Five elephants killed in Zambia after vexed translocations, NGO says toll is higher
Five elephants killed in Zambia after vexed translocations, NGO says toll
is higher
Ed Stoddard, Daily Maverick
October 16, 2024
See link
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-10-16-translocations-result-in-five-elephants-killed-in-zambia-ngo-says-toll-is-higher/
for photos.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare has confirmed that five elephants
have been killed in recent months on the Zambian side of Malawi’s Kasungu
National Park in retaliation for crop raiding. But an NGO says the toll is
higher, adding to the misery unleashed since more than 260 elephants were
translocated to the park in 2022.
Abrief statement from the international fund (Ifaw) on the matter was
pointedly sent on Tuesday after Daily Maverick had submitted queries to the
animal welfare NGO upon being alerted to reports that at least 11 elephants
had been killed on the Zambian side of the park since 1 September.
Kasungu is in Malawi but borders Zambia, and more than 260 elephants were
translocated to the park more than two years ago in an operation
spearheaded by Ifaw and African Parks, despite the glaring fact that there
is no fence on the international frontier and much of the Malawian side.
“It is with great concern that Ifaw has learned that five elephants have
been found dead in Kasungu National Park between May and September 2024,”
Ifaw’s statement read. It was also posted on Ifaw’s site but not
prominently.
“Preliminary investigation by DNPW Malawi suggests the elephants were shot
in Zambia between May and September 2024 as retaliation for crop raiding
and fled back to Kasungu National Park injured, where they died slowly and
painfully,” it said.
The five carcasses uncovered were three adult males, one adult female and a
calf. Ifaw also noted that the carcasses were scattered around the park
with their tusks, an indication that ivory poaching was not the cause.
As Daily Maverick has previously reported from on-the-ground fieldwork in
the region, rural communities in Zambia and Malawi have inhabited a
landscape of fear and loathing since the translocation.
At least nine people have been killed by elephants since the translocation
on both sides of the border. Another has reportedly been killed by a hippo
displaced by the pachyderms while a man was hunted and slain by hyenas in
August against the backdrop of local perceptions that the predators have
been trailing the elephants out of the park.
The NGO Warm Heart, which has been compiling data and reports from its
network of volunteers and informants about the damage wreaked, estimates
that subsistence farmers reeling from the El Niño drought last summer have
suffered close to $4-million in damage to crops and homes smashed by
elephants seeking stored maize.
Ifaw’s terse statement speaks of the elephants dying “slowly and
painfully”, but makes no mention of the people who have lost their lives or
livelihoods, which would explain their “retaliation”.
Another way to view it is desperate defence against a terror that none of
the people in the region had been subjected to before the translocation,
which is widely regarded as ill-conceived and has also drawn critical
reporting from the Financial Times and The Guardian, among others.
None of the people this journalist interviewed in late June in the region
had laid eyes on an elephant before and so had no experience to draw on to
deal with the animals.
Daily Maverick’s queries to Ifaw were prompted after Warm Heart alerted us
to reports from its on-the-ground network that 11 elephants had been killed
on the Zambian side of the park between 1 September and 6 October.
This is at odds with Ifaw’s recording of five elephants killed from May to
September and it is entirely possible that the toll is even higher than
that cited by either organisation.
“We have recorded 11 elephant deaths from 1 September to 6 October,” Mike
Labuschagne, Warm Heart’s founder, told Daily Maverick.
According to Warm Heart, which has shared its report on the matter with
Daily Maverick, five of the pachyderms were shot, five were poisoned and
one that was poisoned also had a bullet wound. The NGO has also provided
photos of the carcasses.
Daily Maverick cannot verify the veracity of either the latest Warm Heart
claims or Ifaw’s statement. But our reporting in June in the field
certainly corroborated many of the assertions that Warm Heart has been
making.
And the carnage, according to Warm Heart, continues, with a further 29
households suffering crop or house damage from elephants between 1
September and 6 October.
“These are new households and not part of the 1,551 we had collected (data
from) by 31 August 2024,” Warm Heart’s latest report says.
One thing is clear: in the warm heart of Africa, blood is being spilled,
and both humans and elephants are paying the price of a wildlife
translocation conceived thousands of miles away.