ENVIRONMENT: Confronting elephant in the room

25 Jan, 2015 - 00:01 0 Views
ENVIRONMENT: Confronting elephant in the room

The Sunday Mail

2301-2-1-ELEPHANTSWildlife conservation is a difficult task for any government as it battles intense poaching and illegal trade to save various animal species from extinction.

Animals such as elephants and rhinos have been fiercely hounded in the last decade, a development which has left around 700 rhinos in Zimbabwe while elephants continue to be targeted for their ivory.

With wildlife being central to the preservation of the ecosystem and development of tourism, conservation cannot be over-emphasised.

However, Government’s elephant conservation programme has worked too well that the country now faces the dangers posed by too large a herd.

[READ MORE: “JUMBO SALE IS 100% LEGAL” on the sale of Zimbabwean elephants]

Authorities say the country’s elephant population now stands at 75 000, surpassing the carrying capacity of 45 000.

“Our habitat is not designed to carry so many elephants . . . We have an overpopulation of elephants,” says Tourism and Hospitality Minister Walter Mzembi.

According to the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, the preservation, protection and planned management of other wildlife habitats is now under threat.

Cases of human and wildlife conflict have been on the increase as elephants stray into villages and destroy crops and homes.

According to ecologists if the situation is not dealt with urgently, extensive damage can be caused to the environment and loss of human life will occur.

Ecologist Lovelater Sebele, in a paper at a recent workshop, said elephants need between 200 and 300kg of forage and about 200 litres of water daily.

With Zimbabwe having 75 000 elephants, 15 million litres of water and 15 000 tonnes of food are needed every day for these huge mammals.

Hwange National Park – home to a majority of Zimbabwe’s elephants – has not one perennial river and has very little natural surface water to sustain such herds.

Most of the water has to be pumped from boreholes in order to sustain the current animal population.

Conservation efforts, which include fighting organised international groups of poachers who have become sophisticated and use modern weapons, are also becoming increasingly difficult.

It appears the problem will be much greater in the next few years with Sebele saying elephant population can grow by 5 percent annually, which – working with the current figure of 75 000 – is 3 750 more elephants per year. “There are no natural predators (for elephants) except man and occasionally lions preying on baby elephants,” she said. “Population can increase at a rate of 5 percent per year if resources are available. If poaching is controlled elephants can easily increase to numbers unsustainable for the environment.”

There are various elephant population control options, which include laissez faire, culling and resource manipulation.

Laissez faire is letting nature take its course but the method may not be acceptable as experts say many wildlife sanctuaries are already artificial environments and may result in major die-offs.

Culling, a method of reducing wildlife population by selective slaughter, has been condemned by pressure groups and attracted negative publicity the last time it was done in 1988.

Manipulation of resources such as water is another option but it often takes longer before its effects are seen and in the Zimbabwean situation, experts feel that time simply is not there.

To address the situation, authorities have found themselves with no option but to export some of the calves – something that can also help raise funds to manage wildlife better.

The Parks Authority has decided to export over 60 elephant calves to various countries.

The baby jumbos, with a value of about US$60 000 each, will be sold to countries such as the United Arab Emirates, China and France. The revenue could help meet the US$2,3 million annual running costs of the massive Hwange National Park.

The decision has, naturally, attracted anxious scrutiny from both local and international animal rights groups who say exporting beasts is tantamount to animal cruelty. Pressure groups have also dismissed as incorrect the total number of elephants in the country saying the figure is much less than that.

According to Wildlife Environment Zimbabwe, the number of elephants in the Hwange wildlife sanctuary has been inflated.

“We are sure there are 25 000 elephants in the Hwange National Park,” Colin Gillies, of Wildlife Environment Zimbabwe, told The Sunday Mail “while the National Parks believe there are 40 000.”

Other groups weigh in.

“You can’t take these animals out of Africa and send them to these ‘inhumane’ areas where they’ve got no good track records,” said Johnny Rodrigues, who heads the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force. However, none of these groups says exactly how and when they conducted their elephant population census. On the other hand, the Parks Authority uses a census method that has for years been accepted internationally.

Further, it is legal to export elephants from Zimbabwe.

Under the CITES agreement to protect wildlife, trade in elephants in Zimbabwe (along with South Africa and Botswana) is permissible, as long as it is properly regulated.

The treaty stipulates that all species should be categorised according to the size and robustness of the population, with the trade limited accordingly. In 1997, CITES members voted to downgrade the Zimbabwean elephant from Appendix I (a total ban on trade) to Appendix II, in order to facilitate a once-off legal sale of stock-piled ivory.

Zimbabwe, as well as Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, argued that the reclassification was appropriate given healthy elephant populations. And recently Zimbabwean authorities said they had run out of storage space for ivory in their central stores.

Research shows that the overall rate of accumulation in the central stores is generally well above five tonnes per annum. This is against averag e annual sales of 1,8 tonnes to the domestic market.

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