Feb 05, 2025 Elephant Management in Southern Africa
On January 27, 2025, the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment (DFFE) gazetted (that is, opened for formal public comment) a new report on the management of elephants in the country entitled the National Elephant Heritage Strategy. According to the preamble, this draft strategy sets objectives for the “management and long-term conservation of elephants as a meta-population in South Africa while contributing to the well-being of people.”
The document reports approximately 44,000 elephants in South Africa, of which 34,000 are in state-protected areas, including trans-frontier conservation areas where they can move across international borders. Around 6,000 elephants are in private protected areas, and a further 4,000 or so live in contractual protected areas. Elephant conservation in South Africa can be judged as a success, considering there were no elephants in the country at the end of the 19th Century.
Nevertheless, the management of elephants in the Kruger National Park (KNP) in particular has been a contentious issue, with vocal and passionate protagonists espousing different approaches to elephant management ranging from leaving them alone on one side to managing elephant populations intensively by active culling to maintain a specified target number. For example, the KNP began culling elephants in the 1960s to keep the population in the park at around 7,000 individuals. Culling was halted in 1994 when animal activists convinced the managers of the KNP to end the practice. Since 1994, the KNP elephant population has increased by around 5% annually and currently numbers over 31,000. Claims that too many elephants are in the KNP have been growing louder, leading to calls to renew elephant culling in the park.
However, calls to restore the KNP to its “original” state face a problem – nobody knows what the Kruger landscape looked like before humans eliminated all (or nearly all of) the elephants in and around the current area comprising the KNP and neighboring parks and conservancies. It is widely accepted that elephants have a considerable impact on their environment. Elephants are often described as ‘Nature’s gardeners’. They typically open up woodlands and create more grasslands. They disperse seeds widely and provide those seeds with natural fertilizer, namely, their dung. As humans debate the protection of biodiversity in the KNP, what should constitute the “normal” biodiversity in the KNP is far from obvious. Herbivores, fires and drought all impact the KNP vegetation and will cause variations in that vegetation over time.
The original culling target population of 7,000 elephants set by KNP managers in the 1960s was unsupported by science. Coincidentally (or not?), the target population of 7,000 was established when there were approximately 7,000 elephants in the KNP in the mid-1960s at a density of roughly one elephant per square mile. In a 2006 expert analysis of the Kruger elephant issue, the authors noted that big trees had disappeared from the KNP landscape, presumably due to elephant activity, when the elephant population was kept at around 7,000 individuals. The obvious conclusion is that “a far lower elephant population [lower than 7,000] would be needed to halt such a loss” of big trees. However, such a conclusion is confounded by the fact that the KNP experienced five years when annual rainfall was well below average in the early 1960s, raising questions about the potential impact of drought conditions on KNP vegetation.
The authors of the 2006 analysis further note that the vegetation recorded historically in the KNP had developed “in the absence of elephants, together with low densities of the other large herbivores.” As the number of elephants and other large herbivores in the KNP grew, vegetation would have inevitably changed. The authors further state that change is “an integral part of ecosystem dynamics, “It is just as likely that “the disturbing effects of elephants on vegetation could likewise be beneficial” for biodiversity. In other words, it is unclear what mix of vegetation and animal species in the KNP would be most appropriate today to preserve KNP biodiversity in a “natural” condition!
Currently, the management of individual elephant populations is guided by the National Norms and Standards for the Management of Elephants in South Africa, published initially for implementation in 2008 (Government Gazette No 30833). The new government draft strategy on elephant management has been produced to update the National Norms and provide a consolidated and integrated framework to support both private landowners and national park managers across the country in the conservation and use of elephants. Elephant experts have argued that, in large ecosystems, such as the KNP and its neighboring conservancies and national parks, elephant populations could be allowed to fluctuate independently with only localized management to reduce elephant impact in areas of particular biodiversity value. However, elephant populations may need to be actively managed in smaller parks and conservancies. It has been demonstrated that elephant populations in smaller parks and conservancies can be satisfactorily managed using non-lethal chemical contraceptives delivered remotely. Over 40 parks and private conservancies have, to date, successfully used immunocontraception to control the growth of their elephant populations. However, managers of large parks such as the KNP and Addo still question whether immunocontraception is a realistic option for their elephant populations.
In a recent analysis, the authors reported relatively upbeat statistics on African elephant populations. While several conservation landscapes across Africa have been hard hit by the illegal poaching of elephants, across six of the nine identified African conservation areas examined, encompassing a total area of 320,000 square kilometers, elephant populations are stable or increasing. These six areas account for 60% of Africa’s savannah elephants. Despite the many threats facing elephants, southern African elephant populations have grown slowly (at a rate of 0.16% per annum) over the last twenty-five years. The authors consider this remarkable, given that almost half of these elephants cohabit with humans in buffer areas around national parks and conservation areas.
The contentious debate over the elephant population in the KNP will undoubtedly continue. However, our understanding of elephant behavior and their impact on natural ecosystems is steadily growing. Current KNP managers are promoting adaptive management techniques based on better science and an improved understanding of how to moderate elephants’ impact on ecosystems in the KNP and protect the park’s biodiversity.
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