Jumbo-sized plan for pachyderms
For anyone to generate a significant shift, a partner with the same mindset to double the impact is needed, especially when the vision is backed by science, writes Myrtle Ryan
DR HEINZ Kohrs feels strongly that elephants should be allowed to roam the vast spaces of Africa and recently penned an impassioned letter to the Minister of Environmental Affairs to support plans for a mega transfrontier conservation corridor extending from Kwazulu-natal through to Tanzania.
Twenty years ago, Kohrs and Digs Pascoe founded the Space for Elephants Foundation. Given Pascoe’s failing health, Kohrs – who practises in Pongola and also owns the White Elephant Safari Lodge in the Pongola Game Reserve – continues to hold high the flame of their dream: a vast conservation corridor for elephants to roam from Thula-thula Game Reserve near Nkwaleni in Zululand, along the Lebombo mountain range, including the Kruger National Park and Limpopo Transfrontier Park, up through western and northern Mozambique, Malawi and into Tanzania.
It is a truly jumbo-sized vision requiring the dropping of a multitude of fences and a change of mindset.
While humans pontificate and squabble over fences, herds of elephants, some 76-strong, are already showing us the way, says Kohrs. “They have waded and swum their way along the western shores of the Pongolapoort (Jozini) Dam, and settled into the Royal Jozini Big Six in Swaziland.
“Part of the herd then headed along the dam’s eastern shores are now contentedly ensconced in Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife’s Pongola Nature Reserve East,” says Kohrs.
In so doing, the herd, complete with newly-borns, have circumnavigated fences not only demarcating different reserves, and an international border which, of course, means nothing to the jumbos.
Heike Zitzer monitors the perambulating pachyderms – a role she has played for the past nine years. She can identify each elephant by a nick or tear in an ear, a scar, the shape of its tusks. She also meticulously records scientific findings on their movements, foraging and behavioural patterns on a daily basis
Zitzer, 46, who studied nature conservation, is also studying the impact of vasectomy (surgical male sterilisation) on elephants.
“It is the only such longterm study in the world,” she says. “In the medium-term, there has been no change in the behaviour of the seven Pongola Game Reserve males that were vasectomised in 2008.
“Nor have the six elephants which have been placed on the contraceptive GNRH recently, via darting, shown any major behavioural changes yet. These bulls are still ‘mating’, blithely unaware they don’t stand a chance (of siring a calf).
Zitzer is particularly interested in how the females ultimately respond. “Will they work out that something is wrong? Will they realise that though the dominant bulls are mounting them, there is a decline in the number of babies? Will they start mating with the younger males? I am monitoring to see if there is a change in the attitudes of both sexes; the intervals between calving; and whether the females will come into oestrus more frequently.”
Zitzer goes into Swaziland for a week each month to check on the group, who have chosen to remain there, while others have moved on. As she relates the story of the arrival of two groups, known as the Family Herd, she digs deep into a veritable mine of information on elephants, much of it based on associated scientific studies using telemetery (transmission of electronic data). The elephants were translocated from Kruger to Pongola Game Reserve as a fully functioning group with a matriarch, in 1997. As a result of culling in Kruger, the Orphan Herd (a teenage elephant bond group without a matriarch or older elephants to mentor them) were also translocated to Pongola Game Reserve.
In 2000, Ngani, already living on the Pongola Game Reserve, wandered out using the underpass beneath the N2 and found his way to Milimani Game Sanctuary (now Somkhanda Game Reserve) about 50km away, where he linked up with the four females and one male of the Orphan Herd.
“When Ngani returned to Pongola Game Reserve, these orphans followed him,” says Zitzer, whose scientific work underpins the vision of Space for Elephants.
At the centre of the vision of elephants being able to move from one area to another is the active participation and empowerment of people living adjacent to the corridor areas through the creation of interrelated small businesses.
To find out more, visit www. spaceforelephants.com