Drought is driving elephants closer to people. The consequences can be deadly
Drought is driving elephants closer to people. The consequences can be
deadly
Tendai Marima, NPR
August 15, 2022
See link
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/15/1117076598/drought-is-driving-elephants-closer-to-people-the-consequences-can-be-deadly
for photos.
The season of searing temperatures will soon begin in northwestern Zimbabwe
as the chilly months fade away. But for the villagers of Silewad the return
of summer, storms and a new planting season increase the risk of elephants
invading their land.
Silewad is near Hwange National Park, the country's premier game reserve
which is roughly half the size of Belgium. Zimbabwe is home to Africa's
second largest pachyderm population. It's growing at about five per cent a
year, and that means competition for water and land between humans and the
world's largest land mammal is increasing in and around Hwange.
During these last weeks of the cool months, the villagers rely on homemade
remedies to keep elephants away from people, crops and water. In Silewad,
not far from seasonal streams which attract elephants, five gloved and
masked villagers use a large wooden pestle to pound a fermented mixture of
chilis, garlic, ginger, neem leaves and elephant dung into a paste designed
to keep the animals at bay.
Masaloni Ndlovu, 67, hangs plastic bottles of the ground chili paste on his
fence to deter elephants which often wander through his homestead.
Elephants hate the smell of the paste. But faced with another dry season
forecast of patchy rains and poor harvests, people fear that the homemade
remedies won't be enough to keep desperately thirsty elephants within the
national park and out of village gardens.
Once a worker at a nearby railway station, Ndlovu recalls that elephants
rarely wandered through the hamlet when he was younger, but now they are
increasingly a common sight.
"We call the rangers to deal with the animals, but they don't do anything.
We hardly saw elephants when I was younger but today they are everywhere
and they eat everything we plant," he says.
Zimbabwe's elephant population is growing as climate change is making
rainfall unpredictable. Depleting levels of groundwater in the Hwange game
reserve are forcing animals to travel further in search of replenishment
during the hot season. Villagers and conservationists fear that the
competition for shrinking water resources could lead to deaths of local
people and elephants. Already this year, at least 20 people have been
killed in confrontations with elephants, according to Zimbabwe's National
Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZimParks).
Growing, Thirsty Herds Roam a Drying Earth
Elephants are especially vulnerable to rising temperatures. They need to
drink up to 200 liters [50 gallons] per day, but during the summer they can
lose up to 10 percent of body water daily. Research shows elephants migrate
seasonally depending on the availability of water in Hwange National Park.
Between 1928 and 2005, during drought years with erratic rainfall,
herbivore populations tended to migrate more frequently, according to
another study. ZimParks has partnered with local and international donor
conservation groups to drill more than 65 boreholes that create artificial
watering holes throughout the year for more than 45,000 elephants that trek
through Hwange. But the changing climate has raised concern among scholars
and conservationists over the future sustainability of the animal sanctuary.
Dr. Simon Chamaillé-Jammes, deputy director of Hwange LTSER, the Long-Term
Socio-Ecological Research center, has observed that droughts have
intensified in sections of the game reserve.
"[W]e did publish a study showing that annual rainfall did not change that
much on average over the 1940 - 2005 period, but that droughts, when they
occurred, where much more severe than they used to be, with 50% reduction
of rainfall during drought years in some areas of the park," he wrote in an
email.
On the routes elephants typically take that wind through Zimbabwe, Angola,
Botswana, Namibia and Botswana, an aerial survey was launched by the
Kavango Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) to count the wildlife
roaming the Kavango Zambezi basin over the next four months. (Hwange Park
is within the Kavango Zambezi basin.) Counting the large herds which roam
this rich biodiverse area will help to determine animal numbers and the
water needs of Southern Africa's mammals.
This is the first survey of its kind in this region, according to Teofilus
Nghitila, executive director general of Namibia's wildlife and national
parks management authority. The information gathered from the survey will
also help in shaping elephant management policies, Nghitila said.
Climate Change Pushes Elephants Closer to People
Over the years, Southern Africa's climate has become increasingly
vulnerable to weather patterns like El Nino, making rainfall patterns
highly unpredictable, according to Narcisa Pricope, a professor of
geography at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in the United
States.
Some research has shown an increase in the occurrence and intensity of
drought over many parts of Southern Africa, Pricope says. Rainy seasons
have gotten more unreliable, with implications for humans and animals alike.
"So, local communities not only have to contend with unreliable
precipitation patterns that make them food insecure in the first place,"
Pricope said in an email, "but on top of that, they have to live with
wildlife in very close proximity as a result of the shrinking of water
availability throughout the landscape in Hwange national park."
In 2019, hundreds of people were killed when Cyclone Idai struck eastern
Zimbabwe. The same year, a drought in the western provinces resulted in the
death of more than 200 elephants in Hwange National Park over just two
months.
Pricope predicts if water scarcity persists it is likely to "amplify human
wildlife conflicts especially in the areas adjacent to national parks where
humans cohabit". Less water within the national park could drive animals
closer to perennial water sources which are also close to human settlements.
A Desperate Solution to a Deadly Conflict
To manage the dilemmas of a changing climate and growing wildlife
populations, regional governments are currently lobbying for the one-off
sale of ivory stockpiles in order to finance human-wildlife conflict
programs. But under a global treaty called the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), trade in ivory
is strictly prohibited. CITES has previously allowed ivory sales on two
occasions, but global resistance against the trade has grown stronger.
After the push to sell African stockpiles was chastised by international
conservation groups, the Southern African states convened the African
Elephant Conference in May and declared their intention to collectively
lobby for permission to trade. The Southern African states, which includes
Zimbabwe, hope to present their united position at the CITES Summit in
Panama later this year.
Zimbabwe alone claims it is sitting on a 123 tonne stockpile worth an
estimated $600 million, a figure questioned by environmental accountants.
Better Water Drilling to Save People and Elephants
But far from the high-powered summit and drawn out debates over the sale of
tusks, villagers live with an impending crisis.
Hangani Dube, 79, bears the scars of this conflict. Dube was injured while
trying to scare off a pair of intruding elephants in his vegetable garden
one afternoon in May. The elephants, instead, charged and gored him with
their tusks.
Writhing in pain, Dube dragged himself on his hips to the main highway
where he found help to get to the nearest medical center. After a month in
the infirmary, a frail Dube hobbles from place to place, unable to walk
easily because of the steel plate implanted to keep his bones together.
Feeling robbed of life, the old man wishes for more action to reduce the
elephant herds in his area.
"I feel useless. I can't do anything for my family since I was injured. I
used to take out my plough and plant with my cattle, but now I can't." he
says. "I rely on my wife and sons to do everything I used to do."
He says bitterly: "The government has to cull these elephants before they
hurt us all."
Zimbabwe has recently considered culling. In the past, more than 50,000
elephants were killed during culls between 1965 and 1988. However, this
controversial control method would require significant financing, which the
government lacks.
While the government weighs the sale of ivory or culling herds, villagers
still live with the daily risk of elephants searching for water and food.
When the rainy season begins in November, farmers will plant their crops,
and Ndlovu will have to apply the chili fixative more regularly as his only
defense against the marauding mammals. Other homegrown methods such as
burning chili bricks and making chilli bombs are used in other areas, but
they too have limited effectiveness in keeping elephants away.
Hwange's intermittent rain and persistent heat also harm vegetation. The
elephants have to travel further in search of food as well as water. While
there is no available research on Hwange's groundwater recharge rates,
Chamaillé-Jammes cautions against drilling further boreholes near human
settlements. His joint research has shown that more water holes tend to
attract more elephants.
Chamaillé-Jammes recommends closing watering holes on the eastern section
of Hwange to steer elephants away from villages and instead, drilling
boreholes in the center of the game reserve with some only operating during
periods of extreme drought. These "safety pans" might be one way of
ensuring elephants are more likely to stay within the perimeter of the park.
As rising global temperatures signal more extreme droughts in the future, a
more sustainable intervention than chili concoctions and one-off ivory
sales is needed to halt Zimbabwe's deadly battle for resources in a parched
land.