Hwange and its elephants

Gazetted in 1928, in an area devoid of permanent water, Hwange National Park can trace its success to the decision to install the boreholes that would keep animals in place. But there are those who say that this decision could turn out to be an environmental disaster for Hwange. “There were fewer than 1,000 elephants in this area in the 1920s,” wrote Dick Pitman in his 1980 book Wild Places of Zimbabwe. “Today, it is probably 13,000 or more.”

Almost 40 years later, Hwange National Park now has an estimated 46,000 elephants. The habitat is already visibly suffering, and starvation – not just for elephants but for other species too – could be just around the corner. Culling is no longer considered an option in Zimbabwe. Yet, as one perceptive research officer pointed out to Pitman in 1980: “It takes two hundred years to grow a forest, but only 20 to grow an elephant.”