Elephant culling to begin again.

[Ming]

The SA government gave a provisional go-ahead today for the resumption of limited elephant culling as a method of controlling burgeoning numbers, after a 12-year ban.

There has been no elephant culling since the mid-1990s, when shooting was stopped in the Kruger National Park after 14 500 elephants were killed between 1967 and 1994.

Elephant numbers in the park have since increased from about 8 000 to nearly 14 000, and the total elephant population in all parks and reserves stands at about 20 000.

Announcing the move today, Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said culling would be applied only as part of site- specific management plans that would be subject to public input and government approval.

"I would like to stress this - if (the draft policy is) finalized, the government will never give a blank cheque to elephant culling," he said.

He did not believe the resumption of limited culling would have a negative impact on tourism through possible protest action.

Source.IOL

Some animal rights organisations have conditionally accepted the government's draft policy to reintroduce elephant culling, but others say it is morally indefensible.

Announcing the draft "Norms and Standards for Elephant Management in South Africa" at the Addo Elephant National Park yesterday, Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said his office had received "literally hundreds" of submissions since his initial announcement on the issue in September 2005.

Commenting on the draft policy yesterday, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) believed that the government would provide a uniform framework for the management of elephants and was committed to funding elephant research.

IFAW Southern Africa director Jason Bell-Leask said yesterday that the organisation would work with the government to ensure that all alternatives in elephant management were explored before resorting to culling.

"While culling as a method of population control has not been ruled out altogether, we are very pleased that the minister has decided to depend on the help of the scientific community in eventually making his decisions," said Bell-Leask.

"It is extremely laudable that the government has taken the step to actually invest in research, and we dearly hope this indicates a long-term intention to ensure an ethical approach to elephant management."

Dr Rob Little, acting chief executive of WWF South Africa, said: "Although WWF does not advocate culling as the preferred management alternative, we recognise that it is a management option and reiterate our view that all other options should first be explored."

But Justice for Animals (JA) said the management plan was both "unjust and morally indefensible".

JA chairman Steve Smit said yesterday that he was disappointed by the government's "veiled reference" to accepting elephant culling as an option.

"The premeditated and systematic killing of elephants is abhorrent, should never be considered and can never be ethically justified," said Smit.

"Ultimately, slaughtering elephants is all about money.

"Southern Africa is spearheading the lobby (against) the voracious and ruthless ivory trade."

Van Schalkwyk said submissions to his office had included "many heartfelt pleas not to harm the elephants, to protect our parks from excessive damage by elephants, and also to protect communities and their crops from elephants".

Furthermore, many institutions had submitted position papers and scientists had drawn attention to their research findings.

But it was "common cause" that there was still a degree of scientific uncertainty about the long-term relationship between elephants and their environment, he said.

"Decisions on elephant management are ultimately based on societal value systems, since they involve trade-offs between different things that are legitimately valued by society," he said.

"Scientific information alone cannot resolve these value differences. It is up to the decision-makers to set the value systems and make the laws that underpin them."

Van Schalkwyk said he believed the draft norms and standards, which would be gazetted tomorrow for a 60-day public comment period, were based on "respect for elephants, reverence for humans, and recognition that we are faced with a degree of scientific uncertainty in our decision-making".

This was why his department would make a R5 million grant this year as the first tranche for the elephant research project proposed by the "scientific round table" of experts whose recommendations formed the basis of the new draft policy.

Van Schalkwyk said he was satisfied that, in the African context, the sustainable use of natural resources - which included wild animals - was "necessary and appropriate".

"I also insist, however, that the management of our natural resources should be conducted ethically, humanely and rationally," he said.

"Wilful cruelty to animals must be condemned, and avoided at all costs.

"The draft norms and standards is, I believe, a well-balanced document that addresses the interests and welfare of elephants in equal measure to the options for controlling elephant populations."

The draft policy provides for population control that includes contraception, culling, range expansion and/ or manipulation and removal to other areas.

source-iol

[Ming]

The Kruger parks elephant population is growing at 3 times as fast as the human population. There are now 14500 elephants living in the park up from 7000 in 1994. The number of trees have gone into dramatic decline as a result of this. We created this crisis and dare not stand back and let nature take its course.

[Ming]

Yesterday, in a move that will anger armchair conservationists worldwide, South Africa said that it would reintroduce culling for the first time since 1994 to control elephant numbers, which environmentalists say are threatening the country’s game reserves.

Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, announced the policy reversal after a year-long review. He declined to be drawn on how many elephants might be killed, saying only that figures of between 2,000 to 10,000 claimed by animal rights groups were “hugely inflated”. He emphasised that the measure would be a final resort.


Culling will only be allowed as a last option and under very strict conditions,” he told reporters in the state capital, Pretoria.

Since killing elephants was outlawed 14 years ago, the number in South Africa has soared from about 8,000 to more than 20,000. In the Kruger National Park, signs of the continent’s most privileged elephant population are only too visible. As they move through one of Africa’s biggest and best-managed reserves, the country’s highest single population of elephants — now estimated at 15,000 — leave a swath of destruction. Trampled thorn trees, bushes and dying roots, dried brittle by the sun, mark their route across a reserve visited by more than one million tourists a year.

Research in the 1990s found that the ideal “sustainable” elephant population for the Kruger would be 7,500. One elephant alone eats an estimated 375lb (170kg) of grass, tree bark and leaves every day.

Richard Leakey, chairman of Wildlife Direct and the man who led the worldwide campaign against the ivory trade in the 1980s, said of the cull: “It is a terrible thing to have to do this to such an intelligent species, but we have to find a solution to the numbers problem. I hope it will be a once-off and then we can keep the population in check with other measures.”

Animal rights defenders threatened to call for tourist boycotts and to mount other protests. Animal Rights Africa (ARA), one of the most radical opponents, said that it would organise public protests and legal action if the Government did not drop culling as an option.

The group favours measures such as elephant “contraception” and hugely expensive relocation. There are no quick fixes. A female normally breeds every four years, but with contraception, she comes on heat every four months, though does not conceive. This exposes her to the physical stress of frequent copulation with bulls, which can be four times her weight.

The rights group said in a statement: “We appeal to the international animal rights community to use its not inconsiderable membership and corporate influence to support a call for tourists to boycott our national parks should elephant culling be retained as a management option.”

Wildlife experts in southern Africa which, unlike East Africa, has an abundance of elephants, said that the argument against slaughter was ludicrous. Thorn trees are favourite fodder for elephants, but eagles and vultures also like to nest in them and giraffes like to browse from above.

“I am in the business of conservation of all species, even plant life, not just elephants,” one game warden told The Times recently. “An over-population of elephants spells doom for other species.”

Ian Whyte, the chief elephant researcher in the Kruger, has written that without culling the reserve would change — and not for the better. If the population continues to grow it will turn a woodland into a grassland and other species will die. “In any protected area that has elephants you have two choices: you utilise the area to maintain biodiversity or else you have an elephant sanctuary,” he said. “You can’t have both.”


Tusk force

— An adult elephant needs up to 375lb (170kg) of vegetation every day and can drink up to 90 litres (160 pints) of water

— Elephants can live for 70 years or more and breed until the age of 50. Their young gestate for 22 months, the longest of any land animal, and weigh up to 265lb at birth

— The African elephant population had halved in the decade before the 1989 ban on the ivory trade, almost entirely because of ivory poaching

— Helicopters are used to herd and shoot the animals during a cull. Rifles were used for this once but have been replaced by dart guns loaded with a powerful muscle relaxant

Sources: SANParks; CITES; WWF; IFAW

[piyush]

Though the experts favors culling.And the fact is WWF conservation group suggested SA to go ahead.
South Africa culled thousands of elephants in the three decades leading up to the mid-1990s because of fears their ballooning numbers would overwhelm the environment. Graham Kerley, a zoology professor and elephant expert at Nelson Mandela University, said it was important for the country to maintain culling as an option, not least to protect rare species of plants in their habitats.

"We can conserve elephants, but then we have to start having to worry about how we are going to conserve what else goes with them. It would be good if the elephants were not quite that successful in breeding," Kerley said. Opponents of culling say forced migration and contraception - sterilisation and other forms - are more humane alternatives, while supporters argue that neither option is a long-term solution to overcrowding at Addo and other parks.

Addo was expanded to 160 000 hectares, almost three times the amount of land under park management in 1997, due in part to concerns about the elephants' impact on vegetation. The elephants have thrived in their larger, protected areas. "The population is doubling every 13 years, so in 13 years time you are going to have 880 elephants here," Kerley said.