The Big Question: Why is South Africa proposing to cull thousands of elephants?

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The Big Question: Why is South Africa proposing to cull thousands of

elephants?By Steve Connor, Science Editor

 

*Wednesday, 27 February 2008*

 

 

***Why are we asking this now?*

 

The South African government has decided to lift its moratorium on the

culling of elephants in the country's national parks because populations in

the country have risen from about 8,000 elephants to nearly 20,000 over the

past decade or so. South Africa says, for instance, that there are some

5,000 more elephants living in the Kruger National Park, where numbers have

almost doubled to 12,500, than can be sustained by the park's enclosed

habitat.

 

*What are the arguments for culling elephants?*

 

Elephants are the largest land animal, reaching 13 feet in height and

weighing up to seven tons, and as such they need a lot to eat. Not only do

they consume vast amounts of vegetation, they do it by flattening bushes,

ripping up tree roots and generally trashing the immediate environment where

they live.

 

Some conservationists say that enclosed national parks such at the Kruger

just cannot afford to let elephant numbers get too big otherwise the entire

habitat will be seriously degraded, which is bad news not just for elephants

but for all other creatures that have to live in the same habitat.

 

As elephants do not have any natural predators to speak of, the only way of

keeping their population at sustainable levels is by killing off selected

family groups. In other words, the planned culling is a necessary evil,

according to its proponents.

 

*Are there anyalternatives to culling?*

 

The South Africans and their supporters have gone to great lengths to

emphasise that culling must be the option of last resort. They want, for

instance, to investigate the possibility of using contraceptives, which are

administered to females using hypodermic darts loaded with drugs and fired

from powerful guns.

 

Another alternative is to allow elephants to migrate to other regions where

numbers may not be so high, such as the neighbouring state of Mozambique.

However, both of these alternatives have their problems. Not all the excess

elephants can move to another country, and females will have to be

repeatedly injected with contraceptive hormones if they are to remain

infertile, which presents logistical difficulties. Another problem with

contraception is that it prevents an entire generation of elephants from

being born, which can upset the long-term demographic structure of herds.

 

*Why has this situation arisen?*

 

The big problem is that elephants in Africa can no longer roam freely. In

the past, as the population of a herd increased, it would migrate to

another, less populated region, thus allowing the grazed and degraded

habitat it left behind to recover. However, there would have been some sort

of natural culling process as well. Major droughts, for instance, would have

occurred every couple of decades and these would have killed off many

elephants.

 

Whatever the arguments against the cull, not least the cruelty involved, it

must be remembered that death by drought is a long, drawn-out process and

much less " humane " than culling. So, with a growing human population needing

more land for agriculture, and a fixed area of land set aside as national

parks for African wildlife, culling was bound to come to the fore again.

 

*What has happened with elephant culling in the past?*

 

In South Africa, elephant culling stopped in 1995. It is estimated that

between 1966 and 1994, some 16,210 elephants were culled in the Kruger

National Park alone. It is testament to the success of national parks such

as the Kruger that elephants living in them did so well – after all, it was

only a hundred years ago that there were just a few hundred elephants left

after they were hunted almost to extinction.

 

Culling was seen as a necessary way of keeping the growing numbers in check.

However, it was stopped in 1995 as a result of pressure brought to bear on

the South African government from groups such as the International Fund for

Animal Welfare (IFAW), which insists that culling is not supported by the

science.

 

" Culling is cruel, unethical and a scientifically-unsound practice that does

not consider the welfare implications to elephant society as a whole, " said

Jason Bell-Leask, the IFAW's southern African director.

 

*How is culling carried out?*

 

In the past, the elephants were herded together by helicopter, before

sharp-shooters tranquilised them and then killed them with a shot to the

head. The drug they used was Scoline (succinylcholine chloride) which

brought elephants to their knees with its nerve-toxin formulation.

 

IFAW said that many of the animals were often left to suffocate to death

while remaining fully conscious and unable to move, a process that took

several minutes. If the cull resumes, it is unlikely that Scoline will be

used. Instead, marksmen on the ground and in helicopters will attempt to

fell the animals with powerful bullets.

 

*Does anyone outside South Africa support the cull?*

 

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) supports the cull but only as a last

resort. The WWF says there are compelling reasons to believe that culling is

one of the ways to deal with the crisis of growing elephant numbers. It

argues that the national parks in South Africa will not be able to support

either elephants or many of the other large species if matters continue. If

left unchecked, elephants in South Africa could, in theory, number 34,000 by

2020, a population that could not be sustained by the land given over to

national parks.

 

*Why can't elephants be moved?*

 

Their size is the first problem. The second is that they would find the move

stressful. The third is knowing what they are being moved to. In central,

west and east Africa, elephants are still being widely poached for the

illicit ivory trade. It would be no good moving them to another area if they

are just going to be fresh targets. The final problem is that the subspecies

of Loxodonta africana in South Africa is different to the ones further

north. So it would not make sense from a conservation point of view to mix

two different subspecies.

 

*Is killing elephants the only solution?*

 

*Yes...*

 

* The population cannot be sustained by the habitat, so numbers have to be

reduced

 

* Letting them die of starvation or drought is far more cruel than a

controlled cull

 

* Culling elephants will preserve the habitat for all the animals living

there, protecting the entire ecosystem

 

*No...*

 

* There are other alternatives, such as contraception, which could reduce

the population

 

* Killing with guns is never guaranteed to be a quick and humane method of

culling

 

* Elephants should not be culled as they are intelligent creatures who

suffer emotional trauma

 

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