South Africa mulls culling elephants

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Small farmers and villagers in South Africa see elephants as cunning, destructive and dangerous beasts. In the West, elephants are perhaps the most beloved of the big-game species and tourists fly thousands of miles just to see one.

So South Africa's proposal, unveiled Wednesday, to thin elephant herds by methods that include shooting them was bound to spark controversy.

The proposed policy, which enters a public-review process, suggests that future elephant culls would be limited and rare. South Africa's handling of the issue is being closely watched across the region, which has a rapidly growing population of 270,000 elephants.

Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said priority would be given to other management options, such as contraception, relocation or expansion of migratory routes to ease pressure on the most heavily impacted areas.

"Where lethal measures are necessary to manage an elephant or group of elephants, or to manage the size of elephant populations, these should be undertaken with circumspection," he said in announcing the new rules at Addo Elephant National Park near the southeastern coastal city of Port Elizabeth, according to a text from the ministry.

Of the new rules, he added, "Their adoption will not be a 'victory' for any given position, nor will it immediately lead to the wholesale slaughter of elephants anywhere."

The proposal did not quell debate over an issue that has pitted animal-rights activists against wildlife officials who argue that only culling can reduce elephant populations to levels that won't devastate vulnerable habitats for animals and plant species.

Photographs taken over several decades show that parts of Kruger National Park — a New Jersey-size sliver along South Africa's eastern border — have begun the shift from woodlands to grasslands. Kruger's elephant population has grown from 8,000, when culling stopped in 1994, to 12,500 today. At current growth rates, the park would have 34,000 elephants by 2020, officials say.

Elephants often live to be 60 and eat 300 to 600 pounds of grass, bark and leaves every day. Even a few of Kruger's massive baobab trees, some thousands of years old, have succumbed to their voracious appetites.

Elephants rarely attack humans but increasingly crash through the park's fences, terrorizing nearby villages and wiping out crops.

Culls typically are conducted by trained sharpshooters, often borne on helicopters. The bodies of the elephants are butchered into meat, and the tusks saved for possible sale into the highly restricted global ivory market.

Entire families of elephants generally are killed at once to lessen the grief for survivors.

Between 1967-94, Kruger culled more than 14,000 elephants. Kruger's top elephant researcher, Ian Whyte, said the park is likely but not certain to seek permission from van Schalkwyk to resume culling once its management plan for the park is done.

The plan for Kruger seeks to create zones where elephants are plentiful and others where they are not, allowing plants and other animals such as giraffes and antelope to thrive. Elephants remain a top draw for Kruger, which has 1 million visitors a year.

International animal-rights groups have urged boycotts of South Africa's popular national parks — a major attraction for the nation's lucrative tourism industry — if elephant culls resume.

These critics favor the closing of human-made water points and expansion of parks to encourage seasonal migrations. That process has begun, and Kruger's elephants have begun walking to an adjacent national park in Mozambique, officials say.

Contraception also has begun on a limited basis in some parks, though its long-term impact on elephant herds remains unclear.