Mhudi

by Sol T Plaatje

  When I try to compare Welgevonden with Olifants, I find it really hard to come up with a finite list of pros and cons … there is something missing, and it’s not just the malaria mozzies or the heat. I think the problem is that they might seem similar, but it’s like comparing Canadians to North Americans. There are no obvious, discernable differences, yet they are different, that’s that.

  People who own property in both Welgevonden and Olifants share the same sentiments – they love both, but for different reasons. Both the reserves have their role to play in the greater scheme of things. Our Phinda host was rather too uncompromising in attitude for our liking.

  When I was converting my notes for this chapter into something resembling prose, I noted that Olifants was experiencing a period of change, having recently had some of the most rewarding elephant viewing for years. For nearly ten months there had been elephant continually on the reserve, mainly small groups of up to six young bulls. The number of individual sightings recorded by members was over 50, a record for us. There appeared to be about 12 elephant on the greater reserve area at that time, and we thought it would be wonderful if a breeding herd moved in permanently just to boost these numbers a little. That thought was high on our wish list, and it was materialising sooner than expected. The natural recruitment of elephant, endemic to the region, became a reality.

  This all highlights how privileged we are: in spite of all our warts and pimples, ‘Big Game R Us’. The natural movement of elephant in our reserve demonstrates that despite the fences, railway line, the power lines and people shining spotlights in their faces, they appear to be happy here. Most importantly, they are relatively free to come and go as they wish. Our area may not be as pleasing on the eye as the sand forests and wetlands of northern Zululand, or as dramatically beautiful as the Knysna Forest, but big game animals, especially elephant, are thriving here, and they’re here because they want to be.

  To Cull or not to Cull, That is the Question

  November 2004 … ad infinitum

  The increase in elephant numbers and the apparently destructive feeding habits of these magnificent animals has led to fears of habitat destruction. These fears have reached the point where biodiversity being adversely affected is seen as the best scenario and irreversible damage to the environment as the worst. On Balule Nature Reserve the elephant population has risen from a handful to nearly 500 in the space of 14 years, with the last five years having seen the most rapid growth of nearly 400 per cent! Consequently, the sudden impact of these numbers on the reserve’s vegetation has been cataclysmic, particularly the woody component.

  Sadly, it appears elephant are becoming their own worst ambassadors, and in some reserves where they were previously tolerated in moderate to healthy numbers, now they’re not wanted at all. The management of elephant populations by lethal culling was stopped, due in part to pressure groups who love these pachyderms. Unfortunately, as a result of this well-meant action, the numbers have been increasing exponentially while the available habitat dwindles with each day that passes. The resulting situation has now reached the point where it has turned those landowners who were willing to make land available for manageable numbers of elephant, against them.

  Recently, many private reserves have gone to great expense and erected elephant-proof fences around their properties in an effort to deny access to all elephant. Sentiment is such that many others, including those vehemently opposed to fences and who campaigned tirelessly for the removal of these barriers, are now seriously considering the same action. The majority of these landowners who are now excluding elephant from their land admit to doing so reluctantly, as they have great empathy with these icons of the African wilderness. But, these same landowners also love the landscape and other wildlife that depends on the biodiversity which is evidently under threat.

  Privately owned and managed reserves are playing an ever-increasing role in conservation outside the National Parks. Most of these reserves rely on income-generating activities for the funding required to maintain their infrastructure. Eco-tourism in its various facets (even including trophy hunting) is regarded as the most reliable source of revenue. The hunting component is, without doubt, the most lucrative, but in terms of the growing anti-hunting sentiment, is becoming less acceptable as a fund-generating option.

  We also need to be cognisant of the fact that areas dominated by elephant are losing biodiversity, and as this happens, the areas’ attraction and aesthetic appeal also diminish.

  Once investors, shareholders and tourists no longer find an area attractive they will go elsewhere. These days, I am hearing more and more comments like ‘we need to do something about the increasing numbers of elephant’ or ‘the bush is looking downright depressing’ or ‘our reserve is beginning to resemble Delville Wood.’ Worst of all, these are the murmurings of discontent from those with a fundamental love and understanding of these wonderful, intelligent, appealing creatures. These are the people who previously would only ever have uttered the word ‘cull’ in hushed tones, behind masks at secret meetings in dark places.

  Irrespective of the scientifically motivated hypothesis that this is part of a natural cycle in the bigger scheme of things, it remains a hard sell. The majority of us humans are by nature not a patient lot. We are rarely far-sighted enough to go through an apparently negative process that may only show the positive ecological benefits a few centuries hence.

  The reality is that it is ‘their’ land that the increasing population of elephant so desperately needs, but from which they are now being excluded. The full impact of the detrimental consequences of this action will take some time to be understood, but it doesn’t take rocket science to calculate the results of the fundamental physics at play.

  To my mind, given the simplest laws of nature, not only is the status quo unsustainable, in the long term there can be no doubt that the concomitant effects of being denied access to living space and having to focus their feeding on an ever-dwindling habitat, will kill elephants as surely as if they were being culled.

  As the numbers of elephant continue to grow, so does the support for alternatives to lethal culling as a means of effective population management. Unfortunately, none of the other proposals put forward to date are able to be practically implemented on the scale necessary. This dilemma is especially evident in the larger reserves, where not hundreds, but thousands of elephant need to be removed.

  Almost everyone is in agreement that unless elephant numbers are controlled, they will ultimately destroy themselves by destroying the very system that sustains them. This well-known scenario played itself out in East Africa’s Tsavo Reserve, where thousands of elephants starved to death as a result of habitat destruction. Formerly a dense woodland savanna, today Tsavo is an open grassland savanna. As I stated earlier, some may argue that this is the great circle of life in elephant ecology, and there is evidence to suggest that in certain habitats, this argument has merit.

  This theory of the great circle of life, for want of a better term, cannot be widely applied, as there are too many variables in play. In our case, here on Olifants, it would be irresponsible to allow nature to take its course. Adopting this policy could have catastrophic consequences for our biodiversity and as many fear, it may become irreversibly damaged. This is a legacy no conservationist would want to leave behind.

  Many are of the opinion that nobody and nothing should have the right, for example, to destroy baobab trees that are thousands of years old – or, as is happening, to destroy at a rapid rate all the younger specimens that would have had a remote possibility of succeeding them. In certain parts of Botswana, this cycle of eradication is complete, with not a single baobab tree with a trunk diameter of a metre or less left! Some of the older trees were providing shade and fruit when Cleopatra ruled Egypt.

  That observation gives some weight to the immense passing of time involved in us reaching our current untenable situation.

  I became disillusioned with conflicting scient
ific opinion and tired of reading modern research papers, most of which have been concluded in segments of time so fleeting and so disproportionate to the subject as to render them questionable, particularly as references to assist with elephant management. Not prepared to leave this pressing issue at that, I went back in time to when observations were made and objectively relayed without the constraints of time or deadlines, without the motivation of chasing academic qualification, political recognition or scientific correctness. This took me to an era when events were accurately recorded from keen observation as they happened and descriptions were given the detail that modern text leaves for photography to enhance.

  In an old hunting book, A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa, by Frederick Courteney Selous, I came across a description by him of an area that is virtually as untouched by man today as it was 120 years ago. Presently, more than 30 000 elephant call it home and many of us have either visited, or are familiar with, this reserve. There is ongoing debate amongst conservationists and the area is presently under the spotlight regarding its elephant population management. It is the Chobe National Park, situated in north-eastern Botswana.

  Selous writes: ‘The next day (Sunday) we continued our journey westwards along the southern bank of the Chobe, which here runs nearly due east. As we had been informed, we found that a dense continuous jungle, interspersed with large forest trees, came down in most parts to the water. This jungle-covered land rises in some places abruptly, in others in a gentle slope, leaving along the shore a margin of open ground (from 10 to 100 yards broad), covered with short grass, and formed, no doubt, by alluvial deposit. As we proceeded, traces of the presence of elephants and buffaloes became more and more frequent, we kept a sharp lookout for fresh spoor.’

  Since that time there has been no measurable interference by man that could have helped to change the Chobe, or manipulate the habitat in some way. It is clear that Selous does not appear to be describing the same area we presently know. He did not see as many elephant as we see there today; in fact, all he saw were traces of elephant. If one had to randomly mark out a square metre in Chobe today, chances are it will contain evidence of elephant! In total contrast to the jungle and forest trees he repeatedly describes, there is now only stunted scrub and large tracts of pioneer weeds. A few skeletons of what were once magnificent trees stand as stark reminders, indicating where the forest once stood. The short grass plains are now eroded, weed-strewn dustbowls!

  Why? The answer is simple. Nature was left to take its course, unchecked! And all this happened in less than 120 years – ecologically speaking, in the blink of an eye. In one paragraph, Selous has unwittingly spoken volumes on the African elephant and its influence on the habitat.

  In the controversial debate on elephant control, many supporters of the ‘leave it to nature’ option will, paradoxically, in the same passionate breath, support the drive to reverse bush encroachment in lowveld reserves. The rapid establishment and aggressive, competitive growth of the encroaching bush continues to threaten the biodiversity of the smaller private reserves in this area. Although these rapid-growing bushes and trees are a form of natural succession in response to over-grazing, fences and/or poor management, if left unchecked, this encroachment eventually chokes seep lines and clearings. The increasing woody vegetation is thirsty, resulting in a drop in the water table. This, in turn, has a negative effect on the quality of the herbaceous layer and its dependent animal species.

  The methods employed in eradication and the degree of thinning vary considerably. Most of the clearings are being re-created to resemble as closely as possible the relatively open landscape mosaic seen in aerial photographs in the years prior to fences and domestic animal husbandry. Mostly, the mosaic of mechanical clearing will reflect the landowners’ individual needs or taste.

  Renowned ecologist RJ Scholes, who conducted an extensive study on bush clearing in the Klaserie Private Nature Reserve, said that we need to remember that the lowveld is a naturally thickly wooded area and if cleared will always try to reach that climax stage. So, once established, these clearings, which are invariably overdone, need to be intensively maintained in order to keep them from reverting to thick bush. Perhaps it is not surprising that many think this is the elephant’s role in the ecosystem.

  Nowadays it appears it is socially acceptable and quite trendy in conservation circles to champion the fight against bush encroachment. To ‘cull’ unwanted bushes and trees in an effort to maintain biodiversity or to return the landscape to how it used to be (or, often, how we’d like it to be), to selectively remove trees in the interests of the ecological well-being of a system is totally acceptable. Yet to cull an elephant for the same reasons is anathema. Ironically, those very reserves that created enormous artificial landscapes which they thought should have been created naturally by elephant in the first place, are now doing everything possible to reduce their numbers. For example, nobody ever thought the elephant numbers in the Sabi Sands Reserve would grow from 17 to over 1 000 in 30 years! Needless to say, the elephant are most grateful for, in particular, the beautiful marula and knobthorn trees that were selected to help create these open areas which well-meaning man thought was the right thing to do at the time.

  As a result of elephant impact on the larger trees, these clearings bear very little resemblance today to the parkland mosaic they were originally intended to emulate.

  And it is going to get worse.

  Clearly, anyone with a pragmatic approach to conservation can see there is, in the larger systems, no practical elephant population control option other than culling. In a more hypothetical environment, though, there are only a handful of conservationists out there who don’t see contraception as a realistic and eventually viable alternative to culling.

  I believe there is an immediate need for extensive exploration of the opportunity of combining the two methods, a balanced mix of culling and contraception, of the bullet and the dart, drug and pill. But the question remains – Who will bell the cat? As Aesop observed, it’s all very well suggesting what should be done, but who will do it?

  Traditional elephant culling methods evoke ethical concerns and worldwide emotional reaction. The use of contraception as an alternative to population control of these pachyderms has long been proposed. Initially the proposed contraceptives were hormonal, such as oestrogens, androgens, progesterones and testosterone. But, they produced negative side effects. Amongst others, the contra-indications included prolonged periods when cows were sexually attractive, resulting in mothers being separated from their calves by over-attentive or aggressive bulls. Calf mortality, abortions and other placental complications, as well as cancerous growths, were also observed. It was obvious from this that this avenue had to be abandoned. So the use of hormonal contraceptives was terminated.

  The alternative lay with immuno-contraception, namely porcine zona pellucida vaccine (pZp). It is administered intramuscularly, and this basically triggers antibodies, which prevents fertilisation by blocking receptor sites for sperm on the ovum. Tests on a control population have revealed that pZp is effective for twelve months or longer and is completely reversible. The most important advantage of this method is that it can be practically implemented to a relatively large number of elephant in a reasonably short space of time. In practical terms, darts can be administered from a helicopter or a vehicle. Preliminary study on the behaviour of elephant treated with pZp is very encouraging. There is no apparent influence on elephants’ social behaviour or migratory patterns, nor is there any change in their external features.

  Research results are encouraging and appear to suggest the dart is a truly viable alternative to a bullet. The findings of Delsink et al. (2006) – a reduction of as much as 33 per cent in the population growth rate over 10 years – are indeed cause for optimism.

  At last it appears there are promising prospects of a solution to the problem of elephant population control. A side issue is that this solution could alter the age structure of the e
lephant population just as is happening with human populations in some first world countries in Europe. In smaller populations, where intensive monitoring is possible, we may need to select certain cows for breeding on a rational basis.

  Research and study in this particular field is ongoing, but it appears that this non-lethal method as a means to effect population control, especially in ‘hands on’, well-managed reserves, may prove to be a viable option.

  I have no doubt that man will help these icons of Africa to avoid self-destruction, and in the process, will help reserves, Olifants included, to maintain their critical biodiversity.

  Reflections on Youth and Nature Conservation

  From my youth …

  Watching a helicopter skilfully herding game into well-prepared capture bomas, you cannot help but stare in awe as the pilot throws the little machine around in amongst the trees. Above the throb of the motor, the occasional ‘krrrrrr’ can be heard as the rotor blades inevitably clip the highest twigs off the odd knobthorn tree, not unlike the sound of your lawnmower hitting some rough stuff hidden in the grass. The movements, although practised and effortlessly smooth, are dangerously on the edge. At an altitude of a less than 20 metres, there is absolutely no room for error.

  As the pilot explained, ‘I wear the chopper, it’s part of me.’ In other words, he didn’t fly it, he was one with the machine.

  The removal of surplus animals is a last resort and is only employed after scientific, calculated evaluation. Game capture is not a routine part of game management on Olifants, rather it is a facility to call upon as and when required. In fact, we don’t budget for, or rely on, income from game capture. The decision and degree of action taken is entirely dependent on ecological motivation. Despite the rational reasoning behind the activity, once the actual mechanics of the capture are in progress, it remains an exhilarating and exciting part of my job as a game ranger and reminds me of why I chose this path.