Less than a hundred years ago, the African Elephant was barely around. Now, due to the conservation work in South Africa and their recent prevalence within the parks they are one of the guaranteed sites at all of the parks and reserves. As the elephant populations have grown, so has their destruction among the land surrounding them. Elephants are what they call environmental engineers in that they change the environment they are living in to best fit their needs. Whether that means knocking down hundreds of trees, or pushing other animals out of the space in which they are residing. The history of the African Elephant populations has not been a constant one. In the early 1900s elephants were a highly poached for their ivory tusks which led to low numbers among the largest parks and reserves throughout South Africa. But, since then, due to the great conservation work in South Africa through the anti-poaching squads and the higher regulation on the black market, the elephant populations have strived. Sue Lieberman a director of the global species program at World Wildlife Fund International claims that “In South Africa, elephants have done very well; in other countries, poaching is out of control.”
Between 1966 and 1994 due to the great strides in the elephant populations, elephant culling was reintroduced in South Africa as a population management program. Over the 30 year period where elephant culling was used within the parks, over 16,000 elephants were killed and the population numbers were declining quickly. In 1995 due to the over-culling within the parks and reserves, the process of culling elephants was banned. This ban lasted eight years while the elephant populations grew large once again, until the parks and reserves could no longer manage the elephant populations just through translocation, and contraception. In March of 2007 it was announced that a policy proposal for a regulated cull was to be announced by Kruger National Park (the largest game reserve in South Africa). Finally, in February of 2008 the ban on elephant culling was lifted with high regulations and the first elephant cull at Kruger was to happen on the 28th after 13 years.
In the past few years, Elephant culling has been used as a process of population management in South Africa since the ban on culling of elephants was lifted in 2008 by the government. The process of culling is defined as “to reduce or control the size of (as a herd) by removal (as by hunting) of especially weaker animals; also to hunt or kill (animals) as a means of population control,” (Merriam-Webster, 2014). Basically, elephant culling is a procedure where mass amounts of elephants are killed at a single time. The parks and reserves do this through professional hunters and a well planned out schedule. Many parks and reserves throughout South Africa have been putting culling within their quarterly plans each year due to the overpopulation of elephants within the parks. Although the process of elephant culling might seem cruel and inhumane, it is one of the only ways to save the biodiversity within the South African land in which the elephants live, and at this time, is the only viable management program due to the greatness of the over population.
Although elephant culling at this time is the most viable option for elephant population management there are other programs that conservation groups are researching and experimenting with throughout the South African parks and reserves. There are multiple programs already in the works, such as translocation, elephant contraception, elephant vasectomies and trans-frontier conservation areas. These programs all have been shown to work in smaller parks and reserves and show great successes but can not solve the large population problems that are present right now. They also need to be more researched and more experimented before they are ready for use within the large parks and reserves. Plus, the programs I have listed above are all preventative programs and so before they can all be truly helpful there needs to be some balance. There needs to be some population amount that the parks can handle and then prevent further growth with these programs so that they can keep handling them.
Elephant Population Management 