No Room for Zim Jumbos


The Namibian (Windhoek)

November 15, 2005
Posted to the web November 15, 2005

Absalom Shigwedha
Windhoek

THERE is no way Namibia can give shelter to elephants that Zimbabwe is said to be considering relocating here, a senior official in the Ministry of Environment and Tourism said yesterday.

Ben Beytell, the Director of Parks and Wildlife Management, told The Namibian that Namibia was already struggling to manage its huge elephant population.

"We already have enough elephants of our own," said Beytell.

Namibia has about 15 000 - 16 000 elephants, which from time to destroy people's homes and homesteads in search of food, and their numbers have exceeded the grazing capacity.

Last week, Zimbabwe's Deputy Minister of Environment, Andrew Lunga, told the state-controlled The Herald newspaper that they were looking at relocating some elephants to Namibia because they were starving in Zimbabwe's national parks.

The animals are dying because of a shortage of water and pasture and the country's wildlife parks are over-burdened.


Recently, some 50 elephants starved to death in the famous Hwange National Park.

Zimbabwe has 100 000 elephants and a carrying capacity of only 45 000.

I must be getting dyslexic. When I saw this subject line I wondered why someone was posting about Jim Zumbo on the African Forum.

Lhook7, That is hilarious, but that post would have been from someone from Wyoming or Montana in the Big Game forum.

ill happy take care of the over population problem if theyd let me.

i figure i should be able to shoot a couple hundred a year easy.

Our first trip to Zim back in 98, we stayed in a B&B, in Victoria Falls, with an old guy that said he had been the head of all the game parks in Zim some years back. He lamented on and on about how many elephants he had to cull. He said he had culled over a thousand elephants in his day. I asked him about hunting elephants and his answer was that culling is not hunting. There is a big difference. He said you went into a herd, surrounded it with game scouts and went in to kill all of them. Not to let any escape. He said it became a sickening line of work after a while. Just blood upon blood. He said the most pitiful thing was after you had killed all the adults particularly the adult cows the young ones would just run around trying to find some adult they still knew. Then they would just have to kill the little ones too. I think it would be exciting for a while but after hearing him tell of it I began to understand his viewpoint. Like so many places, too many people. Too little habitat. "D"

Most big numbers culling looses its attraction after a while.

I think having to shoot ele calves would be quite aweful.

During my last trip to Zimbabwe[Chewore safari area} in October/ November we counted approximately ten dead Elephent due to the hard condition's at the time. one day we watched one youngster just holding on with his family close by, the next day he was dead and the family had moved on.
Also due to their poor condition the Lions were killing some also.
The way Zim is at the moment with fuel, soon they might need the Ele to replace trucks.