Imagine if, here in Britain, we had too many elephants. Not just some elephants, (which is, you might think, a stretch in itself) but far too many of them. Elephants, everywhere. “This train has been delayed, due to elephants.” “Play was disrupted before the final whistle by elephants.” “Junction 15 is closed, and full of elephants.” Magical?

Not for long.

I throw that out there to help you to empathise with the anti-elephant lobby. It's easier, by far, to be pro-elephant. I forget (as an elephant wouldn't) just who it was who wrote that our fondness for animals tends to be directly proportional to the size of their eyes (bush babies declare war on earthworms - take a side). I was once stared down by an Indian elephant in an Asian temple. Quite the experience. Big brown eyes the size of apples. Only one eye can focus on you at any given time, true enough, but even one does the job. Windows into a great, lugubrious soul.

I have met African elephants, too. From a boat on the Zambezi, I once watched two huge tribes (“herds” seems too base a noun for elephants) combine from opposite sides. Some swam. Others walked across the river bed, effectively snorkelling. As they met, trunks touched faces and ears flapped. I couldn't even see their eyes, and I was mesmerised. So whatever follows, please believe that I am pro-elephant all the way.

In South Africa the killing of elephants was outlawed in the 1990s. According to yesterday's reports, since then the population has soared from 8,000 to 20,000. That's a lot of elephants. Most of them are in the Kruger National Park.

Authorities are suggesting a cull. And, predictably, animal rights activists are aghast. What right have we, they cry, to play elephant god? This is the great green ideological conundrum, boiled down. When nature gets messy, do we put it right? There is no point asking the elephants.

“Too many of us in Kruger Park?” they'd say, if they could. “Not our fault. If you really care, let us out. Let us go blundering out across your country, eating your farms and drinking your swimming pools.”

Not surprisingly, in South Africa this solution isn't even on the cards. And I wonder, do we, as the self-appointed custodians of our world, have the honesty to acknowledge why? Can we admit that we have battered and bullied this planet into the shape it is in today by waging a war, pretty successfully, on pretty much everything else? Elephants, like everything else, only exist because we put up with them. It's not like we want them in our gardens. We are already playing elephant god.

We have been for ages.

So, cull or don't cull, but don't ever pretend that we are on the side of the elephants. Behind his deep brown eyes, even the elephant knows it is far too late for that. Today he is nothing more than our costly hobby. Our white elephant, perhaps.

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