People against elephant culling in the Kruger National Park will demonstrate that there are non-violent and non-lethal alternatives when they meet Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk on Monday.
The Elephants Alive Coalition said it would also argue that the plan to cull elephants in the Kruger National Park was ”deeply flawed, ecologically and ethically”.
”This situation will be exacerbated as awareness grows about the lack of scientific data to justify the proposed elephant kill.”
The coalition said delegates would inform Van Schalkwyk and his advisers that much of the perceived biodiversity problems facing the Kruger Park were the result of decades of mismanagement.
The delegation will also point out that if the Kruger Park landscape ”is once again to be turned into killing fields, there will definitely be adverse effects”.
”It stands to reason that visitors from the United Kingdom and elsewhere, who would otherwise travel to South Africa to see its magnificent wildlife, will vote with their feet.
”They will be disturbed by the prospect that the elephants they enjoy watching and photographing during their safari one day, could easily be hanging upside down from a meat hook in the Skukuza abattoir the next.”
The SA National Parks Board (SANParks) has proposed culling between 5 000 and 7 000 elephants it says are damaging the biodiversity of the Kruger Park.
A total of 14 562 elephants were killed during culls in South Africa between 1967 and 1994, according to SANParks chief executive David Mabunda.
In the same period, 2 175 elephants were translocated to other parks.
The Kruger National Park is presently thought to have a population of 12 467 elephants. Had the culling not taken place there would be 80 000, Mabunda said recently.
”Right now the parks which were given elephants have more or less the same over-population problem being experienced by the Kruger Park,” he said.
”If there is no culling done from now, by 2020 there will be 34 000 elephants in the Kruger Park if growth continues at an annual increase of seven percent.” – Sapa