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Elephants in Africa have grown from 6,000 a century ago to 600,000 now. The South African government’s plan to carry out a massive cull has triggered an international row,
A
century ago Africa had just 6,000 elephants left. Now there are
600,000, and some say they are a pest—which is why the guns are out
in the whole of Africa south of the Zambezi. This astonishing growth
in numbers has led the elephant into a new danger, however: the South
African Government is now planning to carry out an unprecedented
massive cull, amid claims that the world’s largest land animal has
become its biggest pest. The South African plan is igniting an
international row that has split environmental, scientific and
political opinion, and could damage the country’s image as it
prepares to host the 2010 football World Cup. Neighbouring nations
such as Botswana, with 120,000 elephants, and Zimbabwe, which want to
start culls of their own, are anxiously awaiting the outcome. All
sides agree that southern Africa now has too many elephants. The giant
animals smash their way through the landscape, eating—or flattening—
much of what is in their way. An adult eats at least 330lb of
vegetation a day. As their numbers have grown, they have increasingly
wandered on to farmland, devastating crops, destroying the livelihoods
of poor farmers and occasionally killing people. And even when they
stay in the wild, South African National Park officials say, they
threaten the survival of more endangered species such as the black
rhino and rare antelope by devastating their habitats. From an
elephant’s point of view, however, it looks different—especially
on a continent-wide basis. Originally, it is thought, there were some
10 million of them spread across Africa. Now, at most, about 600,000
are left. While their numbers in southern Africa were increasing,
because mass slaughter of elephants stopped about a century ago, they
were being devastated by poaching across much of the rest of the
continent until the world agreed to ban the ivory trade in 1989. Now
there is a relatively stable population of about 150,000 in east
Africa. West Africa has very few, about 13,000 at most, and central
Africa has anything between 15,000 and 160,000. The issue has come to
a head in perhaps the most successful area of all— South Africa’s
Kruger National Park, an area about the size of Wales. Its elephant
population has soared from 65 in 1918 to about 12,500 today. The
National Park Service says this is twice as many as the park can
stand. The numbers are growing by 7 per cent a year, bringing the
expected total to about 20,000 by 2012. Until 11 years ago, the park
service culled the elephants to keep their numbers around the 7,000
mark. But then television footage of the killings created an
international outcry and it was stopped under pressure from
organisations such as the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). In
September the South African Environment Minister, Martinus van
Schalkwyk, recommended a new cull of some 5,000 elephants, the biggest
ever carried out anywhere in the world. The government is expected to
finalise its plans by the beginning of next year, though it will be
2010 before the killings begin. Mr van Schalkwyk, acknowledging,
"that there are a lot of emotions around this issue", said:
"We hope we would be able to convince people that this is not
hunting an elephant; this is culling as a management option." But
already feelings are running high, with some opponents of the cull
calling it "genocide", while some of its supporters say
there will be a "holocaust" of other species unless it takes
place. The IFAW continues to insist the culling is "cruel,
unethical, and scientifically unsound", but the WWF (formerly the
World Wildlife Fund) says it is "the most viable immediate
population-reduction tool". The Humane Society of the United
States has warned that, if the cull takes place, it will advise its
8.5 million members to boycott South Africa as a tourist destination,
and opponents say that it will tarnish the World Cup. — By
arrangement with The Independent |
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