South Africa to allow elephant culls
26th February 2008
The South African government has announced that it has lifted a ban on culling native elephants following a huge growth in their numbers.
The announcement has sparked protests from environmentalists and calls for a tourism boycott.
However, the country’s Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, said culling would only be used as a last resort. The government would need to be satisfied that other methods, such as contraception and moving elephants to less populous areas, had been tried and failed.
The number of elephants in national parks and private reserves has increased from 8,000 to nearly 20,000 in the past decade.
Officials at the world-famous Kruger National Park say its current elephant population of 12,500 is 5,000 more than is sustainable.
The elephants’ appetite and habit of flattening parkland as they roam is a threat to the park’s biodiversity, according to ecologists.
Some fences on the park’s border with Mozambique are being removed in an attempt to get elephants to relocate to new areas.
Environmentalists argue that elephants’ close-knit communities mean any cull would be inhumane.
Michele Pickover, spokesperson for Animals Rights Africa, commented: ‘We think it's a really sad day. We would not want to encourage people to come here and support a country that has policies like this.’
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