Pachyderms and People

Today's Staten Island Advance contained an article by Robert R. Frump dealing with the conservationalist movement to remove elephants from zoos and release them back into a natural environment where they will be protected from human influence. While at first glance this appears to be a logical remedy to the plight of these beautiful animals forced to live out their lives in captivity, the author suggests that perhaps it is an ill-conceived plan.

Mr. Frump has travelled extensively throughout Africa, affording him the opportunity to observe the successfulness of the program. He has visited elephant conservation parks and discovered that too many animals are being released into the environments. This overcrowding is adversely affecting the people, the vegetation, the land, and the other species sharing the habitat.

The author cites Kruger National Park in South Africa as an example of this phenomenon. Kruger now has a elephant population of 12,000 which is approximately double the amount that the park can adequately support. Since the elephants are protected by law from human predators, the animals can proliferate and are decimating the available food supply needed by other animals in the reserve. Park rangers have suggested that one-half of the elephant population may have to be killed in order for the park to recover from its current condition, and recovery may take as long as forty-five years.

Frump also encountered similar problems in Tanzania at the Great Selous Game Reserve. This reserve's elephant population of almost 90,000 is responsible for the direct and indirect deaths of farmers and villagers, as well as destroying the crops of some of the poorest farmers in the world. The farmers are not equipped with rifles to protect themselves or their property. The park rangers must sometimes travel great distances to assist them, are only supplied with three or four rifle cartridges, and are required by law to fire the first cartridge as a warning.

Unquestionably, the release of large numbers of elephants into game reserves has tipped the delicate ecologic balance of these habitats and placed their human neighbors in harm's way. We should not overlook the irony of this situation. Humans and elephants share much in common: we are social creatures, we nurture our offspring, we exhibit reverence for our dead, and when large numbers of us are placed in close quarters, we tend to behave poorly.