Kruger Park Animal Stories

My next few blogs will focus on specific animals I saw on my last visit to Kruger Park and hopefully provide some interesting information on or related to them.


This is a real photo, only cropped a bit to make it a bit more impressive (the real distance relationship in the next blog!). What was for sure was that it was a very big elephant and it was close to the bakkie (SA English for Light Delivery Vehicle - this one is a half ton load vehicle)! Obviously the bakkie is no match for an elephant of this size - luckily the elephant wasn't angry. What is also interesting is that the guys in the bakkie don't seem worried - they seem to be looking the other way! or was it a larger elephant that side?

There is currently a developing problem with an overpopulation of elephants in the Kruger Park. This is creating a controversy at the moment about how it should be handled.

In the past, say 20 years ago, elephants were routinely and quietly but openly culled. There was an abattoir in Kruger Park (is still there in fact) and you could buy tinned elephants in the shops! Then the environmentalists entered the picture and the ivory trade came under the spotlight because of poaching and things are very different.

An experiment in Kenya was based on assuming that the environment would come to an equilibrium with the elephants. I understand that was a failure and enormous damage was done turning forests and bush veld, where elephants graze, into grasslands making the balance even worse. It seems that any constraint on movement (Kruger Park is 350km long and up to 65 km wide) creates an artificial system that requires management.

At the moment there are a number of ways that the problem is being addressed:

• contraception for elephants - yes that's right!
  
• opening the fences to adjacent reserves especially in Mocambique and Zimbabwe forming transfrontier parks
• capturing and moving elephants to other reserves
• culling is still under consideration

The all have advantages, disadvantages and constraints though.

South Africa and other Southern African countries have after lots of arguing, been given permission to sell the ivory they have in stock. Seems to me this is the way to go - cull carefully and humanely and sell the ivory to help fund improved conservation.