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| author/source:Times (UK) |
| published:Fri 6-May-2005 |
| posted on this site:Fri 6-May-2005 |
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| Article Type : News |
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By Jonathan Clayton
Zimbabwe, which is struggling with chronic shortages in everything from fuel to food, claims that it has at least one huge surplus - elephants. The Government’s wildlife and parks department says that there are 60,000 more elephants than can be sustained in the wild and has invited local farmers to buy them to populate remote ranches and private game reserves. Wildlife experts dispute the Government’s figures and say that the proposed sale is a ploy to create the impression that the country’s game parks, which have been devastated by poaching and mismanagement over the past five years, are well run. Maurice Mutsambiwa, director of the National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, said that Zimbabwe now had 100,000 elephants, against a sustainable population of 45,000, and gave a warning that if current trends continued the country faced a major ecological disaster. “Ideally we should have one elephant on 1sq km (0.4sq ml) but we have a situation in places like Hwange National Park, the Zambezi Valley and Gonarezhou National Park where we have four elephants per sq km,” he said. Mr Mutsambiwa said that because of their heavy concentration in certain areas the elephants were damaging vegetation and driving other species to extinction. “Vegetation will be destroyed and water will run out in the parks,” he said. His authority is inviting tenders from farmers interested in buying elephants.
But the move has angered conservation experts, who cast doubt on the Government’s claims. There has been no proper count of the elephant population for many years. They said that there was a real danger that small-scale farmers would buy the elephants on the cheap and then allow the animal to be poached on their land. “If they allow an illegal hunter to kill it, the going price is about £4,000. Or they could use it for meat. There is no way a farmer with some 2,000 hectares can support elephants on his land,” Johnny Rodrigues, of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, said. John Worsley-Worfwick, of the Justice for Farmers campaign group, said: “They (the Government) are trying to give the impression there is a healthy situation. The food situation is so bad here that people have been killing elephants for meat, and officials have been dealing in ivory on the side.” He added: “There are no private individuals who want an elephant in the back yard. It is nonsense.” The Standard, the Zimbabwean newspaper, has reported that one national park was instructed to slaughter elephants in order to feed villagers at Independence Day celebrations last week. President Mugabe’s Government, which won re-election last month in a poll that the Opposition and Western governments maintain was rigged, reacted angrily to suggestions of a food shortage, but has admitted plans to import 1.2 million tonnes of maize in the next few months. Elephants have been protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) since 1989, but in 1997 rules were relaxed to allow Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to cull a limited number and sell a portion of the resulting ivory stocks under regulated trade. “Culling is a very scientific process. They just don’t have the ability to do it properly any more. They just want to try and hide what is really happening out there,” Mr Rodrigues said.
Southern African nations, where game parks and reserves are traditionally well run and the animals protected, have long argued for a relaxation in CITES rules to allow them to trade in ivory stocks built up from large-scale culling. Many also want to make private hunters pay “trophy” charges for killing the unwanted animals. Mr Rodrigues said that individuals can pay up to £5,400 each for an elephant “trophy”, but that Zimbabwe - one of only a handful of countries which allows licensed hunting - was now trying to fix the price to the hunter at more than £12,000. Meanwhile, he said that it was possible for a farmer to “buy” a Zimbabwean elephant for just over £1,000. “The potential exists for huge profits and abuse, but we will have to see what happens when the tenders come in. I do not think they are serious about this. Our herds have been hit by poaching and mismanagement. They want CITES to give them permission to cull many more, saying they have tried everything else.” Ivory poaching devastated Africa’s elephant population between 1979 and 1989. In some countries, notably Sudan, Mozambique and Angola, elephants were almost wiped out. Today, the total African elephant population is put at between 500,000 and 600,000, but the herds have recovered much more quickly in southern Africa.
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