On the morning of 28 September 2024, at around 5 am, rangers from Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZimParks), shot a ‘problem’ elephant in the streets of Victoria Falls. This, according to authorities, came after a distress call from a resident.
The elephant was said to have left three orphaned calves, which sparked an outcry from critics and conservationists. Most felt that the action was too drastic, that there was no need to have had the elephant downed. But ZimParks has since defended its actions as necessary. The cow was, apparently, a danger to the community, and there was no record or evidence to show that it left calves.
Nevertheless, this highlights a problem that has been ongoing regarding Zimbabwe and its vast elephant population. According to an article by The Guadian, Zimbabwe is home to an estimated 100,000 elephants (twice the capacity of its parks) – the second-biggest population in the world after Botswana. Due to conservation efforts, Hwange (Zimbabwe’s biggest park) is home to 65,000 elephants, more than four times its capacity, according to ZimParks. The country last culled elephants in 1988.
Authorities claim that the elephant population is more than the country can support. This situation is exacerbated by the recent droughts that have plagued the country in the last couple of years due to climate change. As per a report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare; in 2019, over 200 elephants died in Zimbabwe due to severe drought; this phenomenon is recurring. Despite having 104 solar-powered boreholes, park authorities say it isn’t enough and no match for extreme temperatures (at times reaching up to 40 Degrees Celsius) drying up existing waterholes, forcing wildlife to walk long distances searching for food and water. The drought which has hit several southern African countries, has been worsened this year by the El Nino phenomenon. The hunt for water has taken elephants dangerously close to human habitations on the fringes of Hwange. This is just one of the effects of climate change.
The effects can be disastrous. Elephants that fall due to drought can easily attract poachers who target the dead animals for ivory, as well as produce bacteria that endanger the fauna and flora in these parks. There is a heavy stench around the elephants, which has attracted growing attention in recent years. To counter this problem, rangers have tried to identify dead elephants, detusk them before poachers find them, and disinfect the areas before diseases get out of control. However, it is hard for rangers to find all the animals on time.
Zimbabwe is not the only elephant-rich country affected by rising temperatures caused by climate change. Neighboring Namibia said this month that it had already killed 160 wildlife animals in a planned cull of more than 700, including 83 elephants, to cope with its worst drought in decades. This is the pattern of the day.
Zimbabwe, for the past couple of years, has been calling on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to lift the ban on international elephant trade. This would, according to the Zimbabwean government, help to reduce the load that elephants have on the environment and boost the country’s income revenue from the sale of elephants. Zimbabwe’s stockpile includes 130 tons of ivory and 6 to 7 tons of rhinoceros horn, the product of poaching or natural causes, estimated to be worth as much as $600 million.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) secured an agreement in 1989 among its member states (Zimbabwe is among them) to ban the international ivory trade. This disruption of the international ivory market was intended to reverse a sharp decline in the African elephant population, which resulted from widespread poaching for ivory in the previous decade. The continent’s overall population of elephants increased after the ban, but now it seems that the ban might be having a reverse effect.
Elephants are a huge tourist attraction and also contribute to the biodiversity of the regions in which they inhabit. Due to the fear of extinction, critics and conservationists are justifiably weary of the detrimental effect that could follow the lifting of international trade in elephants. To their credit, some countries including the US, have remained firm and tightened their laws regarding the ban on international ivory and elephant trade. But this still leaves African countries with the aforementioned problem of sustaining an elephant herd that is above the capacity of their natural resources. Moreover, a growing herd means that wildlife crimes continue to rise, as poachers have more animal resources to target and African economies lack funds and resources to protect all of their animals. Furthermore, the people who live in elephant-rich areas, such as Victoria Falls and Hwange in Zimbabwe, have to co-exist with the animals. Human-wildlife contact in these areas has not always been cordial. The recurring severe droughts, a direct effect of climate change, have increased human-wildlife conflicts, with 50 people in Zimbabwe killed by elephants last year (2023).
Yet, conservationists and the general populace continue to fight from opposite ends of the table.
Something has to be done about the elephant problem in Africa. On the one hand, there’s a need to ensure the protection of these magnificent and precious animals. On the other hand, climate change makes it hard to sustain Africa’s herd. Southern Africa is home to one of the world’s largest elephant populations, with over 200,000 elephants living across a conservation area that spans Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Angola, and Namibia. The benefits that these animals bring to the region’s economy, tourism, and biodiversity are beyond measure.
The question remains on whether a middle ground can be reached, between conservation of the precious animals and protection of human life and the environment that these animals inhabit. It is not a matter of how CITES, conversationalists, and the governments involved can reach a middle ground and find proper solutions to this problem. It is a matter of when – and the clock keeps ticking.