Drought-hit Zimbabwe proposes culling elephants to tackle food shortages

Zimbabwe’s government said Thursday it was considering a proposal to cull its elephant population to address food shortages and reduce the effects of an El Niño-induced drought.

“Zimbabwe has more elephants than our forests can support,” said Sithembiso Nyoni, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Environment, Climate and Wildlife. “We are in discussions with ZimParks (Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority) and some communities to do like Namibia, so that we can cull the elephants and mobilise the women to perhaps dry the meat, package it and make sure it gets to the communities that need the protein.”

Zimbabwe is one of five southern African countries that the World Food Programme says have been hit hard by El Niño-induced drought, leaving millions of people food insecure. Zimbabwe’s proposal to cull elephants follows Namibia’s recent announcement to cull 723 wild animals, including 83 elephants, to alleviate the effects of the drought and distribute the meat to communities facing food shortages.

Just as Namibia’s decision drew condemnation from environmentalists, Zimbabwe’s proposal to cull elephants will reflect badly on the country, said Farai Maguwu of the Centre for Natural Resource Governance.

“Elephants are protected by international conventions, such as CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). They are part of the world heritage,” Maguwu said. “So you can’t just decide to kill them. They are not like goats, and a person can just say, ‘I want to kill one to feed my family.’ There are rules and procedures.”

Maguwu said officials in Harare had been fighting for a long time to change these rules.

“Zimbabwe has always claimed the right to kill elephants,” Maguwu said. “We all know that when we look at the way our natural resources are being plundered at the moment, especially minerals, the idea is to sell ivory. It is not even about the local communities.”

Maguwu also said that “the government can do a lot to protect the people from the effects of drought rather than killing elephants. I think they should stop this practice.”

Zimbabwe said it had about 100,000 elephants out of a capacity of about 45,000 and had been unable to sell some of the giant animals because of CITES.

Minister Nyoni said the culling in Zimbabwe would be within the limits of the country’s law.

“If Zimbabwe had a way, we would be selling our elephants for ivory yesterday,” Nyoni said. “The people who are stopping us from selling our ivory are people who have killed their own animals. They don’t have elephants. And they don’t have the experience of this human-wildlife conflict that we’re facing. And these are the people who influence the decisions of CITES. So this is a problem that Zimbabwe is facing. (…) Some people think we should withdraw from CITES and then do what we want. That has consequences. Zimbabwe would like to be independent; we would like to take care of our own animals. But we can’t, because we are part of the global village.”

Nyoni added that Zimbabwe would continue to negotiate with other CITES members so that Harare would be allowed to trade in ivory and elephants under CITES.

Efforts to contact CITES for comment were unsuccessful Thursday.