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Elephant Culling Reflects the Complexity of Managing Wildlife Populations

African Elephant Bull Photographed in Kruger Park on 20 June 2009.

The author’s last two posts have shown that culling is often used as a “solution” to limit the growth in animal numbers in a particular situations. At the extremes, some animal rights lobbyists oppose the killing of animals on the basis of principle alone ignoring environmental or wildlife issues while some legislators look for a fast fix without a long term view and justify killing by the need to protect the remaining.
There are always a range of opinions and solutions which can be considered in these cases. There is normally neither enough time nor enough information to allow the development of a solution that is acceptable to all and guarantees a longterm solution to the problem. In this context, it is instructive to look at the elephant as an example of the difficulties in finding solutions even in very well studied cases.

Please note that this is a layman’s understanding based on a quick “reading” of two recent major reports and is clearly open to much discussion. The author is simply trying to get a simple overall understanding of managing elephant populations and to also present some interesting information contained in the two reports.

Controlling an Over Abundance of Elephants

Although many press reports focus on the threats to elephants through capture, poaching and commercial hunting, the African Elephant in South Africa is probably more threatened by their successful adaption to protected ranges than directly by man.

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Elephant Culling Reflects the Complexity of Managing Wildlife Populations