African Elephant Bull Photographed in Kruger Park on 20 June 2009.
The author’s last two posts have shown that culling is often used as a “solution” to limit the growth in animal numbers in a particular situations. At the extremes, some animal rights lobbyists oppose the killing of animals on the basis of principle alone ignoring environmental or wildlife issues while some legislators look for a fast fix without a long term view and justify killing by the need to protect the remaining.
There are always a range of opinions and solutions which can be considered in these cases. There is normally neither enough time nor enough information to allow the development of a solution that is acceptable to all and guarantees a longterm solution to the problem. In this context, it is instructive to look at the elephant as an example of the difficulties in finding solutions even in very well studied cases.
Please note that this is a layman’s understanding based on a quick “reading” of two recent major reports and is clearly open to much discussion. The author is simply trying to get a simple overall understanding of managing elephant populations and to also present some interesting information contained in the two reports.
Controlling an Over Abundance of Elephants
Although many press reports focus on the threats to elephants through capture, poaching and commercial hunting, the African Elephant in South Africa is probably more threatened by their successful adaption to protected ranges than directly by man.Two major publications in 2007 address the management of elephants in protected ranges.
- Assessment of South African Elephant Management 2007 ( some 450 pages and 1200 references) focussing on a review of the scientific knowledge of elephants in South Africa, identifies the scientific gaps and presents a management system developed by a group of experts.
- Review of Options for Managing the Impacts of Locally Overabundant African Elephants (some 80 pages and 360 references) seeks to present the options available to conservationists.
The previous technique of setting a carrying capacity (elephants per/100 ha say) for an area and then applying controls, initially mainly culling, once that level was reached is replaced by a more case by case approach.
An area is monitored for some indicators of elephant activity which give a warning of possible problems of an increasing population. This allows the conservation authority to take appropriate steps to avoid the situation developing. It’s interesting that, while conservationists, have generally set indicators that focussed on the effects of overpopulations on the ecology there is now an agreement that a wider range of criteria such as human animal conflict, ethics and politics need to be taken into account.
A number of techniques including non-intervention, range expansion, water resources, barriers, translocation, fertility control, safari hunting and disturbance methods are proposed with culling being recognised as the last resort technique. Again the method needs to suite the environment and resources.
The Lack of Scientific Information
The dynamics of overpopulation in elephants has not been modeled as they have in some shorter lived animals. There is no scientific information on the response of the fertility of elephants in South Africa to a shortage in food. It would be expected that an elephant populations growth rate decreases in times of shortage but this is not proven.
There are even suggestions from respected researchers that the management of selected populations should actually be adjusted to force such situations so that responses of the elephant and its environment can be noted and studied. This with the objective of building up good data for the development of generalised approaches.
The “management report”, amongst others lists: the study of human value systems that underlie conflict around the management of elephants; the potential benefits from elephants for those with the greatest need for them; use values and non-use values; behavioral consequences of contraception; stress response to culling or hunting, capture, translocation, and separation from clan members; the effect of density on elephant populations; the effects on various elements of biodiversity – including composition, structure, and function – of increasing levels of elephant pressure as being some of the areas requiring study.
The Number of Elephants in South Africa
Although there is no data it is surmised that there were around 100,000 elephants in South Africa before the arrival of European settlers in 1652. By 1890 elephants had been virtually exterminated in South Africa. This was mainly due to hunting for ivory, other elephant products and subsistence. In 1876 the ivory exported from the Cape Colony alone reached a peak of 160,000 lb. a year, requiring the hunting of around 600 elephants a year.
Studies show that in 1920 there were as few as 120 elephants in four areas remaining. The introduction of conservation areas and the translocation of elephants has allowed the numbers to grow and there are now approximately 18,000 elephants in 40 ranges in South Africa.
The total number of elephants in Africa is around 470,000 with about 330,000 from Souther Africa.
The Value of The Elephant
This is of course subjective in some areas and based on limited information in others but the “assessment report” report proposed the following values for elephants.
This is based to a large degree on what people perceive they would be willing to pay for the continued existence of elephants (existence and bequest value) and the amount of money that authorities are willing to spend (defensive expenditure, compensations) to maintain their populations.
The value of an elephant via sport hunting is put at $38,000 but is not presented in the table as this is a once off benefit. It is interesting to note that sports hunting doesn’t seem to have the ability to control numbers and may have a negative impact on the tourism value of the elephant.
The Complexity and the Options
The “management report” notes that “Human values with respect to elephants cannot be classified into a simple preference for protection or consumptive use. For example, some ‘consumptive use’ groupings, such as recreational hunters, are highly committed to elephant conservation, and some protection-orientated groups see sustainable use as the key to long-term conservation.”
As is normal with biological systems the interactions at play are very complex. For example when elephant numbers increase specific fauna and flora are more significantly effected that others resulting in an imbalance. For example areas carrying large number of elephants selectively loose trees and animals that require easy access to water are eliminated by the competition with elephants for water during droughts.
Picture by Dave Harcourt in dropbox under a Creative Commons license.
Elephant Culling