Opinion: Elephant run

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South Africa has lifted its moratorium on killing elephants. The outcry against the move has been predictable, and to be sure, there’s something visceral about the thought of sharpshooters killing an animal quite this grand from a helicopter. Not only that, elephants have such a tightly knit social structure that the sharpshooters would have to take out entire herds, rather than individuals.

Before anyone leaps too quickly on the calls for boycotting South African tourism, it’s worth noting that this is a complex issue even from an environmentalist’s point of view. The government oversaw a moratorium that successfully raised the country’s elephant population to about 18,000. The population in Kruger National Park alone rose by 50%, to 12,000 elephants. Animals this massive have a tremendous effect on the environment; wildlife managers are concerned for biodiversity, since the elephants can out-compete many other species. The country is gradually merging Kruger with reserves in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, to give the giant mammals a greater range, reducing their impact in South Africa. And wildlife managers would have to show that the herds were causing major damage, and that culling was the only way to reduce that damage. From South Africa’s point of view, elephants are getting to be a bit like our white-tailed deer.

Of course, that assumes the government actually lives up to the standards it’s talking about.

Given information in recent years about elephant welfare in zoos and circuses, putting more elephants in captivity would be a big mistake. At least South Africa says it wouldn’t allow any of that.

The elephant situation brings to mind current concerns over the gray wolf. Once gravely endangered, the wolf was re-introduced to Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, with enormously success. With 1,500 wolves in the region, the U.S. now proposes delisting the wolf. And its rules for what the three states would have to do to maintain healthy populations are much less stringent than what South Africa proposes for the elephants. Even before the wolves are delisted, the government wants to loosen up its rules on hunting the wolves. Hunters have been complaining that the wolves deplete the populations of deer and elk that they, the hunters, would like to deplete instead. They want to hunt wolves in order to have more elk to hunt. Seems like government wildlife managers have forgotten the idea of natural balance, in which animal predators keep down the populations of other animals that otherwise become a nuisance. Nature doesn’t exist solely to give hunters something to do. If these ideas go forward, do we add this country to our travel-boycott list?

Animal welfare groups might be right. There might be no humane way to kill the elephants. But is there a humane way to keep them alive?