ElephantVoices shared a link. 10 hours ago Namibia continues to create serious problems for themselves, with their own elephants about to pay a high price. In a 2011 survey Kunene (where the desert elephants live) had approximately 314 (NOTE: 95% confidence intervals plus or minus 154) elephants, with Namibias own Ministry of Environment and Tourism as the source (tinyurl/mjto24e). Conservationists who know this population well claim that the current figure is closer to one third that estimate, with poaching, hunting and habitat loss as the main factors behind the decline. We havent been there, and cannot endorse any figure, but will state the following: Lets say that 300 is the correct figure. Lets say that the population is made up of 50% males (which is never the case even in well protected populations because males suffer higher mortality). But lets say, for sake of argument, that 150 are males. And lets estimate that like other populations of elephants about 19% of those males are over 25 year old (big enough to begin to be of interest to a hunter, though still pretty small). In a normal population males normal dont begin breeding until they are older than 30, or even 35 years old. But using our figures that leaves only 28 biggish males. The Namibian Government says that it is fine to remove 6 of these remaining males? What if the elephant conservationists are correct and there are only 100 desert adapted elephants left? The number of males over 25 plummets to about 10, or which hunters are to claim 6. Whether the population numbers 300, 200 or 100 - killing 6 of the breeding males will significantly change the dynamics of this rather small population. We suggest that the Namibian Government needs a course in mathematics and in elephant biology. We strongly disagree with those who call this good conservation practise. It is not. It is a practice that threatens the future of the Namib desert elephants. We urge the Namibian Government to rethink their call to hunters to decimate this unique population of elephants. Hunting desert elephants for meat raises a storm – and denials | Daily Maverick dailymaverick.co.za Don Pinnock is an associate of Southern Write, a group of top travel...
Posted on: Wed, 11 Jun 2014 05:58:30 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015