In our previous newsletter we asked why there were no elephants in the Kruger area at the beginning of the 1900’s. It was also around the time of our last newsletter that I was asked to collect a pair of ivory opera glasses – an indicator of a once thriving trade in raw material derived from these animals. This trend saw the demand for worked goods made of ivory soar. During the 1800’s people did not hunt because it was an enjoyable pastime and was therefore not controlled by conservation bodies as it is today. It was a means of survival in a country where there was no organized economy or political structure. It was also considered patriotic to rid the area of wildlife so that it could be settled responsibly and to make it a civilized place to live. According to Luxmoore (1991) the trade in ivory could have been a by-product of the conflict between humans and elephants for land. This trend continues in Africa even to this day and the number of elephants found in Southern Africa far outstrips those of any other region in the rest of Africa, with an approximate population of 297 718 elephants roaming here. The second largest area, East Africa, plays home to about 137 485 animals - according to a survey done in 2006 (Blanc et al., 2007).
The number of elephants found in pre-Colonial South Africa is very hard to determine, but the number that has been suggested for the period when Jan van Riebeek arrived at the Cape in 1652 could have been as many as 100 000 (Hall-Martin, 1992). The most densely populated areas were the Eastern Cape (with 6 000 elephant) and the area between the Orange and the Kei Rivers (8 000 elephant) (Kerley and Landman, 2006). Elephant would have favoured the more dense vegetation that these areas offered as well as meeting their need for groundwater.
The sad thing is that by about 1890 most of the elephants in South Afriica had been exterminated with only four distinct population groups remaining - those population groups could be found in the Lowveld, Knysna, Addo and Tembe. Hall-Martin (1992) suggests that there were possibly only as many as 120 elephants left in these populations by 1920. We know that P.J. Pretorius was approached by the Administrator of the Cape Province during this time to exterminate the elephants in the Addo bush and he was very successful – he shot out 120 of the remaining 131 elephant in the area.
We must go back to our original question: Why were there almost no elephant in the Kruger area at the beginning of the 20th Century? The answer lies in where priorities lay at the time. From the 1650’s laws against exterminating wildlife species were introduced at the Cape. This was done to discourage waste and sustainable yield. This did little to deter hunters and legislation had to be strengthened to restrict the hunting of certain species and no hunting was allowed on designated tracts of land called ‘game reserves’.
While the Cape Colony introduced legislation curtailing the hunting of elephant in the early 1800’s, with more and more stringent laws being laid down as time went on, the Soutpansberg (part of the Boer-governed Transvaal) only introduced legislation in 1846 to achieve sustainable yield. This legislation did not include elephant though, as they were seen as far too valuable a commodity and the ivory derived from them far too lucrative to forego. Between 1870 and 1882 the demand for ivory was enormous. Ivory became the plastic of the age due to its abundance and many luxury objects were made from it e.g. piano keys, billiard balls, binoculars, knife handles and so forth (Oliver and Atmore, 1967). It did not occur to these early settlers that the source of ivory was exhaustible. They simply thought that the elephant were moving out of reach, and they had to travel further and further northwards to find them (Carruthers, 1995a & b).
Even though stricter legislation was applied in the Transvaal (which mostly excluded Africans from hunting) this legislation proved useless in curbing the desire to accumulate wealth and stem the pioneering mentality which seemed hell-bent on milking the land for all it was worth – especially prior to the discovery of gold in the Transvaal. The desire to preserve wildlife in South Africa grew in direct proportion to the rate at which it was being wiped out and by the end of the 1800’s there were game farms in many parts of the country - in the Cape, the Transvaal and Zululand. However, the elephant population had been decimated to such an extent – except for a very few individuals between the Oliphants and Letaba Rivers (Stevenson-Hamilton, 1934) and in Northern Zululand - there were no elephant left to protect (Carruthers, 1995a; Cubbin, 1992; Roche, 1996).
In 1903 there was a total number of zero elephant in the now Kruger National Park area. In 1923 (the year the Kruger National Park was founded) there was a population of 100 elephants that had migrated from Mozambique (Stevenson-Hamilton, 1934). By 1967 their number had increased to 6 586 individuals (Whyte, 2001). At present there are as many as 12 000 elephant in the Kruger National Park. This dramatic increase in numbers is a tribute to great work and foresight of men like Stevenson-Hamilton and those who have followed in his footsteps.
It seems ironic that in May 2008 it was decided to lift the moratorium on culling and begin using this method as a last resort to reduce the now burgeoning population of elephant in the Kruger National Park.
The photo directly above was possibly taken during the last legal Knysna elephant hunt in the year 1920. Major PJ Pretorius was given permission to shoot one elephant "in the interests of science". Five Knysna elephants died as a result of this hunt.
Acknowledgement goes to: Jane Carruthers, André Boshoff Rob Slotow, Harry C. Biggs, Graham Avery, and Wayne Matthews.http://www.elephantassessment.co.za/files/03_ch1_Elephant%20Management.pdf (Accessed on 22 April 2009).
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