ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.

 

This site built and maintained by: GREANVILLE ASSOCIATESand CRESCENT COMMUNICATIONS •Rev. 12.1.05 Copyright ANIMAL PEOPLE, INC. 1992--2006

 

 

 

 

 
   

 
powered by FreeFind

ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: November 2006

Seeking to save "surplus" elephants

 

As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, Animal Rights Africa was attempting to translocate 12 "problem" elephants from the vicinity of Weenan, in Kwa-Zulu Natal, to the SanWild Wildlife Trust sanctuary in Limpopo province.

Orphaned by culling in Kruger National Park, the elder elephants in the herd were previously translocated in 1993 to the former Thukela Biosphere Reserve. Created toward the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the Thukela reserve was recently dissolved and turned over to the Lindauk-huhle Trust, in settlement of a land claim by the tribal people who were evicted from their homes when the reserve was declared.

"The successful claimants don't want the elephants on their newly returned land," e-mailed Michele Pickover, founder of Xwe African Wildlife, which recently merged with Justice for Animals to form Animal Rights Africa.

The elephants were to have been shot, but Animal Rights Africa and SanWild intervened, obtained the necessary permits, and set about trying to arrange a rescue which might have been much easier if elephants had shorter memories.

Explained Pickover, "Between 1966 and 1994, more than 16,000 elephants were killed in Kruger National Park with the lethal tranquillizing drug succinylcholine chloride, better known as Scoline. The elephants were herded together by helicopter and then darted. The drug literally brought elephants to their knees, leaving them to suffocate while fully conscious and unable to move. Calves were captured as they stayed close to their dead and dying mothers and sold to zoos, safari parks and circuses all over the world."

After the Conventional on International Trade in Endangered Species halted commercial traffic in live elephants and elephant parts in 1989, and as the global boycott that eventually ended the apartheid regime economically isolated South Africa, the government released into Thukela some of the last calves taken alive during the culls.

"They have since bonded into a family group, which has now produced calves," Pickover said.

They also remember what happened to them. "It was clear to everyone who was in Thukela," during the first phase of the relocation, "that every single one of these elephants is deeply traumatized," Pickover stated.

"The rugged and inaccessible terrain and the deeply traumatized nature of these elephants meant that we were only able to radio collar the matriarch and the big bull," in order to track the herd.
"We will relocate them from Thukela once they have moved on their own," Pickover said, "to a place where it will be safer for them to be darted. This may take a few weeks.

"As a species," Pickover finished, "elephants have been victims of wholesale slaughter, suffering, and relentless displacement. As a consequence, the fabric of elephant society has been frayed. Research over decades by elephant ethologists means that we now understand that elephants hurt like us. But we are also learning that they can heal like us, as well. It is with this in mind that we will not fail our elephant compatriots."

Elephant captures for commercial sale have resumed. Pickover in April 2006 protested against the capture of "six young elephants between the ages of seven and nine, four females and two males," whom she said "were cruelly separated from their families for use by the elephant-back safari industry. Helicopters, guns and electric prods were used," Pickover alleged, " at the Selati Game Reserve, with the active participation of a Limpopo nature conservation official, who was reportedly using live ammunition in response to attempts by members of the elephant family to stop this atrocity. Apparently this is not the first time this has taken place at Selati," Pickover said.

"The young elephants went to Howard Blight's Elephants for Africa Forever in Mooketsi, near Duiwelskloof," Pickover continued.

Ironically, Pickover noted, "Elephants for Africa Forever has an 'elephant charter' which claims it acknowledges 'the needs and wants of the elephants' and the 'gregarious and disciplined nature of the elephant's family structure,' and 'respects the gentle nature of elephant society and their right to retain the dignity of their species.'"