Minister of Environment and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk is selling elephant culling on an international roadshow that will take in at least six countries across the globe.
Flanked by officials from the South African National Parks (SANParks), the minister briefed government representatives and international NGOs in four European countries on the need to reduce elephant numbers.
Critics in London said the team appeared to be ”waging a campaign for culling” that was ”inaccurate, badly thought out and unscientific”. But when members of the audience raised criticisms, SANParks CEO David Mabunda gave them short shrift.
”Scientifically they were poorly informed and seemed to have no leg to stand on. Mabunda was talking about elephants like George Bush talks about al-Qaeda,” said Barbara Maas, director of Care for the Wild International.
Various United Kingdom-based NGOs, including the Joint Nature Conservation Forum, which advises the British government, attended the London briefing at the offices of the South African High Commission. Earlier in the day, South African Tourism and high commission officials received the same briefing.
Maas said the briefing was delivered mainly by Mabunda, who argued that there were too many elephants in South African reserves and that culling was necessary to conserve biodiversity.
”It seemed the minister has accepted that elephants are damaging vegetation and need to be culled. The whole presentation seemed like a culling public relations exercise.”
Vocal criticism of culling by UK-based NGOs was one of the reasons why it was stopped in 1995. Maas said if culling was resumed ”it would be against South Africa’s tourism interests” because international tourists would boycott the country.
Other ministerial briefings were held this week in Holland, Switzerland and Rome. The Director General of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Pam Yako, staged a separate bilateral government meeting on the topic with the German government. A briefing session in Washington is planned for early next year.
SANParks spokesperson Wanda Mkutshulwa described the briefings as ”information sessions with our international stakeholders”, conducted in a ”consultative and cooperative spirit”.
In response to ”the attack on Mabunda’s integrity by Maas”, Mkutshulwa said, ”our response is that throughout all the sessions the different stakeholders provided positive and constructive input, except for her. She seemed bent on attacking SANParks and the process with a vehemence that is illustrative of extreme right wing tactics which are not aimed at providing viable solutions or a way forward.”
At an anti-culling workshop earlier this year, Oxford-based ecologist Keith Lindsay represented Care for the Wild International. He argued that SANParks scientists were ignoring current ecological thinking, which allowed for changes in habitats over time.
Anti-culling organisations say it is a cruel, unnecessary intervention and SANParks should rather concentrate on management techniques, such as closing down waterholes, that help reduce elephant numbers and others, such as building effective fences, which minimise human-elephant conflict.
They argue that transfrontier parks are providing more space for elephants and that immuno contraception is becoming sufficiently advanced to offer real solutions, even for the elephant populations in the Kruger National Park.
In late September SANParks publicised an elephant management plan that recommended culling elephants in various reserves around the country. Van Schalkwyk said it was the beginning of a process that would see draft national guidelines drawn up by early next year and published for public comment.
Care for the Wild and various other local and international NGOs have been invited to present their views on the management plan in one-on-one meetings with Van Schalkwyk on November 28.
Brian Gibson, an ”issue management” adviser hired by the ministry, told the Mail & Guardian the minister had not made up his mind that culling was necessary. He said the objective of the international roadshow was ”to exchange ideas. The minister is briefing parties on the process to date.”
Gibson said SANParks had been asked ”not to aggressively pursue their agenda and to let the minister make up his own mind”.
According to Maas, however, this week’s roadshow indicated the minster’s mind had already been made up.
”When we asked the minister some informed questions about the need for culling, his jaw dropped and he was at a loss … It seemed this was a case of the tail wagging the dog,” she said.