Parque Nacional da Gorongosa Moçambique

Six South African Elephants Make Their Home In Gorongosa

Sep 24, 2008 - Gorongosa National Park

On September 16, 2008, Gorongosa National Park received four young adult elephant bulls from South Africa’s Kruger National Park.  A week later, two more arrived.  The reintroductions – the first for elephant under the Park’s wildlife reintroduction program – were both successful:  Chief Veterinarian and Director of Conservation Services, Carlos Lopes Pereira, assessed the health of the elephants to be good as they were released directly into the Park. The elephants had been tranquilized in Kruger and transported in a large truck to Gorongosa.  Only adult male elephants were relocated to prevent the disruption of matriarchal existing family groups already in the Park.  The relocations were part of an ongoing collaboration between Gorongosa staff and Kruger’s veterinary services department, which has assisted with wildlife relocations and radio collaring operations at Gorongosa for the past two years.

The relocation of elephants to Gorongosa National Park will boost the elephant population in the Park, and may also increase the genetic diversity of its elephant population. The relocated elephants will be monitored closely to ensure that they are adapting well to their new environment. If this relocation proves successful, two more bull elephants will be relocated from Kruger National Park later this year.

The embodiment of the African landscape for many, African elephants reached an estimated population of 3 million in 1935, according to the IUCN.  But in the latter half of the 20th century many African countries experienced civil wars that brought powerful automatic weapons and economic instability to the continent. In addition, the demand for ivory created a profitable business for anyone willing to capitalize on it, and elephants were soon under fire.  At the height of the ivory trade (from 1970-1985), Africa’s elephant population was reduced to approximately 285,000 individuals. 

While the continent’s elephant population was declining, the population at Gorongosa National Park was as well. In 1972, prior to the Mozambique’s civil war, the Park was home to an estimated 2,200 elephants. During the war, elephants were poached and ivory was sold to buy weapons for both sides of the conflict. In 1994, two years after the end of the civil war, a wildlife survey found only an estimated 100 elephants left in the Park.

The plight of Africa’s elephants generated significant worldwide attention until the international ban on the sale of ivory was passed in 1989. This policy and the many organizations dedicated to protecting elephants helped to slow their decline. But despite these efforts, in many places elephant populations continue to decline and are in jeopardy of being lost forever, particularly in Central and East Africa.  Today’s African elephant population is estimated to be approximately 500,000 but the status of elephant populations varies considerably across Africa.

In Mozambique, since 1994, increased political stability and increased protection from poaching has allowed Gorongosa’s elephant population to rebound to an estimated 300 individuals – a remarkable recovery in just over a decade, but still possibly insufficient to sustain elephants in the Park over the long term.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that the fate of the African elephant is far from secure across most of the continent, some protected areas in Southern Africa, such as Kruger National Park, are home to such high populations of elephants that the land and the people are in jeopardy.  Kruger National Park is home to more than 80% of South Africa's elephant population, with more than 13,000 individuals in an area roughly equal to that of the Netherlands.  The density of the elephant population presents serious ecological concerns for Kruger. 

An average elephant eats roughly 400 lbs of food each day, and can also pull down trees and strip them of their bark. Both activities can significantly alter an area’s vegetation if the density of elephants is too high.  At Kruger, the combined impact of damaging roaming habits and heavy feeding has had a devastating effect on the Park's vegetation, an effect that threatens the habitat and food sources of many other species. Ultimately, when elephants are confined to a limited area (even an area as large as a national park), the habitat damage they inflict can diminish their own food supply, leading to starvation.

Parks and reserves with elephant overcrowding problems are faced with a choice: let the elephants starve, use birth control treatments, cull elephants, open the park's boundaries, or relocate elephants to other reserves or parks.  To restrict the growth of Kruger's elephant population, a total of 14,562 animals were culled between 1967 and 1995, until South African law banned the practice.  South Africa's recently adapted elephant management policy allows culling only as a "last resort" in order to control Kruger's elephant population. 

In the hopes of avoiding another elephant cull, Kruger is exploring other options, including birth control, fence removal and translocation of elephants to other protected areas.  Kruger has removed fences along some of its borders, allowing elephants to migrate west into private reserves and east into Mozambique's Limpopo National Park, a drier region where the animals are still scarce. The Limpopo Park should act as a safety valve for at least the next five to ten years, says Norman Owen-Smith of the University of the Witwatersrand. Others note that people living in Limpopo have already complained about elephants damaging their crops.  Birth control medication for elephants, although effective in reducing birth rates, is a very costly and time consuming to administer.

One of the great challenges of relocating elephants into Gorongosa National Park is that there are already conflicts between Gorongosa’s resident elephant population and people living along the boundary of the Park.  Even if the newly released elephants never venture across the Park’s boundaries, the concern is that local people will blame the Park for any increase (real or perceived) in human-elephant conflicts.  The Park’s challenge, therefore, is to not only monitor the relocated elephants’ adaptation to their new environment, but to also work with communities to manage and mitigate any potential conflicts with these new residents.

Although translocation of elephants is costly and challenging, it can be an effective and humane way to help foster struggling elephant populations.  South Africa has few places left that are large enough to accommodate relocated elephants.  Most of the roughly 30 small reserves that have accepted elephants from Kruger since 1979 are now struggling to manage their growing numbers.  Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, however, has been deemed a worthy recipient.