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With barely a grunt, the powerful elephant yanked the trunk of the decades-old mopane tree out of the reddened earth of the South African bush. The party may soon be over, however.

Yesterday, in a move that will anger armchair conservationists worldwide, South Africa said that it would reintroduce culling for the first time since 1994 to control elephant numbers, which environmentalists say are threatening the country’s game reserves.

Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, announced the policy reversal after a year-long review. He declined to be drawn on how many elephants might be killed, saying only that figures of between 2,000 to 10,000 claimed by animal rights groups were “hugely inflated”. He emphasised that the measure would be a final resort.

“Culling will only be allowed as a last option and under very strict conditions,” he told reporters in the state capital, Pretoria.

Since killing elephants was outlawed 14 years ago, the number in South Africa has soared from about 8,000 to more than 20,000. In the Kruger National Park, signs of the continent’s most privileged elephant population are only too visible. As they move through one of Africa’s biggest and best-managed reserves, the country’s highest single population of elephants — now estimated at 15,000 — leave a swath of destruction. Trampled thorn trees, bushes and dying roots, dried brittle by the sun, mark their route across a reserve visited by more than one million tourists a year.

Research in the 1990s found that the ideal “sustainable” elephant population for the Kruger would be 7,500. One elephant alone eats an estimated 375lb (170kg) of grass, tree bark and leaves every day.

Richard Leakey, chairman of Wildlife Direct and the man who led the worldwide campaign against the ivory trade in the 1980s, said of the cull: “It is a terrible thing to have to do this to such an intelligent species, but we have to find a solution to the numbers problem. I hope it will be a once-off and then we can keep the population in check with other measures.”

Animal rights defenders threatened to call for tourist boycotts and to mount other protests. Animal Rights Africa (ARA), one of the most radical opponents, said that it would organise public protests and legal action if the Government did not drop culling as an option.

The group favours measures such as elephant “contraception” and hugely expensive relocation. There are no quick fixes. A female normally breeds every four years, but with contraception, she comes on heat every four months, though does not conceive. This exposes her to the physical stress of frequent copulation with bulls, which can be four times her weight.

The rights group said in a statement: “We appeal to the international animal rights community to use its not inconsiderable membership and corporate influence to support a call for tourists to boycott our national parks should elephant culling be retained as a management option.”

Wildlife experts in southern Africa which, unlike East Africa, has an abundance of elephants, said that the argument against slaughter was ludicrous. Thorn trees are favourite fodder for elephants, but eagles and vultures also like to nest in them and giraffes like to browse from above.

“I am in the business of conservation of all species, even plant life, not just elephants,” one game warden told The Times recently. “An over-population of elephants spells doom for other species.”

Ian Whyte, the chief elephant researcher in the Kruger, has written that without culling the reserve would change — and not for the better. If the population continues to grow it will turn a woodland into a grassland and other species will die. “In any protected area that has elephants you have two choices: you utilise the area to maintain biodiversity or else you have an elephant sanctuary,” he said. “You can’t have both.”

Tusk force

— An adult elephant needs up to 375lb (170kg) of vegetation every day and can drink up to 90 litres (160 pints) of water

— Elephants can live for 70 years or more and breed until the age of 50. Their young gestate for 22 months, the longest of any land animal, and weigh up to 265lb at birth

— The African elephant population had halved in the decade before the 1989 ban on the ivory trade, almost entirely because of ivory poaching

— Helicopters are used to herd and shoot the animals during a cull. Rifles were used for this once but have been replaced by dart guns loaded with a powerful muscle relaxant

Sources: SANParks; CITES; WWF; IFAW

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