Loving A Species To Death

Article originally ran in the Maine & Virginia Chapters of The Wildlife Society Newsletters in 2014. I have been a Member of TWS since 2000.

Photo courtesy of Ron Thomson Publications. I had the opportunity to meet Ron at the International Wildlife Management Symposium in British Columbia, December 2011.

Elephants are often in the news. Articles about poaching incidents, game rangers killed, arrests made, etc. bombard the general public almost weekly. Misinformation or lack of detailed information about the issues surrounding the species in rampant. Some organizations would rather use the sensationalist momentum to pay their overhead than promote on-the-ground conservation. Accurately depicting the situation in Southern Africa for the Savannah Elephant would be an inconvenient truth - well, at least, the groups would not be able to raise money in the same ways for the same purposes (i.e., eliciting an emotional response to elephant plight). Although elephants are the flagship representative of charismatic mega fauna and one of the species that contain the essence of Africa, pachyderms are the poster child for population mismanagement.

Population Status

Savannah Elephants are overpopulated. There was a time when preservation of elephants meant saving every individual animal on the planet. Similar to white-tailed deer in the early 20th Century, interested parties have done a wonderful job avoiding extinction and bolstering numbers. Now, there needs to be well thought out stewardship of the species. The threat of extinction currently comes from overpopulation.

Elephants are degrading their own habitat. By pushing over trees, affecting water quality through increased soil erosion/fecal contamination and over-grazing; jumbos have reduced the carrying capacity for dozens of species - including themselves. Elephants are one of the few wildlife species that have the luxury of walking 25+ kilometers to find water and forage. Other animals are stuck with the desertification proliferated by Africa's "sacred cow." Calf recruitment is nearly non-existent in some reserves, certainly insufficient for population maintenance.

Much Ado About Ivory

No one likes poaching. Well, perhaps the poachers. There is a difference between mortality that has a population-level effect and that which does not. Poaching rates are only able to increase staggeringly due to the sheer abundance of animals. More elephants available to poach equates to a seemingly inexhaustible resource to poachers. Local communities need real economic solutions. Escalating violence does not help anyone. Destroying stockpiles of ivory is counterproductive because now those animals truly died for nothing, a complete and total waste. Instead, use confiscated ivory to fund science-based management of elephants and their habitat. By controlling a lawful market for ivory through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), prices can be stabilized and overexploitation avoided. it is time to beat the poachers at their own game.

Sustainable-Use Conservation

Many folks may not realize there is already a lawful, regulated harvest for elephants; you just cannot sell the ivory. The difference between poaching and legal hunting is that local communities benefit in more ways than just the funds or food derived from killing an animal killed today. Businesses specializing in lodging, food and other services flourish. Hunters are often willing to travel to more remote locations and thus serve as the initial catalyst for bolstering more diverse tourism to areas that previously were not a party to the revenue streams. We manage dozens of species in North America through sustainable-use, why is it so difficult to fathom overseas?

The Future

Is it too late to correct the mistakes of the past several decades? How do we get there? Few people would advocate for wholesale culling of elephants for political reasons. However, wildlife management agencies may not want to abandon the method completely. Obviously, the meat and ivory products from animals removed by agency action or through regulated harvest must benefit local people. Otherwise, the incentives for poaching remain. If elephants continue to be managed with a hands-off approach, human-elephant conflicts will only increase in the short term. Long term, elephant populations will continue to age with decreasing numbers of calves reaching maturity. We will likely reach an inconvenient time when the aging elephants begin to die off while poaching continues to increase at an exponential rate. At the intersection, some enterprising groups will exclaim a link between the drastic decline in elephant numbers and the rampant poaching. They will raise funds with anti-poaching campaigns and work tirelessly to address a source or mortality that is not really the issue. Rather, the focus of conservation efforts must be directed at proper range management, maintaining appropriate elephant stocking rates and reducing human-wildlife conflict.

I hope we are not too late.