Scientists defend elephant culling and contraception plans amid MP pushback
· Citizen
Wildlife scientists clashed with a parliamentary committee this week over plans to cull and contracept elephants in the Madikwe and Pilanesberg game reserves.
MPs demanded to know why non-lethal options had been left unused for years, while researchers defended the rationale for a combined management approach.
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Task team explains the science behind culling and contraception
Professor Sam Ferreira, a large-mammal specialist at SanParks, told the portfolio committee on Tuesday that the task team had modelled 34 management scenarios across the two reserves before recommending a mix of culling, contraception and translocation.
According to Ferreira, the group’s central concern was not elephant numbers in themselves but the animals’ impact on vegetation, water and other species.
“The important one is that it was really about how you manage impact and not just the numbers.
“So a lot was about how one would need to induce or help with movement patterns and water access. But a really important one is actually thinking a bit about what the mechanism is and how elephants change things,” he said.
Additionally, he said that scenarios relying only on contraception had produced a paradox, since herds shrank quickly but pressure on vegetation crept back up over time.
“You may reduce immediately, but you may not be able to maintain that reduction in foliage use in the long term using this scenario,” he said, explaining why the task team had recommended combining fertility control with limited removals rather than relying on either method alone.
MPs question why lethal and non-lethal options were treated as equal
DA MP Andrew Dirk de Blocq van Scheltinga argued that the task team’s report wrongly placed non-lethal contraception on the same footing as lethal culling.
“They equated a non-lethal intervention with the lethal intervention and yet culling is surely much more traumatic for herds,” he told the committee.
Moreover, he pressed officials on why contraception, which had been offered free of charge for years, had never been implemented.
“We would have a few hundred elephants fewer to have to look at lethal management,” he said, referring to what could have happened had the programme started five to ten years earlier.
Ferreira responded that the task team had applied similar caution to both interventions because their long-term biological effects remained uncertain.
“We are not aware of any natural process that imposes broad-scale infertility for a long time on an individual elephant cow and the consequences of you simulating that,” he added.
John Power, a member of the task team responsible for on-the-ground management, admitted that the delay in rolling out contraception could not be scientifically justified.
Asked directly why it had not started sooner, he conceded that the department had missed an opportunity.
“It certainly was a missed opportunity many years ago and I cannot answer why that wasn’t done,” Power added.
Hunting described as a secondary, not primary, tool
MPs also challenged the inclusion of trophy hunting as a possible intervention, arguing it contradicted earlier assurances from the North West Parks and Tourism Board that hunting would not be used as a population management tool.
Warning that its inclusion risked damaging the reserves’ reputation as ecotourism destinations for high-paying international visitors, Balocq was blunt in his assessment.
“Hunting is a population management tool? It’s not… It’s an economic tool,” he told the committee.
Ferreira agreed that hunting had never been the starting point of the strategy.
He explained that once ecological modelling showed elephants needed to be removed through translocation or euthanasia, other opportunities could follow.
“Some of those elephants that you need to remove may also provide opportunities to have other additional secondary economic outcomes,” he added.
Chairperson of the North West Parks board, Khorommbi Matibe, told the committee that decisions on managing the elephant population would be guided by science rather than emotion.
“There is no one silver bullet,” he added, noting that officials were finalising costed management plans for both reserves, which would go to the minister for approval before any interventions began on the ground.