South Africa lifts elephant hunting banArticle Launched: 02/26/2008 10:53:02 AM ESTYork Daily Record CELEAN JACOBSON PRETORIA, South Africa -- South Africa said Monday that it will start killing elephants to reduce their burgeoning numbers, ending a 13-year ban and possibly setting a precedent for other African nations. Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said the government was left with no choice but to reintroduce killing elephants "as a last option and under very strict conditions" to reduce environmental degradation and rising conflicts with humans. There will be no "wholesale slaughter," he told reporters. |
Earlier this month, from February 11 through 13,
we visited the Addo Elephant National Park,
where I shot the following photograph:
we visited the Addo Elephant National Park,
where I shot the following photograph:
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The history of elephants in the region of the present Addo Elephant National Park is repetetive. From the 1700's to the early 1900's, massive hunting took place and the ivory trade boomed. The increasing number of farmers exerted pressure on the Government to exterminate elephants, and in 1919 Major P.J. Pretorius was contracted to shoot those remaining. From 1919 to 1920 he shot 114 elephants and sold two calves to a circus. In 1920, the killing was halted and the surviving 16 elephants found refuge on the land of farmer J.T. Harvey. In 1925 a Forest Reserve was set aside, which in 1931 was proclaimed as the "Addo Elephant National Park; it covered about 5,000 hectares and held only 11 elephants. Subsequently, the elephant population as well as the size of the Park increased: 22 in 1954, 100 in 1979 and over 450 in 2008 in an area over 164,000 hectares [1 hectare=(100m)2] The present population of elephants is too large, as is that of Kruger National Park. That is why the 2008 suspension of the ban was announced. |
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Personally, I always admired elephants. In the 1950's, I chartered an elephant for several days in the Thai jungle west of Kanchanaburi, known for the infamous "Bridge on the River Kwai" and the Burma Death Railroad. A kind grandfather-owner of a female elephant which had just given birth to a calf "donated" it to me, and I agreed to let him keep and train the calf till one day I would return to claim it. My friend Jan Hempenius and I, once planned to ride an elephant from Bangkok back home to Holland, but changed that mode of transport to a Vespa scooter when we learned that it would take another elephant to carry enough food for the first one etc. ad infinitem, so that we would have had to travel with a veritable chain gang of pachyderms. For the same reason, I have not (yet) returned to claim my given elephant. In conclusion, Jan and I happened to have been the best students in our respective "Bahasa Indonesia" classes- that's why our Bank directors sent us to Thailand (presumably so we would become the best in Thai - which is much harder to learn). So every time in the last few weeks when I heard or read the word "Addo" - as in the name of the Addo Elephant National Park - I recalled that "Adoe" was a Pasar Melaju exclamation of the order of "WOW!!" So in my mind I dredged up the following nonsensical sentence or rather word-combination: "Maleis": "Ado, Tuan, sekarang tidak lebih pandjang jangan bikin mati ekor gadja!" Dutch:"Ach Meneer, nu is het niet langer meer verboden om olifanten dood te maken" English:"Wow, Sir, it is now no longer forbidden to kill elephants! 'Ado' and Maleis/Indonesian-related links: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 |