Elephants in KwaZulu-Natal face culling because of overcrowding

South Africa is grappling with an elephant population problem because there is not enough land in public and private game reserves. 

This is according to Vuyiswa Radebe, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife’s executive manager for biodiversity conservation, who was giving an update on the estimated 35 elephants that escaped from KwaZulu-Natal’s Mawana Game Reserve (MGR) into the Mawana and Ekudubekeni areas.

Ezemvelo had considered relocating the elephants but other Southern African Development Community countries had the same problem of limited land in protected areas.

“We discovered that nobody wants elephants in the country, and nobody wanted elephants outside of our country,” she said.

There are an estimated 30 000 elephants in South Africa on private and state game reserves, including Kruger National Park, which far exceeds the ecological carrying capacity, Radebe said.

“It is clear that we have a crisis in our hands as a country, not just in the province. Our elephant populations have reached carrying capacity in most conservation areas, and something needs to be done,” she said.

“We are looking at half of these numbers as what should ideally be sustainable. We are way over the limit.”

The free-roaming elephants in the Mawana and Ekudubekeni areas have caused the death of one person, the destruction of crops and children being chased by elephants.

Radebe said the problem stemmed from the growing elephant population in the reserve. 

Ezemvelo granted permits to the private reserve owned by the Van der Walt family for the introduction of 10 elephants in 2003 and five more in 2004. 

Radebe said the reserve’s fences had deteriorated, leading to frequent elephant escapes. She added that “the animals roam outside because there is more food and water in the surrounding areas than inside the reserve”. 

This has led to dangerous encounters between humans and elephants. Ezemvelo has paid out R12 million in compensation over the past 10 years following cases of human/wildlife conflict in the province.

She recounted several incidents of human/wildlife conflict in the Mawana and Ekudubekeni areas, including how, in 2020, a man was trampled to death while chasing elephants back into the reserve.

“We have been receiving incidents of animals escaping, animals being seen in the communities causing damage, threatening people’s lives,” Radebe said. “There was a point where community members called us and said the kids, to deter the elephant from attack, had to throw a backpack and run for their lives.”.

She said an incident in March this year, when a boy herding cattle in March 2024 had survived an attack, had been “a wake-up call”.

“We realised that something ought to be done, and it was something that needed to be done at high speed,” Radebe said. 

Ezemvelo was preparing to issue a compliance notice regarding the roaming elephants to the MGR in April this year, when the reserve sent an email advising that the elephants did not belong to it. 

On 29 August a farm owner near Vryheid complained to Ezemvelo that elephants had entered his property. A helicopter was dispatched to conduct a census, which found there were nine animals on the farm.

Radebe said Ezemvelo had made use of a standing permit which allowed them to kill the nine elephants because they posed a potential threat to property and human life, which had caused an outcry from conservationists.

Solutions proposed by conservation organisations such as Elephants Alive, Humane Society International (HSI), LionsExpose and Project Rhino were presented at a meeting with local communities, the Van der Walt family and Ezemvelo on 19 November. 

The HSI proposed that a helicopter be used to push elephants into an emergency holding area that should be fenced in three months; that the elephants be collared; that a reaction unit be equipped with tools such as drones; and that the elephants’ population growth be controlled with the use of contraception.

Elephants Alive said it would work with the HSI to train elephant shepherds and that it had had discussions with community members to identify an area in which to push the elephants.

The Van der Walt family suggested that the elephants be herded into the reserve’s boundaries and that they be collared and monitored within a geofenced area in the centre of the game reserve. 

A geofence is a virtual boundary defined by radio frequency or GPS that triggers a response when something enters or leaves the area.

The family said they would repair the physical fence around the reserve.

Radebe said Ezemvelo and the conservation organisations did not have the funds to implement the solutions. Furthermore, land for the proposed elephant “emergency” holding area had not yet been identified.

“Whatever we do, we are going to be damned. We are damned if we do it, and we are going to be damned if we don’t do it. So we still have to keep the balancing act until somebody comes with a possible solution that is going to be accepted by everybody,” Radebe said.

She said Ezemvelo would “keep balancing” the situation but it would use its permit to kill elephants in situations where people’s lives are under threat.