It was a jumbo-size operation but all went smoothly and the Addo Elephant National Park has, for now, successfully reduced the pressure from its burgeoning pachyderm population.
At the same time, it has delivered a heavyweight blow for elephant conservation.
The operation was undertaken by SANParks in partnership with Conservation Solutions and sponsored by the Aspinall Foundation, and the animals have been relocated to three different game reserves.
Addo park manager Nick de Goede said on Tuesday the operation had gone according to plan.
“The animals targeted were identified according to the permits issued by the environment department, and then they get darted.
“We captured a total of 18 elephants, comprising two family groups and two big bulls,” he said.
“The exercise was undertaken by Conservation Solutions, together with a SANParks vet and a SANParks-contracted helicopter, which was used to do the darting.
“The elephants were loaded into trucks on site and then woken up immediately to avoid complications.
“The operation was quick and all went well.”
De Goede said the exercise was all about managing wildlife within a restricted area.
“If the resident population becomes too large, they start to impact negatively on the vegetation and therefore the other animals, so you need to have a plan.
“Currently, in our main camp section we have 600 elephants and, in the Addo park, we have a total of 750.
“This population is growing fast and our options are either capture and relocate animals, expand the park or apply contraception.”
He said the park team already used contraception to help control its elephant numbers.
“But we cannot contracept 100% because we still need calves to come through the system in Addo.
“This is necessary so the adults can teach the calves, which can then grow up and do the same.
“If you do not get that social hierarchy into the system, where one animal is teaching the other one, it does become a behaviour issue later where animals break out, damage infrastructure and damage cars.”
De Goede said the contraception method used did not harm the health of the recipient elephants but it was not without its problems.
“It creates a protective layer around the elephant cow’s ovaries, preventing fertilisation.
“So it does not affect her hormones.
“It is done by darting and the dart just falls out once the drug has been injected.
“But contraceptive darting has to be done annually and the herds become stressed at the sound of a helicopter.
“To address this problem, work is being done at Onderstepoort [the University of Pretoria’s veterinary science faculty] to develop an elephant contraceptive that will last for two to three years.”
He said the park was also always looking to expand.
“We have purchased and added an additional four farms to the park in the last three years and we currently stand at a terrestrial area of 178,000ha, and the total together with the marine protected area is close to 300,000ha.
“Over the next 10-15 years, we will be looking to expand east to link with the Shamwari and Amakhala private game reserves, and that will create a wildlife corridor with much more room for elephants.”
He said while farm purchases were being made, the Addo team was rolling out extra fencing to increase the internal rangeland for resident herds.
“We are installing an extra 90km of perimeter fencing in the Kabouga section and, once that is complete at the end of September, we can drop the fence between Kabouga and Darlington — which will give us an extra 80,000ha for elephants, including more food and water.”
De Goede said culling to reduce numbers was not an option in Addo’s elephant range in the Colchester section as the land had been donated by the International Fund for Animal Welfare on the condition that SANParks did not cull there.
“Beyond that, we would only consider culling as a last resort.”
He said besides addressing population challenges in Addo, the capture and relocation operation was also valuable on a broader level.
“By expanding and strengthening the gene pool, we are helping elephant conservation.”
He said the one elephant family group was released to a game reserve in the Eastern Cape and the other to a reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, while the two bulls went to a reserve in Limpopo.
“The recipients, which have asked to remain anonymous at the moment, were a combination of private and community-partnership reserves.
“There was no payment and, in each case, the elephants were a donation from SANParks.”
HeraldLIVE
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