/ 7 January 2008

Famous Zim elephant bull shot dead

Tusker is dead, shot by rangers after New Year’s revellers at a safari camp provoked the elephant into trampling several cars, conservationists said on Monday.

Tusker, a towering 50-year-old bull, was shot on Sunday at the Charara camp on the shores of Lake Kariba, 370km north-west of Harare, parks officials and the independent Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said.

”Tusker was the resident Charara elephant … he was a legend and a great favourite of tourists and locals alike,” said Johnny Rodrigues, head of the trust.

Rodrigues said rangers argued the one-tusked elephant had become a danger to people and was classified as a ”problem animal”. But he added Tusker was provoked into trashing the cars by some of the hundreds of young people at a New Year’s party. No one was hurt.

Rodrigues said music from powerful speakers at the party could be heard for kilometres across the bush, and witnesses reported drunken party-goers taunting the elephant by throwing bottles, lighting fireworks, flashing car lights, hooting and even plucking hairs from the animal’s tail and slapping its rump.

”Despite this senseless abuse, we have had no reports of Tusker hurting anyone, which is testament to his basic good nature,” he said. ”It is shocking these parties where drugs and alcohol are abused should be permitted in wildlife areas.”

Witnesses said the elephant stamped on beer and soda bottles and tried to eat broken glass.

Tusker was a regular visitor to the Charara area, where he foraged for food in garbage cans.

Rodrigues said an attempt to take the elephant to another area was abandoned because veterinarians said Tusker had an intestinal infection and was unlikely to survive doping and the journey in a freight container. — Sapa-AP