Rangers shoot down four elephants in human-wildlife conflict, but this is of little help to farmers helpless against the giants of Africa
Rangers shoot down four elephants in human-wildlife conflict, but this is
of little help to farmers helpless against the giants of Africa
Lucas Ledwaba, Daily Maverick
July 9, 2020
See link
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-07-09-close-encounters-of-the-fourth-kind-limpopo-farmers-consume-marauding-elephants/#gsc.tab=0for
photos (Warning: Graphic Images).
When rangers shot and killed four elephants on the outskirts of Gumbu
recently, villagers celebrated by cutting off chunks from the carcasses to
eat and share with their domestic animals.
Gumbu is located west of Pafuri, the Kruger National Park’s northernmost
gate and south of the Limpopo river. Elephant herds are believed to be
marching between Zimbabwe and South Africa in their daily search for food
and water. The farming village offers easy pickings for the giants who
bulldoze over the fences with ease.
For ages, the giant mammals have been troubling the community of farmers
who live along the Limpopo river which forms the international border with
Zimbabwe. Now it was the farmers turn to eat their crop-destroying nemesis.
When rangers from the Limpopo Department of Environmental Affairs were
called in last week after unusually frequent raids by the animals, the
villagers found a rare cause for celebration. Four of the animals were
tracked down to the north of the village by armed rangers.
Gumbu is a village of small-scale commercial farmers who sell their produce
at markets in Gauteng and Limpopo.
“It was a war out here,” said Mahwasane Mudzweda, chairperson of the Vhembe
Communal Property Association who witnessed the operation.
“They shot one elephant. Then the three others were trying to rescue it.
They were fighting. They were fighting to pull the shot elephant from the
ground and also fighting back. But the rangers showed their experience,”
Mudzweda said.
When word reached the village about 3km away, farmers broke out in
celebration and headed for the spot where the four giants lay dead in a
heap. After the rangers removed the tusks for safekeeping, knives and axes
and saws went to work as village elders skinned the animals and cut off
chunks of meat to take back to the village to share among the people.
Excited people sliced up the meat into pieces, salted it and hung it to dry.
But the celebration was short-lived. Just a day after the shooting another
herd of elephants staged one of their destructive overnight raids.
“They were here again last night,” Pfarelo Mudau exclaimed angrily as she
walked among her crops where the animals had left huge marks in the ground
after stepping on the neat rows of okra and uprooting many of the plants.
The jumbos made nothing of the wire fences erected around the farms to keep
away domestic and small animals. They broke down fence poles, trampled over
the fences to gain entry onto the farms. There, they feasted on ripening
crops of okra, spinach, cabbage and paprika. They ripped up irrigation
pipes, probably hoping to quench their thirst.
All around the farmlands, despairing farmers walked around counting the
costs while some were hard at work trying to repair the damage caused to
the boundaries by elephants. The damage by elephants has added to the
losses the farmers suffered as a result of the prolonged Covid-19 lockdown.
Due to the lockdown, they could not work the land as they normally do and
transporting their produce proved difficult and expensive.
Mudau runs Top Supreme Farming with her husband Phathutshedzo Munyai,
selling their produce in the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market, among other
outlets. Just one elephant raid on the 2ha farm sets them back thousands of
rand. Months of hard work go into the jumbos’ stomachs.
The farmers are so terrified of the elephants that as soon as dusk falls
they make for home to avoid an encounter with these gods of Africa. They
have tried numerous tactics to scare them off, such as burning tyres in
strategic places around the more than a dozen farms and planting chillies
along the fences. In some parts of Africa, farmers have even set up bee
fences [setting up bee colonies along fences] and developed non-lethal guns
to “bomb” the elephants. But all this has yielded no solution – the jumbos
just trample their way to the crops and water sources.
But the elephant problem is not only a challenge faced by the people of
Gumbu. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations noted
that human-wildlife conflicts have become more frequent and severe over
recent decades.
The world body cited human population growth, extension of transport routes
and expansion of agricultural and industrial activities which together have
led to increased human encroachment on previously wild and uninhabited
areas as some of the reasons.
Climate change, which has led to low rainfall levels and a decline in
natural food and water sources, has been identified as one of the key
reasons exacerbating the human-wildlife conflicts.
Zaid Kalla, spokesperson for the Limpopo Department of Economic
Development, Environment and Tourism said they have entered into a formal
co-operation agreement to deal and manage destruction causing animals in
the western boundary of the Kruger National Park.
However, he said claimants “will in all instances have to prove that the
damage causing animals actually came from the [Kruger] National Park.
“If it is clear that it came from the National Park, SANParks will have to
investigate the matter and establish if all reasonable measures have been
taken to prevent animals from escaping from the park,” he said.
Kalla said although damage causing animals compensation protocol guidelines
state that only livestock loss can be compensated while agricultural crops
are excluded which are damaged regularly by elephants and buffaloes
break-outs.
“SANParks undertakes to pay compensation for damages attributed to the
actions of wild dog, cheetah, hyena, lion, buffalo and elephant subject to
certain conditions as outlined in these guidelines specifically focusing on
the loss of livestock.”
He said SANParks has a responsibility to compensate communities where it is
certain that animals are from a national park caused damage to the
community.
“Communities or farmers must report all escaping animals to the relevant
LEDET officials immediately they spot them without taking laws in their own
hands as this might cause much harm to human lives as well.”
A recent report study by the organisation Elephants Without Borders in
neighbouring Botswana found that elephants were more likely to pass by
fields with solar-powered strobe light barriers during a two-year study
involving 18 farmers in Chobe. The recently released study is titled Panic
at the disco: Solar-powered strobe light barriers reduce field incursion by
African elephants Loxodonta africana in Chobe District, Botswana . The
country has the world’s largest elephant population estimated at more than
200,000.
“Although elephants were more likely to pass by fields with solar-powered
strobe light barriers (which was probably a result of selection bias as we
focused on fields that had previously been damaged by elephants), they were
less likely to enter these treatment fields than control fields without
such barriers. Our findings demonstrate the efficacy of light barriers to
reduce negative human-elephant interactions in rural communities.” (Adams
et al 2020)
“We must just keep on doing this, fixing our fences and strengthening them.
Maybe if the rangers are located nearby that can also help us… the truth is
that nothing can stop an elephant,” Vengani Ndou said, fixing a fence which
had been struck down by elephants.
But why don’t the farmers gang up and spend some nights on the fields to
chase the elephants away by making noise and throwing fire at them like
they do in some parts of Kenya and Botswana?
“Eh! Do you know an elephant? We will all be dead. Nothing can stop an
elephant. It can even run faster than a car. What is a human being compared
to an elephant? It will kill you,” Ndou said.