EMS FOUNDATION STATEMENT ON THE NATIONAL ELEPHANT HERITAGE STRATEGY (2026 – 2036)

The EMS Foundation is deeply concerned that South Africa’s National Elephant Heritage Strategy fails to recognise elephants as sentient beings with intrinsic value and instead continues to frame them primarily through a utilitarian lens as assets within a biodiversity economy. The Strategy remains rooted in an anthropocentric approach that prioritises human interests, economic benefit-sharing and sustainable-use objectives, while largely ignoring elephant well-being, welfare, social complexity and the growing body of South African jurisprudence recognising the legal significance of animal sentience and intrinsic value.

This omission is particularly troubling given that South African law has evolved significantly over the past two decades. Our courts, including the Constitutional Court, have recognised that animals are sentient beings capable of suffering, that they possess intrinsic value beyond their utility to humans, and that animal welfare and biodiversity conservation are intertwined constitutional concerns. South African jurisprudence has moved beyond a narrow conservation model focused solely on population numbers towards one that increasingly recognises the well-being and interests of individual animals. Yet the Elephant Heritage Strategy largely ignores these legal developments and continues to treat elephants primarily as units of management, economic assets and components of a biodiversity economy.

Of particular concern is the Strategy’s expanded emphasis on human-elephant conflict, adaptive management interventions and the normalisation of management tools such as culling. While the Strategy does not itself authorise culling, it creates a policy framework that may facilitate future lethal management measures and further commodification of elephants.

The EMS Foundation also rejects any suggestion that the outcomes of the 2025 Elephant Indaba reflected broad consensus among stakeholders. The Indaba was not a formal public participation process, nor did it provide a balanced, transparent or inclusive platform for meaningful engagement on the future of elephant governance in South Africa. Significant differences of opinion remained unresolved, particularly regarding elephant well-being, sentience, welfare obligations, sustainable use, culling and the treatment of elephants as economic resources. The resolutions emerging from the Indaba should therefore not be portrayed as representing a national consensus on elephant management or as providing a mandate for future policy reforms.

South Africa’s elephant governance framework must be guided by constitutional principles, scientific integrity, precaution, transparency and respect for the lives and well-being of individual elephants. It must also be aligned with South Africa’s evolving jurisprudence, which increasingly recognises that wildlife are not merely biological resources or economic commodities, but sentient beings whose well-being matters. The EMS Foundation remains committed to advocating for an approach that recognises elephants not merely as populations to be managed or resources to be utilised, but as highly intelligent, socially complex and sentient beings whose interests matter in their own right.