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ZIMBABWE's ELEPHANTS. 2016 Letter

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ZIMBABWE's ELEPHANTS. 2016 Letter The President The True Green Environment South Africa Email: [email protected] Date: 4th August 2016 To: The Honourable Minister for the Environment, Water & Climate, Mrs Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri. ZIMBABWE GOVERNMENT. Some notes on Zimbabwe’s Elephants for consideration at CITES 2016 By Ron Thomson I spent 24 years of my young adult life in the service of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management – as a game ranger/game warden/provincial game warden (1959 - 1983). Three fifths of that time I served at Main Camp in Hwange National Park; at Binga; and in the Gonarezhou; and throughout my career the management of the African elephant was one of my passions and my all absorbing interest. I would like to pass on to you, now, some pertinent information about the elephants in all three of the above regions of Zimbabwe. This is information that I believe your delegation to the upcoming CITES meeting might find of some use. This information is also relevant to the banning of elephant trophies into the United States of America by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USF&WS). I understand that the reason for this ban is the fact that the USF&WS have doubted Zimbabwe’s ability to sustain its elephant hunting quota – but they admit that they have no scientific data to back up that opinion! (1). HWANGE NATIONAL PARK: is 13 000 sq.kms (5000 sq. miles) in extent. In 1960 I was part of the national parks team involved in that year’s October game count - conducted during the hottest and driest month of the year. In those days there were only 14 bore-holed game water supplies in the Kalahari-sand areas (7/8ths) of the park, and sundry rivers and springs in the northern basalt country (1/8th). Every animal that came 1 down to drink at these waterholes was - with the help of powerful binoculars – identified and counted by several different teams of experienced people. The count covered a 24 hour period – midday-to-midday - during the day-and-night period of the full moon. That year we counted 3500 elephants; and, following this annual census event, a full National Parks Board meeting was held at the park’s Main Camp headquarters. One of the matters discussed was the fact that the elephants were causing serious declines in the numbers of Mukwa Trees (Pterocarpus angolensis), the Mlala Palm - and several other major tree species (especially Acacias). The almost total elimination of the Mukwa Tree, however, was the main topic of discussion. Even at only 3500, there were never any tourist complaints about there being too few elephants in Hwange. Indeed, visitors were seeing hundreds of elephants every day, right throughout every dry season (June to November)! The criterion determining elephant habitat carrying capacity was also outlined at that meeting. It was defined as being the maximum number of elephants that could be carried in the game reserve without them causing irreparable and permanent damage to the habitat. And because the 1960 elephant population WAS causing irreparable habitat damage, the number 3500 was declared to be “excessive” (too many). It was then decided to test the impact of the elephants on the Hwange habitat when the population had been reduced to 2500 animals. It then became one of mine, and Game Ranger Tim Braybrooke’s, principle tasks over the next three years to hunt down every elephant (cows, calves and bulls) that crossed over the park boundary into the Tjolotjo Communal Lands beyond. This strategy enabled us to reduce the number of elephants significantly whilst, at the same time, making their meat available to the local African communities without them having to venture inside the national park. During the five years following 1960, new boreholes tripled the number of game water points in the park and this caused a massive influx of elephants from Botswana. The reduction in the number of elephants by our hunting, therefore, was more than counteracted by the numbers gained from immigration; and by 1965 the elephant population of Hwange had risen to 6000. This was more than double the number the Board had declared (in 1960) to be the ‘test’ elephant habitat carrying capacity. So the programmed ‘test’ failed. NB: I draw these numbers from my memory! They may not be exactly accurate but they are so near to the truth as to make no difference to the conclusions. 2 In 1965 annual elephant culling started inside Hwange National Park and that programme continued into the late 1980s. After the 1989 CITES meeting, however – when the sale of ivory was banned - the Zimbabwe government was unable to finance the expensive culling programmes that were then necessary. And by then, all over the country, elephant population increases were getting out of hand. Today, I am advised that Hwange’s elephants number in excess of 50 000 - which is 20 times higher than the number (2500) recommended in 1960. Hwange National Park is, therefore - in MY estimation - 2000 percent overstocked with elephants and its habitats are very different to what they looked like in 1960! The game reserve is actually starting to look like a desert Responsible and experienced wildlife managers will tell you that, to save the game reserve’s precious habitats, and what is left of its once vitally important biological diversity - as a FIRST remedial management action - Hwange’s excessive elephant population should be reduced, immediately, by 50 percent. And even that will not be nearly enough! A complicating factor is that the Hwange elephant population is but one small part of a huge and massively excessive mega-elephant-population that straddles north-eastern Namibia; south-eastern Angola; western Zambia; North-western Botswana; and western Zimbabwe (Hwange). In essence, that means Hwange (and Namibia) should be able to hunt as many elephants as these two countries realistically want to hunt, without worrying about depleting the numbers. Why? Because the elephants that the hunters kill in-and-around the surrounding game reserves will be quickly replaced with immigrants from Botswana - as happened with Hwange in the early 1960s. This mega-elephant-population must number greatly in excess of 300 000; and in 2013 Botswana’s (counted) share of it was 207 000. (2). The GONAREZHOU NATIONAL PARK: is 5200 sq kms (2000 sq. miles) in extent and very arid. It is much smaller, hotter and drier than Hwange! I was the Game Warden-in-charge of the Gonarezhou National Park from 1968 to 1974. In 1968 the Gonarezhou elephant population stood at 5000 – which was seriously damaging the game reserve habitats. Consequently, in 1971/72, I headed the national park management team that reduced this population by 2500 animals. No annual culling programme was implemented thereafter to stabilise the reduced population at 2500. 3 This omission I consider was a gross neglect of the department’s wildlife management obligations. By 1982 the population, therefore, had fully recovered and another 2500 were removed. Again no annual culling programme was instituted. So.... by 1992 the elephant population was back to its 1970 high numbers. A devastating drought that year, however, killed off thousands of game animals (including a great many elephants). Nevertheless, in 2014 the elephant population numbered in excess of 11 000. I must add that the rich and lovely riverine forest habitats that I knew on the Nuanetsi and Lundi Rivers in 1968, are now all gone. Both the sandveld and mopani deciduous woodlands have been trashed. And the remnants of the one-time hundreds of baobab trees that existed in the game reserve prior to 1965 - some 5000 years old - are all facing local extinction. NB: The loss of these giant and iconic baobab trees is a tragedy. Some of them were already 1 700 years old when Tutankhamun was pharaoh of ancient Egypt. If the same habitat carrying capacity yardstick can be used for the Gonarezhou National Park (as was determined for Hwange in 1960), then this (relatively small and much drier) national park is now some 12 000 percent overstocked with elephants. Its sustainable elephant carrying capacity is probably only about 1000 animals. NB: Given all these facts and considerations - concerning the elephant populations of both Hwange and the Gonarezhou - I find it incredible that the USF&WLS believes it is necessary for Zimbabwe to guarantee its hunting quotas from either of these two grossly excessive elephant populations. It tells me that the USF&WLS is very ill-informed about Zimbabwe’s elephants; and it causes me to wonder if that act was not part of a political rather than a biological agenda! (3). NYAMINYAMI DISTRICT (named after the Batonka River God of that name). I don’t know exactly where the Nyaminyami District is – but I presume it is the old Binga and Kariba Districts combined (i.e. the total Zimbabwean land on which the Batonka people settled after the rising waters of Lake Kariba forced them to move from the banks of the Zambezi). I worked in the Binga District for five years (1964-1968) so I know it very well. 4 I have recently been advised that one of the reasons why the USF&WLS expressed doubts about Zimbabwe being able to sustain its elephant hunting quotas, was because a few years ago (apparently) thousands of elephants in the “NYAMINYAMI” district suddenly disappeared – and nobody knows why! The IUCN (and others) blamed these losses on commercial poaching. But the remains of no illegal carcasses were found to support that thumb-suck contention. NB: I, long ago, forecast that this extraordinary elephant “vanishing trick” might happen!!! In the 1960s, an elephant researcher in East Africa (Dr.
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