Elephant's success breeds its demise

JOHANNESBURG  - Just over 100 years ago, there were at most a few thousand elephants in the whole of Africa south of the Zambezi. There are now more than a quarter of a million of them.

This astonishing growth in numbers has led the elephant into a new danger, however: The South African Government is planning to carry out an unprecedented massive cull, amid claims that the world's largest land animal has become its biggest pest.

The South African plan is igniting an international row that has split environmental, scientific and political opinion and could damage the country's image as it prepares to host the 2010 soccer World Cup. Neighbouring nations such as Botswana and Zimbabwe, which want to start culls of their own, are awaiting the outcome.

All sides agree that southern Africa has too many elephants. The giant animals smash their way through the landscape, eating - or flattening - much of what is in their way. An adult eats at least 123kg of vegetation a day.

As their numbers have grown, they have increasingly wandered onto farmland, devastating crops, destroying the livelihoods of poor farmers and occasionally killing people. And even when they stay in the wild, South African National Park officials say, they threaten the survival of more endangered species such as the black rhino and rare antelope by devastating their habitats.

Originally, it is thought, there were some 10 million elephants spread across Africa. Now, at most, about 600,000 are left.

While their numbers in southern Africa were increasing, because mass slaughter of elephants stopped about a century ago, they were being devastated by poaching across much of the rest of the continent until the world agreed to ban the ivory trade in 1989. Now there is a relatively stable population of about 150,000 in east Africa. West Africa has about 13,000 at most, and central Africa has anything between 15,000 and 160,000.

The issue has come to a head in South Africa's Kruger National Park, an area about the size of Wales. Its elephant population has soared from 65 in 1918 to about 12,500 today. The National Park Service says this is twice as many as the park can stand. The numbers are growing by 7 per cent a year.

Until 11 years ago, the park service culled the elephants to keep their numbers around 7000. But then television footage of the killings created an international outcry, and it was stopped under pressure from organisations such as the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

In September the South African Environment Minister, Martinus van Schalkwyk, recommended a cull of some 5000 elephants, the biggest ever carried out in the world. The Government is expected to finalise its plans by the beginning of next year, though it will be 2010 before the killings begin.

The IFAW insists the culling is "cruel, unethical, and scientifically unsound", but the WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) says it is "the most viable immediate population-reduction tool".

MASSIVE PROBLEM

* There were about 6000 elephants at the start of the last century.

* There is estimated to be 600,000 in Africa now.

* South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe want to start culls of what they consider to be pests.

* The numbers have been booming since the world ban on the ivory trade in 1989.

* An adult eats at least 123kg of vegetation a day.

- INDEPENDENT