Elephant Management and Poaching in South Africa

[Richprins]

The rule seems to be that nature must take its course unless the damage is caused by humans, such as poaching or snaring?

[Lisbeth]

That's what they are saying at the end. Shooting the baby is not only cruel, it is also against the rules and only wounding it is criminal

[Richprins]

Hawks seize elephant tusks worth R400k at luxury KZN estate
18 November 2021 - 16:23
Suthentira Govender Senior reporter
The Hawks arrested two people after elephant tusks were found at a residence in Zimbali. File photo.


Elephant tusks with an estimated street value of R400,000 have been seized from a residence at the upmarket Zimbali Eco Estate on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast.

Hawks spokesperson Capt Simphiwe Mhlongo said the bust took place on Tuesday.

Two men, aged 27 and 57, were arrested for possession and dealing in elephant tusks.

“It is alleged that members received information about suspects selling elephant tusks. An undercover operation was conducted at Zimbali Eco Estate, and members swooped in on the suspects’ residence,” said Mhlongo.


“Upon searching the premises, members found 1.3kg of ivory pieces, 14 warthog teeth, 19 pieces of sperm whale teeth, four ivory carvings, two hippo teeth, 47 ivory chopsticks and 15 elephant tusks with a street value of about R400,000.

“The two suspects were placed under arrest and charged accordingly.”

They were expected to appear in court on Wednesday next week.

The Zimbali Estate Management Association said in a notice to residents on Thursday it was aware that the Hawks “are investigating a case of alleged contraband violation and that some items could have been stored on a private property within the estate.

“We will not be commenting further on unfounded speculation which could hamper sensitive police enquiries,” the association said.

TimesLIVE


https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/sout ... zn-estate/

[Lisbeth]

BUSHVELD BLUNDER

Two dead elephants raise questions on relocation from Mpumalanga ‘sanctuary’


Elephants Kasper and Kitso at the Hazyview Elephant Sanctuary in Mpumalanga. (Photo: Supplied)

By Don Pinnock | 04 May 2022

They were named Kasper and Kitso and charmed thousands of visitors to the Hazyview Elephant Sanctuary in Mpumalanga. The two animals were sedated before a move to the Western Cape, but never woke up. They have been buried without an autopsy. Why?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The deaths of two Mpumalanga elephants have provoked hand-wringing, controversy and accusations of negligence.

Their owner says he’s heartbroken — a former employee says that’s not possible because he’s heartless. The vet insists it was the worst day of his life. A provincial official reckons the relocation was probably mishandled. The trucker says he doesn’t know what went wrong. And a conservation organisation has tracked a history of questionable actions by both owner and vet.

There are clearly many sides to this story. You be the judge.


One of the elephants being dragged into a container with its trunk jammed under the grid. (Photo: Supplied)

Their owner, Craig Saunders, who claims he and his wife are heartbroken, says he hired an experienced vet to do the relocation but, not being a vet, can’t say what went wrong.

“They were darted, then didn’t get up again. They expired while they were down. They were down for quite a long time. The vet said, ‘don’t stress’. He’s darted thousands of elephants, that’s why I decided to use him.

“They’ve been with me for 20 years. It’s like losing a child.”

Saunders said both elephants were “contented” at Hazyview until 2018, when the neighbouring farm was sold, reducing the additional area used for traversing. Surrounding farms were being planted with macadamia and coffee.

“The land was bought by farmers and along with this came the use of pesticides and chemicals and helicopters, all of which are highly negative environmental factors. I, therefore, had no choice but to move the animals to safer territory with more control over their surrounding environment.”

Saunders planned to take them to his property, Lamloch, near Kleinmond in the Western Cape, where there was plenty of space and lots of water. Kaspar, he said, particularly loved water.

There are other views on what could or should have happened.

The two dead elephants were, until recently, used for elephant-back riding by tourists. Training these animals to allow intimate human interactions is universally acknowledged to be cruel, using unacceptable methods which include pain. So the idea of them being “contented” is questionable.

According to Michele Pickover, who runs the EMS Foundation, a social justice NGO, if Saunders loved his elephants so much, he should have rewilded them and not attempted to truck them off to his Kleinmond business, Elephant Ventures Africa CC.

She added that the area had a high veld fire risk, that the only water was a sensitive estuary and the area was unsuitable for elephants. For these and other reasons, both EMS Foundation and the Pro-Elephant Network had requested Cape Nature to refuse transfer permits to Lamloch.


The truck hired to transport the elephants. (Photo: Supplied)

Pickover didn’t accept the claim of a pesticide risk since relocation was planned before spraying took place. She also contested the claim that Hazyview or Lamloch were sanctuaries.

“A true wildlife sanctuary,” she said, “is a safe place where wild animals that have been injured or legitimately rescued from abuse may live in peace and dignity and where they will not be bred, exploited commercially, traded or coerced. These places are not sanctuaries.”

Pickover said they had received information that in a previous attempt, the two elephants were loaded into a shipping container and attempted to break out at a Hazyview petrol station, forcing the relocation to be abandoned. Saunders did not respond to a request for comment regarding this incident.

A former employee at Hazyview, who asked not to be named, said she didn’t buy the heartbreak story.

“The elephants were just a way to make money. Saunders seldom came to the sanctuary. He was just interested in the figures. You really need to take everything he says with a grain of salt.

“Hazyview was starting to lose money. That’s why he wanted to move them,” said the former employee.

Pieter Luus, who runs the trucking company hired to transport the elephants, said they appeared to die from handling that went wrong.

“I’m not a vet, but what happened was that the windpipe of the first elephant closed. I’m not sure why the second one died, but I know that both were darted at the same time and that wasn’t clever. You should do it one at a time.”


One of the now dead elephants. (Photo: Supplied)

He then used his crane to load the carcasses and take them back across the road to the sanctuary where they were buried in the parking lot. No autopsy was carried out.

Ernst Rohm, a game manager at the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency, which licenced the relocation, said Douw Grobler, the vet in charge of the move, was too experienced to have overdosed the darting, but supported Loos’ opinion that the animals died from the way they were handled afterwards.

When Daily Maverick contacted the NSPCA, they said they did not know about the incident, but would initiate an inquiry. They said an autopsy needed to be done to establish the reason for the deaths. That might not be possible.

A bystander who witnessed the attempted relocation said the elephants were darted on Saunders’ Hazyview property, then moved across the road to someone else’s property to load them.

“The first elephant to arrive was Kitso, the smaller of the two. He never made it… something went wrong and he died. I thought they would abort the mission, only to find they were bringing Kasper as well. Kasper also never made it.

“The people involved with the mission were extremely hostile and became aggressive when bystanders questioned the process. They buried the elephants in the parking lot without an autopsy. It’s as if they were hiding something.”

Daily Maverick was sent a photo of one of the elephants which had apparently been lifted by its legs using a crane and was lying on its side being winched on to what appeared to be a container. Its trunk was jammed under the ramp. It’s not clear whether the picture was taken before or after the animal died.

Grobler appears to confirm handling problems, although his report was promised but not supplied by the time of publication. In a telephonic interview, he said the operation was “the worst day of my career as a wildlife vet. Taking responsibility and taking the lives of animals in your hands is part of our lives… losing them is not. Especially in this case. I have moved thousands of elephants.


Elephants Kasper and Kitso at the Hazyview Elephant Sanctuary in Mpumalanga. (Photo: Supplied)

“I know what I do and what can be done. In this scenario, we had limits on equipment and performance of equipment and it cost us dearly.”

Grobler must have had several other worst days in the past. He was head of Kruger Park’s game capture unit but was fired in 2001 for the unauthorised sale of animals from the park’s disease-free buffalo breeding project. Then, in 2012, he was charged with possessing and distributing scheduled veterinary medicines.

He was arrested with hunting safari operator Hugo Ras over allegedly supplying a rhino poaching syndicate with M99, a drug also called etorphine which is used to dart rhinos to enable the removal of their horns. The case against Ras dragged on for more than a decade and he was eventually sentenced to 29 years in jail. Grobler turned State witness and escaped prosecution.

Some digging unearthed questions about Saunders as well. He has other elephants on his properties at Hartbeespoort Dam and in Knysna. It has been reported that five came from 24 wild females and six males, ranging between two and five years old, which were forcibly taken from their families in 1998 in the Tuli region of Botswana and sold in South Africa to zoos, circuses and elephant-back safaris.

Footage of the elephants’ training, abuse and suffering was leaked to animal welfare organisations and the public, eliciting outrage. Saunders was reportedly deeply involved in the “training” of some of these elephants.

According to a group of concerned conservation organisations, “Saunders may say that his elephants are treated kindly, but their capture and training is a practice based on totally unacceptable methods and techniques. Ongoing training to keep the elephant ‘obedient’ is done out of sight of the public.”

The South African Tourism Association does not promote or endorse any interaction with wild animals, such as petting of wild cats or interacting with elephants. These are wild animals and they sometimes retaliate.

Incidents

Three incidents have been reported at Saunders’ elephant businesses: in 2013, an elephant handler was trampled to death by two elephants. In another incident, one was gored in the chest. Then, in April 2007, two British tourists were seriously injured by an elephant.

There have also been questions about the suitability of Lamloch for elephants. A report by three of South Africa’s top elephant specialists, Michelle Henley, Marion Garai and Lucy Bates, said that by Saunders’ own admission, elephants on his property would not be free-ranging but “guided by handlers… and supervised”.

“Constant supervision and guidance are not consistent with good welfare practices. Structured programmes, limited ranging guided by handlers and supervision of foraging do not equate to free-ranging.”

Tourists, they said, would “get to see a couple of bored elephants with a broken-down social structure, which may manifest as dangerous behaviour or aggression towards their handlers and the viewers.”

We are left with questions about who is responsible for the botched relocation and why, for a start, were the elephants in captivity? Was Saunders moving the elephants for their wellbeing or because his outfit was losing money which he hoped to recoup at Lamloch?

Were the elephants overdosed by Grobler or were they inexpertly handled in the relocation disaster? Did Loos have elephant relocation experience? Who had overall responsibility for the move?

For two elephants now rotting in a Hazyview parking lot, these questions are no longer relevant. DM/OBP

[Lisbeth]

For some people they are only animals, so who cares I wonder if they were insured Most likely not, who would ensure an elephant

There are still too many of that kind of places and people going there are too ignorant about how come a wild animal is not "wild" anymore

[graham]

There has been a lot of opposition to having an elephant "sanctuary" at Lamloch and it is painfully obvious that the only motive is financial gain. The property borders the Rooisand Nature Reserve where there are wild horses. There are no trees at all, it is right on the sea.

WHY did Cape Nature give him a permit ? (Needs further explanation)

[Lisbeth]

Cause of death of elephants Kasper and Kitso revealed

The two iconic elephants of Hazyview Elephant Sanctuary, Kasper and Kitso's cause of death has come to light.

May 5, 2022

The duo died while under sedation during relocation efforts from the Lowveld to Kleinmond Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Cape on April 23. They died due to mechanical issues with the cranes used to move them, causing them to be under sedation for longer than usual.

The owner and the custodian of the elephants, Craig Saunders, said the two bulls did not respond to reversal drugs designed to wake them up, and this resulted in their deaths.

“The agency responsible for issuing the permit for the relocation process from Hazyview to Kleinmond, the MTPA, launched a procedural enquiry following the deaths of Kasper and Kitso, requesting a full report from the supervising veterinarian, Douw Grobbler, also well known for his considerable experience in elephant relocation. We have followed all the procedures, and a post-mortem was conducted by a qualified veterinarian, and the cause of death was discovered. We are still devastated by the loss of our two beloved elephants. They will be missed by people who used to visit the Hazyview Elephant Sanctuary, the animal carers and my family,” said Saunders

“Kasper and Kitso’s habitat in Hazyview had come under increasing social and environmental pressure. There was a helicopter spraying crops in the area, which posed an adverse effect on the elephants’ health and their habitat. Unfortunately, we could not expand the size of their existing location, and so it was essential to relocate them to a new space just outside Kleinmond to live out the rest of their days,” Saunders said.

The MTPA was unavailable for comment.

[Klipspringer]

Talk by Ian Whyte

[Richprins]

Klippies!

Another expert warning of the coming overpopulation disaster.

[Lisbeth]

Pongola’s elephant management crisis

Posted on June 28, 2022 by Malcolm Thomson in the OPINION EDITORIAL post series.


An elephant photographed in Pongola Game Reserve during a lengthy period of drought

EDITOR’S COMMENT: Pongola Game Reserve in northern KwaZulu-Natal is home to an impressive array of wildlife, including four of the Big Five (excluding lion), hippopotamus and crocodile. The reserve (and in particular, one of its main landowners, the Karel Landman Trust) recently broke the news that it would no longer be keeping elephants on its property. In this opinion editorial, the general manager for Pongola Game Reserve, Malcolm Thomson, explains the management challenges that led the KLT to this decision. Africa Geographic has provided the reserve with the platform to lay these issues out on the table from the perspective of private landowners as a case study for how these practicalities play out on the ground. Views are the author’s own. One thing is clear: there are no easy answers when it comes to managing elephant populations in small reserves and finding humane and practical solutions to real problems.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

By Malcolm Thomson – General Manager: Pongola Game Reserve
The current situation regarding elephant management and maintenance of elephants on private property in South Africa has led to many private landowners who have elephants on their property having to rethink their positions on whether to keep them there. Many reserves are not dependent on the tourism value of these elephants. Current legislation, and the national norms and standards regarding their management, place so many restrictions on elephant management that, for many, it is no longer practical, viable or economically sustainable to host elephants.

Many years ago, when legislation in South Africa changed to allow private landowners to own the wildlife on their property, wildlife numbers increased substantially due to the establishment of many private game reserves and because wildlife had value. It became viable to maintain and manage wildlife on a sustainable-use basis (through both consumptive and non-consumptive utilisation). This benefited wildlife to such an extent that more land is conserved on private property in South Africa today than in state-owned reserves. Conservation can be defined as “the wise, sustainable utilisation of our natural resources”. Elephants are just one species of many that private landowners manage towards the goal of wise, sustainable utilisation.

The current restrictions on elephant management are set to reverse the above gains made in private wildlife management. Elephants will soon begin to disappear off private property as they no longer have any benefit to the private landowners, who are prevented from maintaining a viable and productive conservation business. If the current situation continues, one will probably only find elephants in state parks and a small number of private game reserves in the future.

Pongola’s position

Pongola Game Reserve has been in operation for nearly 50 years. The PGR’s (namely the Karel Landman Trust’s) revenue streams come from various sources. These include accommodation, ecotourism activities as well as consumptive utilisation (editor’s note: ‘consumptive wildlife utilisation’ in the wildlife industry refers to hunting, harvesting for the commercial sale of meat, local consumption, and the capturing and selling of live wildlife). We are dependent on our wildlife business to survive financially.

We can’t afford to subsidise species with utilisation restrictions, especially if they also destroy habitats that other species depend on. Elephants are major habitat changers and, if not managed in balance with the other species in a reserve, may degrade that habitat. This is happening in many of the habitats where elephants are present.

It is hard to argue that elephant populations in South Africa are in crisis, as many try to. Most elephant populations in South Africa substantially exceed the carrying capacities of the properties on which they occur. This is directly due to the legislative management restriction imposed by the government. The only crisis is that there are far too many elephants and nowhere for them to go.

Elephants in Pongola


Elephants at the water’s edge in Pongola Game Reserve

In our case, Pongola Game Reserve was sold the vision of creating a transfrontier park (across South Africa and Eswatini) by the state. This has never materialised. We introduced elephants in 1997 as part of the transfrontier park vision. At the time, there were no restrictions placed on elephant management and they were managed in the same way as we manage all our other species, which is as it should be. Restrictions were only placed on their management in 2008 when the government issued National Norms and Standards for the Management of Elephants in South Africa. This was when our problems began.

Income through sustainable utilisation

Before detailing our challenges, it needs to be made clear that we own the elephants by definition of the law, and they are our assets. We carry 100% of their management costs. The government does not contribute financially to their management. Despite this fact, the state dictates how we are permitted to manage them. Our business is sustainable-utilisation based, and this is how we successfully manage all our other species, yet we are restricted on the management of our elephant.

Pongola Game Reserve cannot continue to run a business with the current unrealistic restrictions on the sustainable use of certain species. The associated red tape results in loss of potential income for the private wildlife industry. Landowners will resort to commercial farming due to their wildlife business becoming unviable – undoing the excellent progress made on land under conservation and reversing the increases made in wildlife numbers in South Africa.

Desperate times

One practical example of how this plays out is right on our doorstep, where one landowner, whose property previously formed part of the Pongola Game Reserve, changed his land use back to agriculture. This was due to the impracticalities associated with the excessive elephant numbers on the reserve and the financial implications. Once habitat for black rhinos, elephants and other wildlife, that area is now cleared of vegetation and planted with sugarcane.

Another example demonstrates the unmoving stance taken by the state. Pongola experienced a devastating drought between 2014 and 2020, which resulted in the reserve needing to cull a large number of zebra, blue wildebeest and impala to enable other species to have a better chance of survival. We also applied for the culling of 86 elephants as the population was already way above the reserve’s carrying capacity of 30 elephants. Our pleas were ignored with no sympathy or understanding for our situation.


Pongola Game Reserve is unable to balance tourism income with the costs of keeping elephants

Restrictions on elephant management

Several conditions need to be met before managers can be permitted to implement any lethal management solutions for elephants. While our previous management plan included approval for the hunting of a certain number of elephant bulls, the management plan for the next 10 years is currently under review. Until the plan is approved, we cannot hunt any bulls.

Among the conditions that need to be met before lethal management is approved, our most significant challenges are:

Range manipulation – provide proof that management is unable to expand the land available to the elephant:
There is only so much one can do to achieve “land expansion”, so this option is mainly unrealistic and is a temporary solution. All this does is delay the inevitable need to decrease numbers, as the population will become too large for an expanded property.

Translocation – provide proof that management is unable to find alternative properties to which excess elephants can be moved (involving capture and relocation):
The fact is that new properties to which elephants can be moved are scarce. For property owners with suitable habitats, many already have too many elephants themselves or don’t want to take elephants due to the current unrealistic management restrictions.

Contraception – implement contraception program on the females:
Contraception has no practical population management benefits. All it does is create an ageing population over a period of time. We do not believe that contraception is an ethical solution. Furthermore, it is a costly exercise.

The above conditions need to be met before one can revert to lethal management through culling and hunting. It takes years to reach this point, and in the time being, the elephant population continues to grow unchecked, with all the negative ramifications to the surrounding environment that go along with it. Properties need to monetise the population somehow to spend money on the population sustainably. For us, the only positive income balance to come from elephants is through controlled hunting.

While up until recently we were allowed to hunt bulls, we have not had access to these bulls for hunting. Elephants previously roamed the section of the Pongola Game Reserve northeast of the (N2) highway – within a total area of 8,497 ha in size (including Dubula and the PGRE property – see map below). During the drought when Pongolapoort Dam levels were low, and due to overpopulation, the elephants moved around the boundary fences at the dam onto the Royal Jozini Big 6 Private Estate in Eswatini. After that, a large portion of the population moved around the northern side of the dam back into South Africa onto the eastern shores of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife’s Phongolo Nature Reserve. There is a standard game fence (with electric strands) between Dubula and the Phongolo Nature Reserve, but the low water levels enabled elephants to move to Phongolo.

While water levels have now risen, elephants can still, and do, cross on occasion. The elephants are still in Royal Jozini Big 6 Private Estate and Phongolo Nature Reserve, with the occasional movement of some elephants into Pongola Game Reserve. Neither Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife nor the Royal Jozini Big 6 Private Estate will permit any lethal management (in the form of hunting or culling) while the elephants are still on their properties. Due to the high numbers of elephant they will continue to occupy these new areas. Without culling and hunting, the elephant population will continue to reach high numbers.

Furthermore, the 2022 hunting and export quota for elephant, black rhino and leopard has been suspended, due to a court application by The Humane Society International – Africa against the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, for not following due process in the allocation of these quota. As such Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife will not be issuing any hunting or export permits for these species.


The property lines between Pongola Game Reserve, Phongolo Nature Reserve and Royal Jozini Big 6 Private Estate show how elephants were able to move between properties when water levels were low during times of drought.

Legislation states that, when culling, managers need to cull an entire herd at once (and not just a portion of the herd or selectively cull individuals over time). This brings challenges of its own. Practically speaking, how would one dispose of 85 carcasses simultaneously? In a country where poverty and hunger are all around us, you cannot waste a valuable protein source.

We should be permitted to manage our elephants the same way we do all our other species. The argument that elephants are more “special” than other species is not valid: all species should be managed under similar principles.

Due to all of the above, it is not practical, beneficial or economically viable for Pongola Game Reserve to continue maintaining elephants.

Our decision to remove elephants in the near future has resulted in the engagement and the attention of the National Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife indicated that they are currently drafting a proposal (for the bigger picture and Pongola area) which is awaiting approval from their head office before being submitted to us for discussion. It became clear through our engagement that we are not unique regarding our concerns, as there are many other private properties currently in the same position. DFFE has undertaken to investigate improvements in this regard.

Our decision to remove elephants will stand unless the ‘bigger picture proposal’ being developed by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife is beneficial to the goals of our elephant management. Similarly, if the new National Norms and Standards for the Management of Elephants in South Africa being drafted by the government are not beneficial to the management of elephant on private property and our goals of sustainable utilisation, then there is no point in keeping the elephant and a decision will need to made on how to achieve their removal. This will take some time to implement, as this on its own brings several logistical issues.

Rethinking the future of elephant management

The reality for the private wildlife industry and the business of conservation is that the adage of “if it pays, it stays” holds. The state will have to rethink current legislation if elephant populations are to remain on private properties and reserves in the future.

We in the private wildlife industry are professionals in what we do. Let us do what we do best to benefit wildlife in South Africa, which can thrive through sustainable use management, as we have proved in the past and continue to do.

Note: On 4 May 2022, Pongola Game Reserve received feedback from Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy, commenting on Examvelo KZN Wildlife’s commitment to developing a joint management agreement with private sector stakeholders. The letter states there is a “need for innovative and balanced partnership arrangements between state protected areas and adjacent private wildlife areas.” These, Creecy states in the letter, “result in sustainable win-win arrangements, with strong conservation outcomes, and which stimulate the local economy through biodiversity-based enterprises.” The letter further reads, “reaching such agreements in Pongola can provide an important model for success, and I encourage all stakeholder [sic] to work collaboratively, with meaningful participation, to quickly craft the joint management plan [for elephants], and give momentum to economic growth of the area.”

Related reading

Do we have an elephant problem? There are no simple answers. Read our report on the facts.

Is there a direct link between elephants and the ongoing loss of large trees? A recent study suggests elephants benefit ecosystems (in open systems) by improving plant diversity. Read more about this here.

Researchers suggest adapting conservaton strategies to the sentience of elephants. Read more here.