Elephant population swells in Zimbabwe

[grayghost]

Bulawayo Sunday News March 16, 2008

THE population of elephants in Gonarezhou National Park continues to rise and has more than doubled the maximum number the park can carry, raising fears that the jumbos might cause extensive damage to the environment, Sunday News has established.

In an interview with the Sunday News on Thursday last week, the National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority Southern Regional Manager in Masvingo, Mr Stanley Ruswa, revealed that there were at least 7 000 elephants in the park that had a carrying capacity of only 3 000.
Mr Ruswa pointed out that the transfer of elephants to other parks in the country was not only hampered by the cost of the process, but also the condition of other parks.
Hwange National Park for example, has excess elephants and therefore it is impossible to translocate the animals from Gonarezhou to that park.
“So far we have at least 7000 to 10000 elephants in the Gonarezhou National Park that has a capacity of 3000 elephants. We cannot transfer the jumbos to the other parks because the process requires a lot of financial resources that we do not have at the moment”, said Mr Ruswa.
He added that the $1 trillion that was made available to the park by the Government was not meant to translocate the animals, but to develop the Zimbabwean side of the Great Limpopo Trans-frontier Park.
He revealed that the Trans-frontier Park initiative, which sought to combine the Kruger National Park in South Africa, the Gaza in Mozambique and Gonarezhou in the southeastern lowveld of Zimbabwe, would help alleviate the congestion. It would strive to re-establish the historical animal migration route and the fragile virginal eco-systems.
Mr Ruswa was however quick to point out that at the moment, there was no workable measures to reduce the animal population.
He said National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority used to cull the animals, but the method was no longer recommended as a way of controlling animal population.
Zimbabwe is a signatory to the convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) a convention that discourages culling as a measure to reduce animal population.
Mr Ruswa also stated that although the $1 trillion that they received from the Government was not enough to make all the developments needed in the park due to the prevailing hyper-inflationary environment, they would do what they could use the resources sparingly.
“We want to construct a Cause Way along the Runde River and many other developments, but the $1 trillion is not much considering the rate of inflation. We will however always do whatever we can. Electricity has since been connected and we are in the process of advertising for tenders so that work could begin,” said the regional manager.
He revealed that the elephants were causing extensive damage to the environment and that the problem would continue unabated until the Great Limpopo Trans-national Park was complete.
Fears abound however that the elephants might encroach into the areas of human habitation if no stopgap measures were put in place to control the population.