Elephant management

A Scientific Assessment for South Africa

Robert J. Scholes, Kathleen G. Mennell, Brandon Anthony, Graham Avery, Dave Balfour, Jonathan Barnes, Roy Gordon Bengis, Henk Bertschinger, Harry Biggs, James N. Blignaut, André Boshoff, Jane Carruthers, Guy Castley, Tony Conway, Warwick Davies-Mostert, Yolandi de Beer, Willem F de Boer, Audrey Delsink, Martin de Wit, Robert (Bob) Scholes, Kathleen G Mennell, Robert J. Scholes, Kathleen G. Mennell, Robert (Bob) Scholes, Kathleen G Mennell

• Publisher: Wits University Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781868144792
• eBook ISBN: 9781776142279
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Elephants are among the most magnificent – but also most problematic –members of South Africa's wildlife population. While they are sought after by South African and foreign tourists alike, they also have a major impact on their environment. As a result, elephant management has become a highly complex and often controversial discipline. The information needed to underpin vital decisions about elephant management has largely been unavailable to decision-makers, contested by experts, or simply unknown. As a result, the South African Minister for Environmental Affairs and Tourism convened a round table to advise him on this issue. The round table recommended that a scientific assessment of elephant management be undertaken to gather, evaluate, and present all the relevant information on this topic. Its main findings and recommendations are contained in this volume. Elephant Management is the first book of its kind, combining the work of more than 60 national and international experts. Extensively reviewed by policy-makers and other stakeholders, it is the most systematic and comprehensive review of savanna elephant populations and factors relevant to managing them to date. As such it is of interest to a broad spectrum of readers in South Africa and elsewhere. Above all, it is aimed at helping conservation policy-makers and practitioners to choose the best possible options for the sustainable preservation of these iconic animals.

1

THE ELEPHANT IN SOUTH AFRICA:HISTORY AND DISTRIBUTION

Lead author: Jane Carruthers

Author: André Boshoff

Contributing authors: Rob Slotow, Harry C Biggs, Graham Avery,

and Wayne Matthews

INTRODUCTION

So geographers, in Afric maps,

With savage pictures fill their gaps;

And o’er unhabitable downs

Place elephants for want of towns.

On Poetry: A Rhapsody

THESE LINES by Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) are often quoted as a satire on the cartography of the age. However, they also contain three observations about the elephant populations of Africa that illuminate aspects of elephant distribution and human–elephant contact and that continue to influence elephant management. The first is that elephants are the iconic and most charismatic mammals of Africa – indeed, its very symbol. In a continent renowned for its megafauna and wealth of raw materials, elephants and their ivory hold premier positions. The second observation is that elephants were once very widely distributed on the African continent, occurring wherever there was suitable habitat, while the third is that where large settled concentrations of humans occur, one will find either no elephants or very few.

This chapter considers the shifting economic and political dynamics, value systems and technologies that have impacted on Africa’s elephant populations, with detailed attention being given to South Africa. It explains how the current (2006) presence of the African elephant Loxodonta africana indicates that it was once abundant throughout the continent in suitable habitat. While the process of the dramatic decline in elephant range and numbers did not play out in the same way throughout Africa, as far as South Africa is concerned it was accelerated in the nineteenth century by a growing market for ivory and by significant habitat transformation within a modern state. By the early twentieth century the once large elephant population in the region had been virtually exterminated except for a few small relict populations in remote localities. In the later twentieth century, however, owing to a combination of factors that are outlined below, an elephant population that is highly restricted to limited areas (relative to pre-colonial distribution) in South Africa has undergone a period of sustained growth. Since its near-extinction in the region owing to hunting and dense human settlement and rural land exploitation, elephant population growth is rebounding in strictly protected preserves and being manipulated through intensive management and translocations.

ELEPHANT SPECIES IN AFRICA

Linnaeus placed African and Asian elephants together in a single genus, Elephas, but they were separated in 1797 by Johann Blumenbach into the Asian Elephas and the African Loxodonta (Skinner & Chimimba, 2005). There is evidence from DNA-based studies that two species of African elephant exist, namely, L. africana (savanna elephant) and L. cyclotis (forest elephant) (e.g. Roca et al., 2001). In addition to those at the genetic level, the two taxa exhibit certain other more obvious differences; most notably, in habitat – cyclotis occupies mainly the forested parts of Central Africa, whereas africana occupies mainly the savannas of eastern and southern Africa – and in morphology – cyclotis is smaller than africana, and there are differences in ear structure (Skinner & Chimimba, 2005). In West Africa, elephants live in both forest and savanna habitats (Blanc et al., 2007) and here a new species has been postulated (Eggert et al., 2002). However, there is no consensus in the scientific community as to the current number of species of elephant in Africa (Debruyne, 2005). Consequently, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Species Survival Commission (SSC) recognises only one species on this continent, namely Loxodonta africana.

THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT FOSSIL AND PALAEO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECORD

The fossil history of elephants in Africa is relatively patchy, in spite of the fact that they may suffer die-offs involving large numbers, particularly of sub-adults, during droughts (Haynes, 1992). Haynes compared data from Zimbabwe drought mortality with Pleistocene Mammuthus and concluded that severe drought conditions in parts of the southern United States may have led to the Pleistocene extinction of Mammuthus. It follows that wet–dry climatic patterns may have provided a similar mechanism in Africa, where droughts have been a regular part of the climatic cycles that arose during the Late Pliocene and Lower Pleistocene. Conditions for periodic droughts and concomitant high elephant mortality may have placed populations under sufficient stress to have led to adaptive evolution or even extinctions.

Enormous probocidean diversity is evident from the fossil record (Coppens et al., 1978), and the group forms a major part of the Tertiary and Quaternary faunas of the world. The fossil history of the Proboscidea was punctuated by a number of adaptive shifts that resulted in varied types such as mastodonts, gomphotheres, stegodonts and elephants, which are subdivided into three families: the Gomphotheriidae (very diverse Late Eocene to Middle Pleistocene, which includes Anancus species); Elephantidae (Late Miocene to Recent, which includes the genera Elephas and Loxodonta); and Mammutidae (Early Miocene to sub-Recent ancestral mammoth).

Two of the most important fossil localities that have yielded proboscideans are Langebaanweg and Elandsfontein in the Western Cape. Elephants are extremely rare in the South African hominin cave breccias, which presents a problem, since elephants, like pigs, were evolving and diversifying rapidly and are thus of value in correlation and relative dating. Chronological and taxonomic inferences have been made in the light of what has been found in East African sequences (Cooke, 1993). It appears, however, that no Loxodonta were present in the Australopithecine-bearing deposits of Gauteng, probably because of the nature of the traps or because the habitat was better suited to Elephas. Loxodonta are rare in sites with Elephas and vice versa, and it seems that this pattern follows that in North Africa.

The earliest elephants in southern Africa belong to the genus Elephas, of which the earliest is E. ekorensis (Maglio, 1973). They date to between 4.5 and 3.0 my ago and are ancestral to E. recki, a species sub-divided into several units of which E. recki brumpti and E. recki iolensis are known to have occurred in South African hominin-bearing deposits (Cooke, 1993; Coppens et al., 1978), although a number of specimens have been re-assigned from Elephas ekorensis to Elephas recki recki or E. r. brumpti (Cooke, 1993). A series of time-successive Elephas species has been used for biochrononological determinations. However, a review of Elephas recki indicates significant chronological and morphological variation between the currently recognised taxa. E. recki may therefore comprise more as yet undescribed taxa (Todd, 2005). The upshot is that the use of Elephas subspecies as biochronological indicators may be compromised. It is not known for sure, but the disappearance of E. recki from Africa by the Late Pleistocene was probably related to vegetation changes which became more suited to Loxodonta.

Kalb et al. (1996) give Middle Pliocene dates for what were considered the earliest loxodont elephants, Loxodonta exoptata and L. adaurora. Coppens et al. (1978) thought that E. exoptata was probably L. adaurora) in Eastern Africa (Middle Pliocene to Early Pleistocene). It is now thought, however, that the earliest loxodont species comes from the earlier Varswater Formation of the Muishond Fontein Peletal Phosphorite Member (Hendey, 1970; Roberts, in press) at Langebaanweg, where Sanders (2007) has recently erected a new loxodont species Loxodonta cookei sp. nov. (Late Miocene–Early Pliocene between 5.4 and 4.0 my ago), which pre-dates Elephas. L. cookei therefore extends the Loxodonta exoptata–Loxodonta africana lineage further back into the Late Miocene, with L. cookei being more primitive than L. exoptata. It is thus probably ancestral to the L. exoptata–L. africana lineage, and L. cookei sp. nov. therefore represents the earliest record for the genus so far. Sanders also recognised a second elephant, referable to Mammuthus subplanifrons, which is probably the most archaic stage of mammoth evolution. The Loxodonta group appears to have remained conservative in its dental specialisations, however, as other groups became extinct during the Pliocene, or changed rapidly during the Pleistocene. Loxodonta changed very little from Loxodonta adaurora. Indeed, the southern African Loxodonta adaurora is very similar to Loxodonta africana.

From the Langebaanweg faunal list and isotopic analyses of congeners from other African sites, it may be inferred that woodland and open conditions were present locally with abundant grazing in the ecosystem of Langebaanweg (Sanders, 2007). Other evidence suggests that the vegetation was more lush than now, with woodland browsing to mixed feeding dominated by open C3 grassland. The climate was one of wet winters and dry summers; dry periods may have cycled into periods of drought and increasing aridity (Franz-Odendaal et al., 2002; Franz-Odendaal, 2006).

Loxodonta africana and L. cyclotis have been treated conservatively as a single species although the savanna elephant lives in savanna, bush and lightly forested regions, while the forest elephant, normally found in tropical forests, is more of a browser and frugivore. Recent cranial-morphological and molecular studies have shown, however, that they are distinct savanna and forest species respectively and diverged from a common late Pliocene ancestor about 3 my ago. The differences found were predominantly genetic rather than intra-group genetic variation or hybridisation (Roca & O’Brien, 2005).

Loxodonta atlantica, primarily from Middle Pleistocene Elandsf...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• About the authors and contributors
• List of reviewers
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• Preface
• Summary for policymakers
• Chapter 1: The elephant in South Africa: history and distribution
• Chapter 2: Elephant population biology and ecology
• Chapter 3: Effects of elephants on ecosystems and biodiversity
• Chapter 4: Interactions between elephants and people
• Chapter 5: Elephant translocation
• Chapter 6: Reproductive control of elephants
• Chapter 7: Controlling the distribution of elephants
• Chapter 8: Lethal management of elephants
• Chapter 9: Ethical considerations in elephant management
• Chapter 10: The economic value of elephants
• Chapter 11: National and international law
• Chapter 12: Towards integrated decision making for elephant management
• Glossary
• Index