Lessons on elephant management from Kruger

The Kruger scientists call their new plan: “A Landscape Management Approach” to the so-called elephant management “problem”.

At the end of 1994, Kruger’s elephant population stood at 7000; and since that year they have bred “without constraint” – that is, without being annually culled. Today the greater Kruger elephant population stands at plus-or-minus 5000. In a previous blog I explained how I came to the conclusion that, when the habitats were healthy (c.1955), the sustainable elephant carrying capacity for Kruger National Park was 3 500. And the habitats are no longer “healthy”! They are a far cry from what they looked like in 1960.