Quest to save our tuskers
WORLD Elephant Day yesterday provided an excellent opportunity to ponder the future of this great, majestic animal. The prognosis is stark: the elephant populations are nearing a critical point and unless drastic action is undertaken, they will disappear from our wilds. And so shall part of humankind’s heritage.
In 1800 there may have been as many as 26 million elephants in Africa alone; a century ago there were an estimated 5 million. Today, there are less than half a million. On average, at least 55 elephants are killed by poachers every day for their tusks – that’s one every 25 minutes.
Their range has shrunk exponentially over the years, and they are now extinct in the Middle East, on the Indonesian island of Java, northern Africa and most of China. Almost everywhere, these majestic nomads are restricted to ever-decreasing pockets of land.
The number of wild elephants has dropped by almost a third in the last decade alone and about 20 000 are still being slaughtered for their tusks each year. The international trade in illegal ivory is estimated at more than R300 billion each year.
Why are elephants important to our lives and to nature? The National Geographic, explains eloquently: “Elephants are vital to the web of life in Africa. As a keystone species, they help balance all the other species in their ecosystem, opening up forest land to create fire breaks and grasslands, digging to create water access for other animals, and leaving nutrients in their wake. Sometimes called the ‘mega gardeners of the forest’, elephants are essential to the dispersal of seeds that maintain tree diversity.”
And more importantly, elephants are part of humanity’s heritage.
The ivory trade is a major cause of declining numbers of wild elephants, as poachers continue to hunt endangered species for their valuable tusks. In South Africa, numbers of elephants killed by poachers has jumped by almost a third, according to official figures. A total of 67 elephants were poached from the Kruger National Park, and one in KwaZulu-Natal, last year. This is a leap from 46 elephants the year before. Compared to the numbers of rhino poached in South Africa – 1 054 in 2016 and 1 028 in 2017 – the numbers look promising, but it’s just matter of time before poachers turn their full attention to ivory.
The demand for ivory must be drastically reduced, and the elephant’s habitat robustly protected – or we face a big battle to halt the decline in elephant numbers.