As part of a new management plan, the Kruger National park plans to reintroduce elephant culling
Fiona Macleod
The Kruger National Park is proposing to cull between 400 and 1E000 elephants a year over the next five years to control the elephant population in South Africa’s premier game park.
No elephants have been culled in the park since late 1994 because of the controversy caused by culling which, say anti-culling groups, is unnecessary, unethical and cruel.
The park’s director, David Mabunda, says he does not have the resources to start culling this year. But the new elephant management plan for the Kruger recommends that 963 elephants be removed between 1999 and 2000.
It is unlikely the park will begin to implement the new management plan before the end of April, because of the controversy it may raise at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) meeting in Kenya from April 10 to 20. Cites is the international forum for regulating trade in endangered natural resources.
The government, which has agreed to the park’s management plan, is hoping to get Cites to approve the sale of about 30 tons of elephant tusks stockpiled in the Kruger, as well as allowing it to trade in a 152-ton stockpile of elephant hides and leather goods.”It will cost R2- million to R3-million to start culling this year,” said Mabunda this week.
“I’ve retrenched most of the culling staff, and have closed down the abattoir in the park.”
When the new management programme is implemented, it will cost the Kruger about R10-million, says the director of conservation development at South African National Parks, Anthony Hall-Martin.
If the sale of the Kruger’s stockpiles is given the go-ahead at Cites, about R25-million will be raised.
“This will be ploughed straight back into elephant conservation,” says Hall- Martin.
Ian Whyte, the senior scientist in the Kruger park who co-ordinated the new elephant management plan, points out that it moves away from the old policy of sticking to a “maximum carrying capacity” of 7 500 elephants in the park and culling the rest.
“We acknowledge that the policies of the past three decades – however appropriate at the time of formulation according to the best information then available – were too rigid and inflexible.”
The new plan refers to a “preferred management density” of between 12E000 and 20E000 elephants.
“The Kruger park is home to about 80% of South Africa’s elephants,” says Whyte. “The latest census in 1999 counted 9 152 elephants in the park.
“Our new policy acknowledges that ecosystems are not static, and that the right number of elephants can contribute to biodiversity.
“But they cannot be discussed in isolation, and if they increase they can have a negative impact.”
The plan divides the park into six management zones. In two zones in the centre of the park, elephant herds will be allowed to grow unhindered over the next 20 years.
In the first year of the plan, 442 elephants will be culled in two zones designated as botanical reserves in the north and south of the park. A further 521 will be culled in the remaining two “low-impact” sections, where elephant numbers will be curtailed by 7% a year.
In the four years after that, the total number to be culled will fall off to between 446 and 540. By 2020 the figure will drop to 169.
The fall-off is because while the numbers to be culled in the botanical reserves will remain constant, the figures will taper off in the low-impact zones and there will be no culling in the “high-impact” central zones.
“The trends show that while the number of elephants to be removed falls off, their populations will increase – so that by the year 2020 there will be a total of 18 955.
“By then we may need to look at swopping the low-impact and high-impact zones, in which case we will need to remove a large number of elephants,” says Whyte.
Park officials emphasise that, where possible, they would prefer to use non- lethal means of removing elephants. But they say contraception is not logistically feasible for such a large population.
In the past 19 years the park has managed to translocate 1E626 elephants, but it’s expensive and the range of habitats which can sustain them is shrinking fast.
The government has signed an agreement with Zimbabwe and Mozambique to extend the Kruger into a transfrontier park, which would see the elephants’ range doubling. But national parks officials say this is still a long way off, because of the high costs of fencing, problems with diseases and because there are communities living in some of the areas envisaged for the park.
“Where culling is the only adequate option, only the most humane methods will be used,” says Whyte.
The management plan excludes the use of the paralysing drug scoline, which was used in culls until 1990. The drug paralyses the animals while leaving them fully conscious and effectively suffocating them to death.
“The new technique is every animal is brain-shot from a helicopter. This has proven satisfactory so far, but the possibility of wounding the animals remains a concern as this increases the risk to ground personnel.”
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Mohammed Valli Moosa said at a briefing on South Africa’s Cites proposals this week the ivory and other elephant products the country wants to sell come from animals “in conservation areas that died as a result of natural causes or management actions. No animals will be killed to add to the stock.”
The sale would be a one-off transaction with Japan, similar to the sale concluded by Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe last year. “It’s an experimental quota, but we may consider other quotas in future if this works,” he said.
Moosa said culling is not the government’s preferred option, “but turning our backs on what the scientists are saying is risky.
“If they are saying we must put in a management plan to save the elephants, then we must listen.”