In Zimbabwe, too many elephants — and not enough land
HWANGE NATIONAL PARK, Zimbabwe — It is quiet at the waterhole during the heat of the day, but as the sun sinks they come: herd after herd of elephants, some 50 strong, their grey bulks lumbering in.
As they draw closer they break into a run. But there is already a crowd around the channel, which is fed by a nearby borehole. Then the pushing and shoving starts, along with rumbling, roaring, and shrieking. The fights are increasingly violent.
There was at least one dead adult elephant at each waterhole we saw. At one there were five. Twice in three days we witnessed an adult elephant totter, crumple to the ground, and lie still.
Prides of fat, swollen-bellied lions occupy the edges of several of the pans. Each morning there will be a new dead baby elephant, brought down in the night.
Unlike the rest of Africa, where elephant populations have become endangered, southern Africa’s have trebled in size in the past 50 years and their sheer numbers now threaten their own existence.
Large areas of once grand Hwange National Park are bare, the dead trunks of great hardwood trees stunted; swaths reduced to leafless scrub.
Hwange, in western Zimbabwe, has an elephant population estimated at 35,000, far greater than the environment can sustain.
Adult elephants consume about 150 kilograms of green vegetation and 120 litres of water a day. But it is difficult to see where either is available here. Reports from the rest of the region describe similarly destroyed habitats.
Hwange’s elephants are part of what naturalists call a metapopulation of the animals in the area where the Zambezi and Chobe rivers converge.
“The distance they are having to travel to get a decent meal is getting longer and longer because of the destruction around waterholes,” says David Cumming, a former deputy director of Zimbabwe’s National Parks.
“Once they get to distances they cannot cope with, there could be a major die-off.”
Zimbabwe and South Africa used to cull their elephants, but the killings were halted in response to the influential campaigns of Western animal rights groups.
“Culling is no longer an option because of the numbers you would need to destroy,” Dr Cumming said. “It would have to be a massive operation.”
In 1970, a quarter of Kenya’s elephant population, then 40,000 animals, died in three months during a severe drought. But mass deaths in Hwange have been prevented because local groups raise funds to keep the boreholes going.
Patrick Ndlovu is a game scout in charge of a small camp where he has made a sculpture garden out of elephant skulls.
“They are given water so they survive in the dry season,” he said. “So there are more and more elephants, but no food. Disaster is coming.”