Plans to turn a world heritage site into a Big Five game park could be shelved if a herd of elephants are unable to adjust to their new home
When “ellies” do well they do very well, and managing increasing populations of elephants has become a jumbo headache for conservation authorities.
This was highlighted last year when the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park Authority introduced 22 elephants from the neighbouring Hluhluwe game reserve to the newly constituted St Lucia World Heritage Site. It was, quite blatantly, a publicity stunt to draw attention to the new park and its economic promise.
Within 24 hours of their relocation, one young bull had broken out and high-tailed it back home. He was captured and returned to Hluhluwe. Two other bulls escaped a little later and were herded back at huge expense. One calf died shortly after reintroduction. This left 20 elephants.
The embryo herd have spent the past months since their introduction roaming up and down the western fence of the reserve – the area closest to Hluhluwe. This is also an area thick with the gum plantations that are slowly being harvested to rehabilitate the bush back to its indigenous state. Logging crews report frequent sightings of the elephants.
“We have to go in and out all the time,” says a logging contractor. “We often see the elephants and they have never bothered us.” He adds poignantly: “But they check the gates every single day, maybe to see if we have accidentally left one open.”
University of Natal research assistant, Chantal Dickson, was assigned to monitor the elephants on a daily basis to establish how well they had settled. Her work was jointly funded by KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, the university and private enterprise. Six months after introduction the elephants were still not happy.
“They are taking a long time to settle down,” says Dickson, “they move around a lot, they spend a lot of time next to the fence, and they are quite jumpy.” Dickson’s job is to go out every day – sometimes twice a day – track the elephants with radio-telemetry, watch them for a short while to check their behaviour, take samples of dung and whatever trees they are browsing, and deliver a monthly report to biologist Rob Slotow at the Life and Environmental Sciences department at the university.
“There could be several reasons why the elephants are stressed,” says Slotow, “the first could be dietary – that is why we are monitoring so closely what they eat. This is a new habitat for them. Secondly, they are moving around a tremendous amount because this is new terrain – the movement could be physically stressing them. The problem is that there is no precedent in conservation for elephants on the shores of Lake St Lucia.
“So the purpose of our research is to formulate a management strategy for elephants in the park.”
The research project was supposed to last for six years and some of the initial research was not encouraging. “In the context of the research, the introduction strategy changed. We had a workshop that included KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative, the research team and outside experts from the Kruger National Park. The decision to bring elephants from Kruger for future introductions instead of Hluhluwe was a major shift in strategy. It was decided that Kruger elephants would be more resilient to the trauma of translocation and they would be more used to people.”
“There is still considerable debate as to whether, historically, elephants actually lived on the shores of the lake or whether they just used the shoreline as a migratory route”, says Slotow.
It was therefore surprising when KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife announced recently that the organisation was planning to introduce more elephants before the end of the year. It is widely believed that the decision was taken as a result of pressure from the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park Authority to speed up the economic attractiveness of the park.
“Our monitoring teams have reported that the elephants are behaving as elephants should,” says Tony Conway, KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife conservation manager.
“They go on long walks and one of them had a calf recently. We have already arranged for a breeding herd of 10 animals to come from Kruger with an older matriarch of about 25 years old. We want elephants that are used to tourists. We have written to Kruger and we are awaiting their reply.
“Getting them won’t be a problem and the time for them to arrive is right now – we are going into a drought so we can’t leave it too long.
“Once the breeding herd is in we want to take two bulls from Tembe. Our research tells us that bulls are more likely to settle if the females from the breeding herd are settled. If this works we will consider another group from Kruger but that decision will only be made next year.”
Tembe Elephant Park borders the Mozambique border and was proclaimed in 1983 to protect free-ranging elephants from poaching. Because the elephants are effectively remnants from persecution the gender bias is skewed and there are more males than females. It makes sense, according to park manager, Steve Mostert, to take away male elephants.
“Two male elephants have been authorised,” he says, “to be taken to St Lucia. This will make no difference whatsoever to the population of elephants at Tembe.”
However, elephants are not like hamsters and the costs, both economically and conservationally, are enormous. Moving one elephant costs in excess of R30 000 – and that is always assuming that the animal will not break out and head back home. A rescue operation, like the one that herded the first St Lucia elephant back to Hluhluwe, cost in excess of R80 000. And then there is the cost to the environment.
“Capturing elephants has an enormous impact on the habitat,” says Tembe ecologist Wayne Matthews.
“And just taking two elephants would not help our gender imbalance. I would prefer them to take 10 elephants – the same impact and it would help with our population.”
“The problem with translocating elephants is that they are such complicated beasts,” says Matthews. “You move a herd of impala, they run off and start grazing. But elephants are large, they are expensive to move, a fence will not hold a determined elephant and they have a complex social structure that could lead to behavioural problems if disturbed.
“They can communicate with other elephants over long distances. And they live long – they learn a lot in their lifetimes.
“So this is not a simple thing. For whatever reason St Lucia wants our elephants, there must be something in it for Tembe. The community here actually own the elephants, they put a commercial value on them, either for tourists or for trade.”
So this introduces yet another tangle to the elephant story. The new attitude in conservation is for communities who live around the protected areas to derive benefits from those protected areas. What benefits do the Tembe people get from the loss of their elephants? Under the current strategy, none at all.
The conservation study concerning the monitoring of the St Lucia elephants is only in its first year and there is no management policy in place. But elephant translocation continues.