No Room for Zim Jumbos

Source: The Namibian (Windhoek)

Date: 15 November 2005

Author: Absalom Shigwedha

There is no way Namibia can give shelter to elephants that Zimbabwe is said to be considering relocating here, a senior official in the Ministry of Environment and Tourism said yesterday.

Ben Beytell, the Director of Parks and Wildlife Management, told The Namibian that Namibia was already struggling to manage its huge elephant population.

"We already have enough elephants of our own," said Beytell.

Namibia has about 15 000 - 16 000 elephants, which from time to destroy people's homes and homesteads in search of food, and their numbers have exceeded the grazing capacity.

Last week, Zimbabwe's Deputy Minister of Environment, Andrew Lunga, told the state-controlled The Herald newspaper that they were looking at relocating some elephants to Namibia because they were starving in Zimbabwe's national parks.

The animals are dying because of a shortage of water and pasture and the country's wildlife parks are over-burdened.

Recently, some 50 elephants starved to death in the famous Hwange National Park.

Zimbabwe has 100 000 elephants and a carrying capacity of only 45 000.

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Zimbabwe's starving jumbos face certain death

Source: The Cape Times

Date: 16 November 2005

Author: Anon

Windhoek - Namibia has said it cannot accommodate starving elephants from Zimbabwe, as proposed by some officials in that country, as it was already grappling to take care of its own jumbo population.

Zimbabwean wildlife authorities said they were considering moving elephants from the country's overburdened national parks to Namibia after at least 50 starved to death.

Some 50 elephants died in the famous Hwange National Park, where the population had soared to more than 75 000, nearly double the park's estimated capacity of 45 000.

Zimbabwe has a total elephant population of 100 000, one of the biggest in Africa. Hwange is on Zimbabwe's western border with Botswana, which also has a large elephant population.

However, Namibia's director of parks and wildlife management, Ben Beytell, said there was no way the country could accommodate more jumbos.

"We already have enough elephants of our own," he said.

Namibia has an elephant population of about 16 000 and grazing is scarce. Namibia's problem was compounded by the fact that elephants from the Chobe National Park, in neighbouring Botswana, were fleeing to the Caprivi Strip due to dry conditions in the park.

This week Caprivi residents urged the Namibian government to relocate some of the elephants as they were exhausting the limited water resources and were destroying crops.

Zimbabwe's deputy minister for the environment and tourism, Andrew Langa, said: "The situation is bad in the Hwange park.

Some of the solutions we are looking at in order to reduce the deaths are to cull and take some of the elephants to Namibia".

Zimbabwe national parks chief Morris Mutsambiwa warned that if the trend continued "we are going to have a major disaster in Zimbabwe".

"Vegetation will be destroyed and water will run out in parks. If we have a major drought we are going to have massive deaths of elephants and other animals as they run out of food and water," he said, adding that farmers had been urged to buy elephants.