| There ARE other ostensibly
'responsible' management options - IF one accepts the management philosophies
that support them - but they ALL require the culling of elephants. There is no
getting away from the culling option, therefore, no matter what management
strategy is adopted.
SANparks knows all this. They would also
dearly love to implement SOME kind of responsible elephant management
programme because they KNOW that, if they do not, the growing and already
excessive elephant population will hugely impair  the game reserve's currently
great bio-diversity. And maintaining the park's bio-diversity is the
administration's PRIMARY responsibly.
There is an irrevocable hierarchy of
priorities with regards to the management of natural resources on ANY piece of
wildlife real estate:
(1) Our FIRST priority must be for the
protection and "wise-use" of the soil, for without soil there can be
no plants, and without plants there can be no animals.
(2) Our SECOND priority
must be for the protection and "wise use" of plants. Plants do a
number of things:
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(a) They provide food for herbivorous animals (which in turn
provide food for the predators); |
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(b) They provide shelter for animals - from
the elements and from their enemies; |
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(c) Together with the circumstances of
their physical environment, the physical characteristics of plants create all
the different habitats that occur on planet earth - and this determines the
number of different animal species that can exist; and finally |
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(d) Plants
provide "cover" for the soil, protecting it from erosive elements -
the sun, the wind, and (especially) the rain. |
(3) Our THIRD (AND LAST)
priority must be for the protection and "wise use" of the animals.
It stands to reason that when the population
of ANY herbivorous species of wild animal exceeds the carrying capacity of its
habitat, it will consume more plant material every year than the plants can
replace during the growing (wet) season of the next year. Every year,
therefore, the plant communities will be continuously degraded. This will
result in less and less food being available every year for all the other
species populations - many of which will go into decline. The shelter that
plants provide animals will also be reduced - exposing many of the more
sensitive animal species to greater predation. Habitats will change in
character and this will adversely affect those sensitive species (of both
plants AND animals) that are the most specifically adapted to the original
healthy habitats. Many such species (of plants AND animals) will eventually
become locally extinct. Finally, with a reduction in plant cover the soil will
be more greatly exposed to erosion - by sun, wind and rain - which means the
very foundation elements of the whole ecosystem will be destroyed. And
elephants are the most problematical of all the herbivorous animals in this
regard, because they are capable of bringing about the greatest of changes to
the environment.
South African nature lovers should start to
think, in terms of this scenario, about the reasons why the sable and roan
antelopes are disappearing in KNP - and why the introduced Lichtenstein's
hartebeest has not yet taken hold (which are just three examples). And why our
scientists are taking such care to investigate the status of the park's ground
hornbills. When the above wildlife management principles are understood it
will not take very long for even lay-nature-lovers to put two and two
together. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to start reaching the
obvious conclusions.
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