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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: May 2008

Wildlife Direct leaders express conflicting views of South African elephant policy

 

NAIROBI, JOHANNESBURG--Wildlife Direct chief executive Emmanuel de Merode on May 1, 2008 partially blamed a new South African elephant management policy for the poaching massacre of 14 elephants in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, just six weeks after Wildlife Direct founding chair Richard Leakey endorsed the policy.

"The upsurge in elephant killings in Virunga is part of a widespread slaughter across the Congo Basin," de Merode told Agence France-Presse, "and is driven by developments on the international scene: the liberalisation of the ivory trade, pushed by South Africa, and the increased presence of Chinese operators who feed a massive domestic demand for ivory in their home country."

Reported Agence France-Presse, "The killings were announced as South Africa lifted a 13-year moratorium on elephant culling, raising concern about a return to the international trade in ivory seen in the 1970s and 1980s, Wildlife Direct said."

Leakey explained his perspective in a March 21, 2008 "Green Room" column for the BBC News web site. "I was part of the community of concerned professionals who objected to the culling of elephants in southern Africa during the 1990s and before," Leakey reminded in opening. "By 1990, long-term research in Kenya and elsewhere had revealed that elephants have highly organised societies and a surprisingly well developed ability to communicate. We consider them sentient creatures like whales and apes who deserve special consideration when it comes to their management.

"While I will never like the idea of elephant culling," Leakey said, "I do accept that given the impacts of human-induced climate change and habitat destruction, elephants in and outside of protected areas will become an increasingly serious problem unless some key populations are reduced and maintained at appropriate levels."

The South African National Park Service, which lobbied against the moratorium almost from the day it was imposed, claimed to have no immediate plans to kill elephants.

"According to the new norms and standards," explained Fran Blandy of Agence France-Presse, "contraception and translocation would continue to be the preferred population control measures.".