AG_0604_Culling

70 A F R I C A G E O G R A P H I C • A P R I l 2 0 0 6 71w w w. A F R I C A G E O G R A P H I C . C O m

above the elephants. I could smell them. The pilot announced that we were going in and the ranger checked his immobilising gun.

Five minutes later a big cow and sub-adult had been darted, a minute later another two were immobilised. Five more went down, but the matriarch was still on her feet. One cow fell on top of her baby as we circled left and right, holding the herd together. Finally, the matriarch was darted and went down. Two calves stood pressed against their fallen mothers.

The vehicles moved in and within 10 minutes all had been shot, bar the calves, which were given tranquillisers and later sold. From the first dart to final shot, the operation took just 35 minutes.

*The use of scoline was suspended in 1990 after it was discovered to be inhumane. Thereafter elephants were killed by a brain shot fired directly from the air.

Conservationist and wildlife artist Clive Walker founded the Endangered Wildlife Trust and is a co-founder of the Rhino & Elephant Foundation.

Hwange national Park Zimbabwe, 1982I needed a first-hand account of how elephant populations were managed for a research project, and was granted permission to accompany a team of park staff members and a pilot on a culling operation in what was then Wankie National Park (now Hwange).

The pilot, flying a SuperCub aeroplane and acting as a spotter, radioed that a herd of 17 elephants was about two kilometres ahead of us and moving away. We set off at a run and managed to get ahead of them. Soon the lead elephant came into view, moving towards us at a fair pace. The scene felt unreal as the herd had no idea of our presence. The three sharpshooters took up their positions. I stuck close behind the main gun as he ran forward. The matriarch came steadily towards us, only to be felled in seconds. Other elephants started to mill around, then also fell under the fusillade.

All 13 adult elephants were down within 35 seconds and three small females were captured to be sold later. The fourth youngster, a male, was also shot as the buyers only wanted females. I remember no trumpeting or screaming, except from the young elephants which were chased, then restrained.

Then everyone sat down to wait for the tractor bringing the team who would set up a bush abattoir. Our part was over. From the take-off of the SuperCub to the

firing of the last shot, the operation took less than three hours.

kruger national Park SoutH africa, 1980The Zimbabwe experience was quite different to a culling operation that I had witnessed in the Kruger two years previously. There elephants were darted from a helicopter with scoline*, a compound that causes paralysis, allowing ground crews to move in.

I was in the Kruger’s Bell JetRanger helicopter when we picked up an elephant herd just after 15h00. Within 10 minutes, the herd had been broken up into small groups with the bulls running ahead. Occasionally a big elephant would turn and face the helicopter. All the pilot’s skills and years of flying in culling operations came into play. Apart from the occasional word on the radio to the ranger sitting behind him, he concentrated on manoeuvring the group toward a firebreak where the ground crew was waiting. The elephants were clearly very conscious of the sound of the chopper – two slipped in the mud and agitated cows occasionally placed their trunks across the backs of calves. Emptying their bowels, they fled towards a dry river bed where they paused for a moment. We were very close to the firebreak and nine metres

the realityCULLING

In Kruger National Park, culling operations were conducted from the air.

Culling stirs huge debate, from animal rights campaigners who condemn it to researchers who cannot agree on its scientific merits.

D. & S. Balfour/www.DarylBalfour.com (3)

Does It work?Culling not only provokes a strong emotional response, but also stirs debate within scientific circles. Despite diverging views, however, there does seem to be consensus that it should be considered only as a last resort.

No say rudi van Aarde & tim Jackson

Culling seems to be founded in the quest to control, an activity that conservation managers inherited from ‘problem animal control’ departments. These were established by colonial governments to deal with nuisance animals and crop-raiders and later developed into a tool of wildlife management.

Culling aims to reduce numbers and, consequently, the ecological impact that target species have on an area. However, culling may disrupt the ranging behaviour of elephants in an unpredictable manner. In Kruger National Park, for example, elephant numbers decreased as predicted within specified management blocks immediately after culling. Surprisingly, though, the following year elephant numbers had increased to above pre-culling levels. How was this possible? The answer lies in the movement of elephants from areas that were not part of the culling programme into the culling block. In other words, elephants in the Kruger simply seem to have redistributed themselves and local impacts which should have been reduced, became worse.

Other elephants have also responded to a sudden and drastic reduction in numbers. The last cull in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park took place in 1995. Just six years later, the elephant population there had doubled, whereas in that same period other Zimbabwean populations had grown by just 28 per cent. Similarly, in the Kruger, we believe year-to-year growth rates during periods of culling to be some of the highest on record. Rapid recoveries in elephant numbers also followed the cessation of culling in several other parks. Moreover, culling elephants to reduce impact ignores the role of other herbivores as agents of ecosystem change.

When considering the response of elephants and other species to culling it follows that this method seldom achieves the goal of reducing impact. For conservation to succeed we must consider the full suite of management tools.

Rudi van Aarde and Tim Jackson are conducting research into elephant con­servation at the Conservation and Ecology Research Unit at the University of Pretoria.

Yes says Ian whyte

Kruger National Park needs to be managed for the benefit of all species, in other words biodiversity needs to be maintained. Research conducted in Kruger and Tsavo national parks in 1963 concluded that a maximum density of about one elephant per square mile should achieve this. In the Kruger, a slightly more conservative level (7 000 elephants in 8 000 square miles) was adopted.

Between 1967 and 1995, this number was maintained through a combination of culling and translocation, a policy that was successful in that no other species were lost from the system during this time (although there were indications that even at this level tall trees were disappearing from some landscapes).

It is true that, one year after a cull, there were more elephants in the zone where the culling was conducted. This is not an increase in population, but reflects elephant movements from one zone of the park to another. These are movements across administrative boundaries (SANParks has divided the park into four management zones) and have nothing to do with elephant home ranges. In fact, the stated intention of the policy to conduct culls was to induce local fluctuations in numbers. In this, the policy was very successful.

There is no data to support the suggestion that elephants increase their birth rates in response to culling. In fact, for the five years following the moratorium on culling, growth rates were almost the lowest on record. Since 2000, however, the Kruger’s elephant population has been increasing at close to the maximum possible rate of seven per cent per year, as has the population of Addo Elephant Park, where there has been no culling.

Scientist Ian Whyte has been responsible for elephant research in Kruger National Park since 1986.

From the 1960s to the mid-1990s, culling – which actually means ‘to remove’ –

was the principal tool of wildlife managers across most of southern Africa.

Vegetation needed to be maintained and culling was believed to be the only

solution to prevent some species from compromising others. Methods varied from

country to country – in Zimbabwe highly skilled sharpshooters tracked elephants on

foot; in South Africa, culling teams relied more on helicopters. But, as conservationist

clive walker remembers, neither way made this unpleasant task any easier.