A Controversial Cull: Zimbabwe’s Elephant Dilemma

Zimbabwe’s latest proposition to kill elephants to alleviate food shortages resulting from devastating droughts has yet to find few supporters among conservationists and animal rights activists, with most of these condemning the culling as “unsustainable in an ecological sense.” The government defends itself by saying such killings are necessary to save human life and reduce conflict with wildlife; however, the grounds against it do hold water. As such, there are important questions here linking humans and wildlife, climate change, and actual sustainability of resource use.

Zimbabwe plans to kill some elephants amid food shortages caused by a severe drought that’s raping the country. The southern African nation’s move, widely decried by conservationists and animal rights organizations in a similar reaction to Namibia’s previous announcement, has drawn flak.

This saw the elephants moving out of the protected areas for water and food, attacking people. The Zim Parks said that its elephant population had outgrown its sustainable capacity and proposed to cull 200 as a step toward reducing its population and reducing the conflict.

He culls within the elephant-infested areas and dispatches the meat to food-scarce regions. Critics of culling and proponents for more civilized and sustainable alternatives which include better agriculture and food relief.

The Zimbabwean government, in the past, has come out to defend the process, saying that it saves human life and minimizes human-wildlife conflict. What they argued for then is that resources for sustaining elephants are dwindling and if elephants are to survive for the long term, then culling will be necessary in the face of human populations.

This is one of the most debated decisions about Zimbabwe’s culling of elephants, forceful arguments on both sides, and the questions it throws up seem to question the human, the wildlife, climate change, and the sustainable management of natural resources.