South Africa resumes elephant culls - May 02, 2008
Posted on behalf of Lauren Young:
South Africa has lifted a 13-year ban on elephant culling, to help manage the flourishing pachyderm population.
Elephants were once close to being wiped out in many parts of the continent, but have more than doubled in number in South Africa since 1995. The Agence France-Presse says a government assessment report suggests this could lead to the “loss of crops and infrastructure” and the “infection of livestock as a result of elephants having breached veterinary fences, thus allowing the mingling of wildlife and domestic stock and direct injury or loss of human life”.
Culling, with strict provisos, has been legalized as a last resort, the government asserts. Yet some conservationists have condemned the action, warning that it may encourage ivory poachers and could threaten populations elsewhere.
The Associated Press cites the example of Congo’s Virunga National Park, in which 14 elephants have been killed since mid-April by angry residents, rebels and soldiers. Emmanuel de Merode, director of the conservation group WildlifeDirect, has described it as “part of a widespread slaughter across the Congo Basin”. He argues it is due to the “liberalisation of the ivory trade…and the increased presence of Chinese operators on the ground, who feed a massive domestic demand for ivory in their home country”.
Other ways of curbing the elephant numbers include relocation and hormone based contraception, although these are thought to be less effective.
Image: USFWS
Comments
The radical way to approach this is from a market perspective; the consumers are interested in ivory, not dead elephants, and the producers and intermediaries should be interested in sustainability. If the vulnerable countries (Zambia, Kenya,Congo,etc) licenced out the responsibility of anti-poaching to the corporate beneficiaries (eg Chinese), under international scrutiny, and carefully harvested ivory without killing the animals, then the survival prospects of the elephants might in fact be much enhanced. This could be a win-win all round IF DONE PROPERLY. I know it would not be easy but it just might be worth thinking through in a serious way. It just has to be better than what we have now.
Posted by: Mark Vincent | May 6, 2008 06:30 PM
Mark Vincent makes an interesting suggestion. UNFORTUNATELY it does not take into account at least one Asian financier of ivory poaching who is believed to be aggressively pursuing a strategy of elephant extinction, in the belief that the value of his ivory hoard will soar astronomically when the ivory market realises that the renewable source of supply is gone forever.
Such greed, such blackness of soul leaves me aghast.
Posted by: Adrian Woodcraft | June 11, 2008 03:29 AM