South Africa Considers Elephant Cull

South Africa may restart culling elephants, setting the scene for an international battle over the future of the animals. The government said yesterday that proposals on the management of the country's elephant population would be published tomorrow.

Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the minister of environmental affairs, indicated that the 11-year moratorium on culling could be ended. He said: "We have about 20,000 elephants in South Africa, more or less 14,000 in the Kruger National Park. In 1995, when we stopped culling, we had about 8,000 elephants."

He insisted, however, that there would be no question of a "blank cheque" for culling, or of a mass slaughter.

The government was considering several management strategies in addition to culling, including contraception and the transfer of elephants to other areas.

"South Africa is faced with a particular challenge as most of our protected areas are fenced and surrounded by land that has been transformed, to a greater or lesser extent, by human development," he said.

The battle over the world's elephants is expected to come to a head in June at the conference of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora conference (Cites). The UN-sponsored agency outlawed the sale of ivory in 1989, but has twice allowed one-off sales.