Zimbabwe to cull 200 elephants amid food shortages

Elephants in  Amboseli National Park. [File, Standard]

Zimbabwe will cull 200 elephants as it faces an unprecedented drought that has led to food shortages while also tackling a ballooning population of the animals, the country's wildlife authority said Friday.

The country has "more elephants than it needed", Zimbabwe's environment minister said in parliament on Wednesday, adding that the government had instructed the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZimParks) to begin the culling process.

The 200 elephants will be hunted in areas where they have clashed with humans, including Hwange, home of Zimbabwe's largest natural reserve, ZimParks Director-General Fulton Mangwanya told AFP.

Zimbabwe is home to an estimated 100,000 elephants and has the second-biggest elephant population in the world after Botswana.

Thanks to conservation efforts, Hwange is home to 65,000 of them, more than four times its capacity, according to ZimParks. Zimbabwe last culled elephants in 1988.

Neighbouring Namibia has already killed 160 in a cull of more than 700 elephants to cope with its worst drought in decades.

Zimbabwe and Namibia are among a swathe of countries in southern Africa that have declared a state of emergency because of drought.

However, the move to hunt the animals for food was not welcomed across the board.

"Government must have more sustainable eco-friendly methods to deal with drought without affecting tourism. They risk turning away tourists on ethical grounds. The elephants are more profitable alive than dead," said Farai Maguwu, director of the nonprofit Centre for Natural Resource Governance.

"We have shown that we are poor custodians of natural resources and our appetite for ill-gotten wealth knows no bounds, so this must be stopped because it is unethical," he said.

But Chris Brown, a conservationist and CEO of the Namibian Chamber of Environment, said that "elephants have a devastating effect on habitat if they are allowed to increase continually, exponentially".

"They really damage ecosystems and habitats, and they have a huge impact on other species which are less iconic and therefore matter less in the eyes of the eurocentric, urban armchair conservation people," he said. "Those species matter as much as elephants.”