Culling back on the cards

2007-02-28 15:06

Johannesburg - South Africa looks set to reintroduce culling as one of a range of options for managing the country's fast growing elephant herds.

Launching a set of draft regulation on elephant management in the Addo Elephant National Park on Wednesday, Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk stressed this would not "immediately lead to the wholesale slaughter of elephants anywhere."

Over the past two years, government had listened to numerous discussions about the merits and demerits of various elephant management options.

"Some such as culling or contraception I would personally have preferred not to consider, but I am persuaded that this option has a potential role to play under different circumstances," he said.

Different options

The legislation - titled the draft norms and standards on elephant management - provided for population control of elephants using the following options:

-Range manipulation;

-Removal by translocation;

-Introduction of elephant contraception; and

-Culling

"We have about 20 000 elephants in South Africa, more or less 14 000 in the Kruger National Park. In 1995 when we stopped culling we had around 8 000 elephants. The population growth of elephant is six to seven percent, this is the hard reality," Van Schalkwyk said.

It was difficult to answer the question of how many elephants would be culled.

"We don't work with the outdated concept of carrying capacity any longer.

"If culling is allowed after the process of public comment and if it is included in the final draft, it would really depend on those management plans and management objectives of each of the parks."

The draft norms and standards will be published in the Government Gazette on Friday.

Van Schalkwyk encouraged stakeholders to study them carefully and submit comment to his department by May 4 this year.

Van Schalkwyk said government would never "give a blank cheque" to the park authorities as far as culling was concerned.

- SAPA