-existent] elephant number management practice? If a 70 kg human contains 10^16 living cells, let’s assume that an elephant contains 10^18 living cells. So, the killing of 10 000 [10^4] elephants results in the killing of only 10^(18+4) = 10^22 cells. Add another safety factor of 10 times, and say that the once off killing of 10 000 elephants will result in the killing of 10^23 living elephant cells. Just exactly the number of human cells belonging to unthinking ARO’s that needs to be killed in order to have space for the translocation of all the excess KNP elephants to land expropriated from the deceased estates of such stupid ARO’s. But this killing must surely be warranted by the fact that it will save 10^23 times as many living cells in the first year! And then every year thereafter!That can be expressed as a “Return on Investment” of 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 % annually. Is there anyone out there who can tell me why we should not make such a good investment?

My “Save the Zillions” organization stand for saving the 10^46 or so living cells that die an untimely death each year as a direct result of the other lunatic fringe ARO’s insistence that we do not do a once-of killing of about 10^23 other living cells. I do understand [but have no sympathy with] the fact that we dare not select to kill 10^23 human cells belonging to lunatic ARO’s that caused the problem in the first instance. But these same idiots should then tell me why we should not once off kill 10^23 elephant cells and then continue to wisely manage the remaining elephants to the sustainable benefit of all, yes also the lunatic fringe ARO’s , of our wonderful country, and in the process save 10^46 other living cells every year?

Sorry, my story has to end here. I was bored before, but now my wife has called me to go and feed the dogs. Do go and read a more balanced view of the problem and solution here, or at places referenced here: http://www.shakariconnection.c...hant-management.html

In good hunting.

Andrew McLaren

I am not sure of the exact annual growth rate of elephants in southern Africa, but 4% is probably a conservative estimate. That figure would include depredation, poaching, hunting etc, etc. In many areas elephants have exceeded carrying capacity, but many people are under too much pressure to do anything about it. I am sure in many areas, the vegetation may take years to recover, and that is only after the population has been reduced dramatically. However, it is a problem of people and their encroachment, introduction of fences, watering holes etc, and not elephants at the end of the day. Natural disasters such as droughts would thin their population numbers out naturally, but if there are too many of them and they have no-where to go, they are going to eat everything in sight which may ultimately affect many other sensitive plant and animal species.

i have a copy of the 2007 IUCN elephant status report for africa ...its very interesting but its 18meg , i will attach it to my website tommorow and let you know when its there ... its a very comprehensive and detailed report that i found most interesting ..

I went to the CITES web site to look at the annual quotas. Steve is right, it's not the most user friendly site out there. Reading the quota lists was also confusing for me as they seem to assume some sort of prior familiarity. For instance, Zim's 2009 quota is listed as 1,000 and then there is another column that lists 500 pair of trophy tusks for export. I'm sure the Africa guys understand this, but I don't. Are there elephant available for personal consumption?

Anyway, the quota lists available on the site only go back to 2000, so a direct comparison with Ganyana's numbers can't be done. But just taking the 2009 combined quota of 3,000 for the 8 listed countries and using an annual average based on Ganyana's figure of 4,666 per year culled in one area of one country, I think my question has been answered. Poaching, whose numbers will always be unknown, can only add to the disparity.

I was interested to see that for all countries except Cameroon the quota increased, in some cases substantially, between 2000 and 2009.

As always, thanks for your informed comments.
kh

Zim's Quota.
Zimbabwe recieved an allocation of 400 elephant per year FOR EXPORT from Cites when Elephant were put on Appendix I after the ft Lauderdale meeting. Zimbabwe maintained the same quota even after the population was down graded to Appendix 2 ather the Harare meeting (1997)

CITES only regulates exports. Until 1999 Zim alocated 200 elephant a year to citizen hunters and allocated all the tuskless it could find to visiting sport hunters (not for export) and the various tribal councils took off about 400 per year as PAC.

Since 2000 the citizen quota has gone out the window and the numbers shot as PAC by the councils have increased. Current port hunting offtake is currently about 1000.

I have heard disturbing reports of commercial-style elephant poaching, not just subsistance poaching happening in Zim, though to what truth and extent I do not know. However, most worryingly, I have heard of such events happening inside national parks, where there is manpower and anti-poaching units available (although they are not equipped enough to deal with it). Obviously on a very large scale this would certainly start having some effect on the local elephant population. I think past wars have certainly had a detrimental effect on game populaions. Angola went through a bad patch with the decimation of game, elephant being no exception. It is in areas where they are not protected such as outside national parks that animals fair the worst.

I would think that the number of elephant shot in sport-hunting would not have any significant effect on the over-all population, although it may affect their behaviour. I would say that elephant are certainly far from the point of going extinct but it is hard to predict what the situation will be like in 50-100 years time for future generations with the current rate of human expansion and the need to keep crops separate from hungry animals and animals away from hungry people.

I think that there are too many elephants inside many national park areas today, causing more damage than good in some areas, although they are not given enough space and freedom outside national parks where they were once free to roam. Unfortunately elephants and humans do not mix well, especially when it comes to agriculture and the same could be said for lions and livestock.

quote:

where they were once free to roam.

I don't think they were ever free to pick daisies or watch the red sunsets at leisure.

Spear traps, pit falls, poison arrows, etc. were always plaguing elephants. Along came the conservation-minded colonialists to get rid of the native hunting contingent and replaced all that with much more effcient firearms.

Selous would go on about not seeing an elephant for months at a time. That may have been due in part to the hunting-fool Boers, but either way Zim didn't have many elephants around in Selous' time.

I don't have much doubt that there are probably more elephants in Zim now then there has been for a couple hundred years, and maybe forever.

We are probably living in the Golden Age pf the Elephant, and just don't know it.

Hi Will, you are right, but was just trying to refer to the situation of crop-raiders who do or don't know any better, why go and look for food when you have a field full of pleasures right on your doorstep? Many of the areas of bush they once roamed have been transformed by human habitation.

They know that they are safe in the parks, and am sure that they have a good idea where they start and end. Thats why they get the hell out of there by daylight. You can't really blame the elephant though. He just wants food and sometimes it must be hard to resist a field full of mielies, pumkins, etc. These guys know that it is not a good idea to hang around communal lands and for good reason.

Mozambique Info

We just finished a 3 days’ workshop in preparation for the new Elephant Management Plan for Mozambique sponsored by USFW.
Mozambique latest 2009 figures are 22 000 according to WWF / IUCN Government count. This year’s Cites Quota updated to 60 Elephant. We do not have a culling or PAC quota in Mozambique and PAC have to be decided on individual cases by at “least” the Provincial Governor’s or on central level.
These figures confirm a significant increase of the elephant population compared to the last census