South Africa looks set to reintroduce culling as one of a range of options for managing the country’s fast-growing elephant herds.
Launching a set of draft regulations on elephant management in the Addo Elephant National Park on Wednesday, Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk stressed this would not ”immediately lead to the wholesale slaughter of elephants anywhere”.
Over the past two years, the government had listened to numerous discussions about the merits and demerits of various elephant-management options.
”Some, such as culling or contraception, I would personally have preferred not to consider, but I am persuaded that this option has a potential role to play under different circumstances,” he said.
The proposed legislation — titled the Draft Norms and Standards on Elephant Management — provides for population control of elephants using the following options: range manipulation; removal by translocation; introduction of elephant contraception; and culling.
”We have about 20 000 elephants in South Africa, more or less 14 000 in the Kruger National Park. In 1995, when we stopped culling, we had about 8 000 elephants. The population growth of elephant is 6% to 7%, this is the hard reality,” Van Schalkwyk said.
It is difficult to answer the question of how many elephants will be culled.
”We don’t work with the outdated concept of carrying capacity any longer.
”If culling is allowed after the process of public comment and if it is included in the final draft, it would really depend on those management plans and management objectives of each of the parks.”
The draft norms and standards will be published in the Government Gazette on Friday.
Van Schalkwyk encouraged stakeholders to study them carefully and submit comment to his department by May 4 this year.
Van Schalkwyk said government will never ”give a blank cheque” to the park authorities as far as culling was concerned. — Sapa