EMS FOUNDATION COMMENTARY ON THE PROPOSED 2021 ELEPHANT TUSK HUNTING QUOTA

Lack of credible basis for determining quota for elephants

In the Draft Quota itself the proposed quota for elephant is set out in a single sentence: “The annual elephant export quota for 2021 is maintained at 300 tusks from 150 animals.” It does not set any criteria for how or from which animals the proposed tusks should be harvested. As with leopard and rhino, there is absolutely no reason given for setting the quota at this level for 2021. It is therefore virtually impossible to make any meaningful comment on the proposal.

As a basis for the determination of a hunting and export quotas, the 2015 NDF is of limited credibility as it was never published for public scrutiny and therefore never finalized. It is now 6 years since the NDF was compiled. The information it contains is significantly out of date.

As set out above, the EMS Foundation submitted a PAIA request in April 2021 for: records/information and associated data on elephants’ trophy hunted in South Africa in 2020 including: how many; in which district, reserve and province; and ages and sex of the elephants’ trophy hunted. DFFE responded indicating that it was not in possession of the information and that it may be in the possession of the 9 provincial conservation authorities. It transferred the request to the provinces. The records were duly requested from the relevant provincial departments, but only a response was received from the Limpopo province.

The response of DFFE suggests that governance of elephant trophy hunting extremely poor. If the Department that essentially constitutes the management authority for CITES does not know how many elephants were trophy hunted last year, it is unclear how the Minister can have decided that 150 animals can be ‘harvested’ this year.

Trophy hunting of elephant should not be permitted at all

The position of the EMS Foundation remains that the role that trophy hunting may play in conservation at present is scientifically and ethically questionable. Attempts to reform hunting governance only delay the process of identifying feasible alternatives and continue to perpetuate the notion – against the evidence – that trophy hunting is compatible with either good governance or ecological sustainability. It is it is not a long-term solution to preserving biodiversity for future generations. The history of recreational trophy hunting is that it drove many species to near extinction, especially in colonial Africa.

Trophy hunting, like poaching, artificially selects the biggest and strongest animals (largest tusks and thickest manes), weakening populations’ genetic health and variation. Therefore, while revenue may be forthcoming in the short term from such extraction, the longer-term effects are that population growth dynamics are negatively affected.

Moreover, trophy hunting may be having negative genetic impacts. In this regard, some elephants are now being born without tusks, demonstrative of a destructive genetic adaptation.Elephants are also increasingly reproductively successful with age, with older bulls suppressing musth onset in younger bulls and preventing delinquent behaviour associated with early musth onset.

When trophy hunters eliminate these older bulls, they destroy elephant family integrity (through trauma and removal of the discipline and knowledge transfer functions executed by patriarchs) and force matriarchs to mate with younger bulls they would otherwise not have selected, thereby skewing reproduction patterns.

Elephants are also irreplaceable ecosystem engineers; their removal negatively impacts ecosystem integrity and biodiversity preservation.

Recent research which analysed leadership patterns of all-male African savannah elephant found that the oldest males were more likely to lead collective movements.This research challenges the assumption that older male elephants are redundant in the population and raises concerns over the biased removal of old bulls that currently occurs in both legal trophy hunting and illegal poaching.

Selective ‘harvesting’ of older males could have detrimental effects on the wider elephant society through loss of leaders crucial to younger male navigation in unknown, risky environments. In long-lived social species, older individuals can provide fitness benefits to their groupmates through the imparting of ecological knowledge.

The above research is reinforced by George Wittemyer, an elephant conservation biologist, who says it is a “myth that males are far less social than females…Actually, the males are always in groups and have preferences for certain companions. They’re not the loners they’ve been made out to be.” While from a population standpoint, according to Cynthia Moss, who has led the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya since 1972, “older male elephants are very important to the health and genetic vitality of a population…By living to an older age, [older males show that] they have the traits for longevity and good health to pass on to their offspring…Killing these males compromises the next generation of the population.

Export of elephant body parts from South Africa of concern

The export of elephant body parts from South Africa is at an alarmingly high rate and is therefore of concern.
Attached as Annexure “D” to the submission, is information on the number of elephant body parts exported out of South Africa from a single port of exit between the years 2016 and 2020.

The Annexure does not include trophies and other body parts of elephants that were re-exported from other African countries via South Africa.

The information was obtained via a Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) request by the EMS Foundation to DFFE in 2021.

The information is a facsimile as captured by DFFE.

Conclusion

As with leopard and black rhino, no information has been provided to stakeholders in relation to how the elephant quota has been determined. In the absence of such information, it is impossible to comment meaningfully. The only logical conclusion is that the Minister did not have all the relevant information before her when determining the Draft Quota and accordingly the setting off the quota is arbitrary and not rationally connected to the information before her.

Notwithstanding that, we submit that for the reasons outlined above, no trophy hunting of elephants in South Africa should be permitted at all.

Image Credit: PETA and Wikimedia Commons