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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: March 2008

South Africa may resume culling elephants by May 1, says minister

 

JOHANNESBURG--South Africa could resume culling elephants as early as May 1, 2008, ending a 13-year moratorium, environment minister Marthinus Van Schalkwyk announced on February 25.

Van Schalkwyk said his department had "taken steps to ensure that this will be the option of last resort, acceptable only under strict conditions." Offering a concession to animal advocates, Van Schalkwyk added that capturing wild elephants for commercial purposes would be forbidden effective on May 1.

The South African elephant population has increased from about 8,000 in 1995 to 18,000 today, Van Schalkwyk said. "The issue of population management has been devilishly complex. We would like to think that we have come up with a framework that is acceptable to the majority of South Africans," Van Schalkwyk added.

"There is no estimate" of the numbers of elephants to be killed, environment ministry spokesperson Riaan Aucamp told Fran Blandy of Agence France-Presse. "Everything will depend on the management plan of each park," Aucamp insisted.

"In 2005, the government recommended the cull of 5,000 elephants, which would have been the largest slaughter anywhere, causing a storm of protest and a rethink," recalled Xan Rice of The Guardian.

Van Schalkwyk himself called estimates that between 2,000 and 10,000 elephants would be culled "hugely inflated."

The resumption of elephant culling came as South Africa prepared to sell a large inventory of ivory stockpiled from past culls, natural deaths, and seizures from poachers. "China, one of the world's largest traders in illegal ivory, is vying to buy up South Africa's massive elephant ivory stock which has built up as result of the worldwide ban" on ivory trafficking, reported Sheree Béga of the Cape Argus on March 1.

"Conservation authorities must first decide whether China is a suitable destination for the ivory, the national Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism said this week," continued Béga. South Africa in June 2007 received permission from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to sell ivory to Japan.

The Japanese purchase is reportedly to include 40 tons of ivory from Kruger National Park, where 16,210 elephants were culled from 1966 to 1994.

South African Department of Environmental Affairs spokesperson Mava Scott told Béga that, "The products from elephants who might be culled will be stockpiled," but added that, "A nine-year ban on ivory trading will begin once the ivory sales approved in 2002 and 2007 have taken place."

Animal Rights Africa trustee Steve Smit alleged that Van Schalkwyk had essentially proposed "to undermine the entire international ivory ban to make money." Culling would replenish the South African ivory inventory, and the existence of the ivory would increase pressure to cash it in, while marketing ivory in any manner "stimulates demand and the incentive to cull," Smit charged.

"Elephants are being commodified into goods and chattel," said an Animal Rights Africa media statement, promising to respond to culling with "international tourist boycotts, public protests, and legal challenges."

"The big problem," assessed Steve Connor, science editor of The Independent, "is that elephants in Africa can no longer roam freely. In the past, as the population of a herd increased, it would migrate to 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 would have killed off many elephants. Whatever the arguments against the cull, not least the cruelty involved," Connor wrote, "death by drought is a long, drawn-out process, and much less humane than culling."

But Earth Organization founder Lawrence Anthony called the proposed culling "unwarranted, as there is no scientific evidence to demonstrate that the animals are affecting biodiversity in the Kruger National Park." Anthony told the South African Press Association that the scientific advisory board of the Earth Organisation has evidence that there is no factually established carrying capacity for elephants, damage to flora is inflicted chiefly by lone bulls living outside of matriarchal herds, and that many tree species depend on elephant activity to facilitate regeneration. Anthony said that plants in general recover from elephant damage within five years, and that more lasting damage is done by impala.

The previous South African culling method involved herding elephants together by helicopter, darting them with the tranquilizer Scoline, and then dispatching them with gunshots to the head. Van Schalkwyk is believed to favor sharpshooting, which would eliminate the herding aspect.

"In no way do we condone culling as an option. If it is to be, then it really must be with only the most careful management," Christina Pretorius of the International Fund for Animal Welfare told Celean Jacobson of Associated Press. "We are not pleased with the thought of culling elephants, but we do recognise culling as a management tool,"

World Wildlife Fund representative Rob Little told Agence France-Press. "WWF does not advocate culling as the preferred population management alternative," Little added, "but recognises that government managers may deem it necessary after consideration of all other options has been exhausted. "In all likelihood a few of our neighbouring elephant range states are watching South Africa to get guidance," Little noted. "It's not something anybody welcomes at all, but we also have to look at the broader conservation management issues,"

WWF global species director Susan Lieberman told Robyn Dixon of the Los Angeles Times. "The option of doing nothing does not exist."

Zimbabwe

Parks and Wildlife Management Authority of Zimbabwe director general Morris Mtsambiwa used similar rhetoric in a January 4, 2008 announcement that his agency will produce biltong [dried meat] from elephants for retail sale as part of a "sustainable use" scheme. Mtsambiwa said the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority would "apply to the Ministry of Environment and Tourism for a quota of elephants to slaughter every year, after which it would build some abattoirs," reported the government-controlled Harare Herald.

"Currently the country slaughters at least 500 elephants every year, with the meat distributed to communities living adjacent to the game parks," the Herald said. Zimbabwe claims to have more than 100,000 elephants, and estimates there are about 400,000 elephants in the whole of southern Africa--100,000 more than the South African projection.

Botswana is believed to have the most elephants, about 165,000 at present, more than 25% of the total wild African elephant population.