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obtained from the wildlife resource. Zimbabwe therefore argued that the 1989
CITES ivory trade ban adversely affected the success of community-based
resource programmes. It is also argued that it should be possible to sell ivory
legally, that has been obtained from elephants shot due to problem animal
control measures. It has been estimated that sport hunting of 200-300
elephants in Zambia would bring in more financial revenue that all
international donations for conservation (Bowles 1996). For sustainable
utilisation to work strict control measures must be enforced. However, it
appears that elephant populations do require to be controlled in some
southern African countries. Apart from culling, one option currently being
examined, is the use of contraceptives to increase interbirth intervals and
possible methods of doing this are being tested (Whyte et al 1998), but they
can produce behavioural and physiological side-effects in individual
elephants.
HUMAN-ELEPHANT CONFLICT
Elephants cause considerable damage each year to both subsistence-level
agriculture and commercial crops in both Africa and Asia. Elephants in
Sumatra destroy millions of dollars of agricultural crops including date palms
and sugarcane. In India several hundred people loose their lives to elephants
each year (Osborn and Rasmussen 1995). Human-elephant conflict decreases
the support from local people for conservation efforts, and is increasing as the
spread of cultivation into forest destroys elephant habitat. Even in Assam,
one of the main strongholds for the Asian elephant, conflict is increasing and a
number of animals were found poisoned in 2001 (Mills 2002).
Methods of more humane control consist of digging trenches, use of electric
fences and external support to affected villages including compensation
(Nyhus et al 2000) (Sukumar 1992). Other experimental methods include use
of sound, chemicals and trained domestic elephants. The African elephant
Specialist Group is investigating how human land use can be integrated with
the needs of elephant populations (Hoare 2000). This SG inaugurated a
Human-Elephant Conflict Taskforce (HECTF) in 1996. This has the following
aims:
• Linking people with an interest in, and co-ordinating activities with
respect to HEC
• Fulfilling a catalytic role in getting HEC related studies underway
• Providing technical advice and expertise to elephant range state
governments or other conservation support agencies on the
management of HEC.
Information on the task force is available on the AeSG web site (IUCN 2001).
Another method used is translocation. This may involve selective removal of
certain individuals or translocation of a whole group. The Reintroduction
Specialist Group in conjunction with the two Elephant SGs have publisheding
guidelines on the translocation and reintroduction of elephants. This is
available the AeSG website
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