Too many elephants?

Now that the dry season and its associated problems are over (well we hope they are over) it’s time to take stock. A lot has been said and written about the animal’s water supply, overpopulation of elephants in the Park and so on, mostly triggered by sights such as this…

 

  It looks awful but was it really so bad or are we just over-reacting to seeing dead elephants at almost every water hole? A number of questions need to be answered. How bad were the losses? Did we do enough to prevent them? What can we do in future? And since the key factor in all this is the number of elephants we must also ask are there too many elephants? Are they really destroying the Park? What can we do?

    Let’s take the questions in order. First, how bad were the losses? The main visible losses were elephants. In the Sinamatella area almost every major water source had one or several deaths but there were surprisingly few carcasses away from the water – certainly fewer than last year when it seemed at times that the smell of dead elephant was the dominant feature of the Park. Known losses are under one hundred but no doubt there were some unrecorded. We visit many places off the tourist routes and away from the main water points and have seen very few carcasses there so perhaps a reasonable guess would put elephant losses in the low hundreds. The recent WEZ game census recorded 2382 elephants in Sinamatella so (say) 200 deaths is 8.4% of the population. Yes, of course there are many factors to be considered, for example the age and sex of the animals dying (obviously the loss of breeding females has more effect on population growth than the loss of old males) but however you look at it, the death of 8.4% of  Sinamatella’s elephants would be bad but certainly nothing to panic about. In fact I think the actual number of elephants in the area is greater than 2382 (WEZ didn’t count in the Safari Areas) and the number of deaths was probably much less than 200 so the over-all loss would be well below 8.4%. My guess would be that it was closer to 4%.         

      As for other losses, the death of a small animal is hard to detect as scavengers quickly remove small carcasses. However, the WEZ census shows increased or steady populations for most species. Giraffe numbers have been in steady decline for some years but others such as Impala and Kudu are steadily rising. The value of 24-hour waterhole counts is often questioned but it is unlikely that these results could be obtained in the face of actual major losses so it seems that the mortality was distressing to look at but unlikely to have had much impact on animal numbers in the Park.

     So, did we do enough to prevent the mortality? Many observers have written about animals dying of thirst. In Sinamatella that wasn’t the case. Water supplies were (and are) adequate and the deaths were more due to poor diet and perhaps heat stress. These are factors though, which are clearly connected with water supplies. When animals are forced to stay fairly close to just a few water sources the food in that area is consumed and they lose condition so, did we provide enough water?

     There were numerous breakdowns of the ageing water pumping equipment but thanks to Mr Mafa and his hard-working team, no pump was out of action for very long.

Installing a new engine at Inyantue

    In September the Park authorities, recognizing that a problem was looming, called a meeting of interested parties to ask for help. Through the season many people and organisations donated money, equipment, fuel and expertise and without their help the situation would have been much worse. It would be fair to say that as much was done as possible, given financial and other constraints but of course more could have been done in an ideal world. There were boreholes that were unused or underused which could certainly have provided more water. So that leads to the next question, can we do better in future? For now though I want to leave that question and come back to it after we have looked at the ‘elephant problem’ as any future plans on water supplies must be made with reference to the growing elephant population.

   Are there too many elephants?

   The Hwange elephant population seems to be very mobile. The 2011 game census recorded 23,569 but in 2012 there were just 14,428. The missing 9,141 are not dead, they presumably left Hwange at some time and spent at least part of the dry season elsewhere – Botswana, Namibia, parts of Zambia, even South East Angola are all within easy reach of Hwange for an elephant. Our various animal counts show very large numbers of elephants in June/July and a steady decrease from then. Perhaps the elephant herds were as appalled as we were at the huge numbers early in the dry season and they reacted by migrating elsewhere. We could therefore say that the elephants are regulating their own population according to conditions and the question of “too many” doesn’t arise but I think that would be short sighted. Even if Hwange wasn’t over-populated this year, it just means that our elephants had become somebody else’s problem and sooner or later there must be too many because there is a limit to the areas they can inhabit without coming into conflict with humans – a conflict they are bound to lose.  So my answer to ‘are there too many elephants?’ is This year? No, I don’t think so, Eventually? Yes, certainly.

   Are the elephants damaging the Park?

   Just as one dead elephant has a visual (and olfactory) impact far greater than its real impact on the environment, a hectare of smashed bush or even a single felled Baobab looks awful and is far more memorable than a ‘normal’ landscape.

Baobab and Combretum bush destroyed by elephants

Hwange’s tourist roads were designed to pass through the areas of greatest animal concentration so anyone using those roads is likely to get an impression of widespread destruction. In terms of the Park as a whole, I believe the environmental destruction by elephants has been relatively small. Close to Sinamatella there are patches of Combretum bush that have been flattened almost to the ground. It is worse close to Masuma and Mandavu dams. Move away from these places however, only a few kilometres sometimes, and there are large areas of similar vegetation that are almost untouched. That’s a pattern that is repeated almost everywhere I go, a mosaic of  patches of clear and often severe damage and places that are apparently normal so, yes the elephants are destroying parts of their environment but in most places the damage is not anywhere near as severe as it is around the most popular water sources.

    And now we come to the really difficult question. What’s to be done about the elephant population? There are three broad answers. First, do nothing; let the population regulate itself, even if that leads to large scale mortality and environment change. Second, shoot enough elephants to bring the population to an acceptable level and then keep shooting them in subsequent years to stop it rising out of control. Third, try some technological fix such as reducing the elephants’ fertility through chemical means.

    Each of these answers has its backers and each has its pros and cons. I don’t believe there is a ‘right’ answer but arguably, allowing matters to take their own course is the ‘morally correct’ way. However, if the elephant population reaches a point where there is massive conflict between elephants and humans as hungry animals flood out of the Park into the surrounding farms and villages, the impact of that on the whole National Park/wildlife conservation concept could be huge. We might end up losing everything in such a situation so ‘morally correct’ would have to give way to action of some kind and I would have to say I think culling is inevitable in the end – unless a cheap and practical technological fix emerges of course.

      So finally, that brings us back to what can we do about water and food supplies in the future. If we want to precipitate a ‘natural’ decline in animal numbers perhaps we should stop or at least reduce the pumping of water. On the other hand, if we believe that there are not yet too many elephants then we must try to provide water points in as many places as possible so that all the Park’s food resources are used. These are huge decisions that will continue to provoke great debate and they are decisions that possibly no-one is ready to make. Here on the ground then, the only thing we can do is make sure that next year the water pumping effort is at least as good as this year and that, if possible, more of the under-utilised infrastructure is brought back into action. That will at least ensure that we don’t decide the future of the Park by default – by simply failing to do anything – and it will give time for the tough decisions to be considered. Whatever else we do, one important thing is not to panic or over-dramatise. Some time in the future the situation may become desperate but we haven’t reached that point yet and the Park will be as wonderful next year as it has been this.