# Nature’s own cull more efficient
Daphne Sheldrick
THERE is mounting public awareness of the nature of elephants. That they are sentient, caring beings comparable emotionally to ourselves is generally accepted.
Parallel to humankind in development and lifespan, they have a strong sense of family and are concious of death, and they have a memory that spans a lifetime. They can be happy, sad, gay, morose, deliberately naughty or eager to please. They mourn and they grieve, harbour grudges and are capable of compassion that extends beyond their own kind.
They often bury their dead, covering a body with sticks and leaves, and they will revisit the last resting place of a lost loved one for years afterward. Their young display all the traits of human children.
I know because I have reared and successfully rehabilitated more than 15 elephants orphaned at two and older, and, more recently, I have hand-reared 11 milk-dependent newborns, one just a few hours old. I have also lived among and studied the wild herds for close on 40 years.
How they are treated is of concern to all caring people; it is not merely the prerogative of a few wildlife managers. The role of elephants in the environment is complex and vital: many smaller creatures depend on them. By breaking off branches, they bring browse to a lower, more accessible level and stimulate new growth; by felling trees they recycle nutrients locked in wood.
They create water holes by carrying away copious quantities of earth on their great bodies; they feed the earth by trampling and by promoting the growth of deep-rooted perennial grasses that take root beneath fallen debris; they have an impact on the water table, causing long-dry springs and streams to flow again; they open up thickets and plant new generations of trees by scattering the seeds far and wide in their dung.
Elephants do not destroy the habitat, they change and improve it and are an integral part of nature’s cyclical
Nature is never static. It maintains its own controls and balances, exercising its most powerful tool, natural selection, to keep the gene pool strong. It imposes stringent controls on elephants: it has made them fragile, with an inefficient digestive system. In order to maintain good health, they need not only great quantities of food, but also a great variety. When one vital element is missing in their diet, they lose strength rapidly and can die.
Most importantly, nature has ordained that females are organised into family groups, bonded together for life; each unit is subservient to the matriarch, which is usually the oldest cow. When the elephants have completed their recycling and planting roles, nature undertakes its own, much more efficient cull: a one-off event that targets the females because of their social bonding.
Being the oldest, the matriarch is among the first to suffer the effects of malnutrition when specific vital nutrients are absent. She loses strength and, being water- dependent, takes her family to permanent water where conditions are always worse in a drought year. There the females die en masse — not from starvation, because their stomachs may be full, but because they lack the nutrients they need.
This natural cull removes from the population specific female age groups to inhibit recruitment and plunge the population into a long-term, slow decline, thereby solving any imbalance and enabling the new generation of trees the elephants have planted to take root.
In Kenya, natural vegetational progression has been allowed to proceed unhindered for many good reasons, the best being that human beings can never better nature.
Perhaps the authorities here have made a calculated decision to try to halt nature’s rhythm in order to avoid the untidy phase of the elephants-woodlands-grasslands cycle because it may not be aesthetically pleasing to witness what people perceive as destruction.
In that case, how about trying to emulate nature and remove the specific female age groups to bring about the required decline? Anaesthetise (not immobilise) the female eunuch from the air in the same way as Scoline has been used the past, and euthanase those females that provide the potential for recruitment.
It should not be beyond the capability of statisticians to evaluate the number and age groups that need to be removed and the natural die-off of Tsavo has been well documented. Spare the matriarch and her successor, but euthanase some of the breeders of tomorrow in a one-off cull that will circumvent the current cruel annual kill — and never, never be tempted to relegate the babies to a miserable life of confinement and bondage in far-off zoos and circuses, no matter how much money they can fetch.
This is inhumane and ethically unacceptable, for to imprison an elephant is to break its spirit and its heart and turn it psychotic, in the same way as a human would react were he or she locked in a cupboard for life.
Daphne Sheldrick, a wildlife naturalist, was awarded an MBE in 1992 for her work with elephants. She has lived on Kenya’s Tsavo Reserve for more than 30 years
# How can we avoid the trauma?
Marion Garai
Anyone who has witnessed a cull will admit it is a traumatic experience. Watching mothers trying to protect their calves from being shot takes an extremely strong
Adult elephants are darted from a helicopter with Scoline – – a drug which causes muscular paralysis and is extremely painful. The animals remain concious of the events taking place around them, before they are shot dead.
After the adults are downed, the young elephants mill around in confusion and can be easily shot or captured. The operation is meant to be over in a few minutes, but this does not always happen.
Juveniles are darted with a drug called M99 which puts them to sleep within five to 10 minutes so that they can be captured and exported to other game reserves. But while the drug is working the calves experience the chaos around them. Some of the juveniles may start running away and have to be herded back to the scene of the cull by helicopter.
Scoline is used on the adults instead of M99, a painless drug, because M99 leaves a residue in the meat which renders it unsuitable for consumption.
There has been some research which shows that contraception could work on small elephant populations such as those that exist in private game reserves. If the scientific work is co-ordinated, and results pooled, this could provide a long-term solution to the elephant management dilemma — but at the moment contraception is not a feasible option for controlling large elephant populations such as those in the Kruger Park.
The National Parks Board has announced it will not use Scoline in future culling operations and the elephants will be shot in the head. In the meantime, scientists and fundraisers would do well to develop a drug that does not cause the suffering and trauma associated with Scoline.
Marion Garai heads the Translocated Elephants Information Centre (TEIC) and is doing a PhD study on translocated
# The responsible option that pays
Victoria Hylton
GOOD management of a game reserve, as is the case in the Kruger National Park, results in animals prospering and multiplying beyond the park’s “carrying capacity”. There is growing debate about what to do when a park has too many
One option is to allow the populations to grow till they eventually destroy the ecosystem, which would benefit only one species and it would eventually die off anyway.
This would, no doubt, cause concern among the conservation comunity and the denuded terrain caused by elephant overpopulation would have an adverse effect on tourism.
Another option, translocation, is an expensive exercise and has raised concerns that the movement of animals over long distances causes them severe stress.
There are suggestions that the fence between the Kruger Park and Mozambique could be removed so the park’s surplus elephants can cross the border. But many parts of Mozambique are still mined and lack the security to deter
At this point, culling is the responsible option. However, the debate over elephant management raises a broader question.
How can the resources of the Kruger Park be used so that they contribute to the local economy and have appropriate worth to those who live alongside the protected area?
The animal rights movement that has been demanding an end to the culling of elephants represents a minority of the South African population removed from the poverty of millions of rural people who stand to gain from the responsible utilisation of elephant products.
The sale of elephant products could contribute towards easing the park’s increasing financial pressures and give material support to surrounding communities.
Before the 1989 international ban prohibiting the sale of elephant products, the sale of the Kruger Park’s elephant hides and ivory paid not only for the park’s culling operations, but also left a few million rands for conservation-related activities.
The culling harvest can ensure that national parks become self-sufficient and that bordering communities are involved in conservation-based development programmes.
Victoria Hylton is a freelance journalist who specialises in conservation issues