A 3-ton bull elephant lies useless on the bottom in a distant nook of Africa. His life has been snuffed out by a marksman’s bullet fired into his mind. In just a few seconds it was throughout.
He could have recognized nothing. Inside minutes of his demise ten days in the past, a wildlife vet was working to the elephant to examine he was shot cleanly and had felt no ache.
An hour later, I used to be in a position to stand by him, marvelling on the darkish eyes completely circled by bristly lashes and his 4 jumbo ft, every larger than a dinner plate, which is able to by no means tramp the bush once more.
The 22-year-old bull might need survived one other 4 a long time, roaming wild with 950 different elephants on the enormous Sango Conservancy stretching over 231 sq. miles – a 3rd of the dimensions of Larger London – in south-east Zimbabwe, close to the border with Mozambique.
He was killed as a result of right here there are far too many elephants. Not less than 100,000 (17,000 greater than a decade in the past) trudge the nation, annihilating the land the place they dwell.
The bull was amongst 54 elephants killed in a purge at Sango to regulate numbers. By the top of subsequent yr, the non-public conservancy plans to have slaughtered 600, nearly two-thirds of its resident elephants, in southern Africa’s greatest mass cull for 3 and a half a long time.
‘It’s a horrible job, which we don’t like doing,’ says the proprietor, Willy Pabst. ‘There may be an elephant overpopulation, which implies they imperil their very own survival. The most important hazard to the elephant is the elephant itself.’
We’re sitting collectively at his imposing conservancy, which teems with each sort of African wildlife from lions, hippos, zebras and leopards to baboons and hyenas.
‘We have been on the finish of our tether about what to do,’ he continues.
‘1000’s of our bushes, a lot of our forest, have been destroyed by elephants.
‘We try to avoid wasting the elephants and the conservancy.’
Earlier than we watched the cull, Kim Wolhuter, Sango’s wildlife filmmaker, drove us miles to see the devastation wreaked by elephants of their relentless quest for meals.
‘They’re consuming themselves out of home and residential,’ he mentioned. ‘There are too many for the land and their numbers preserve going up.’
Sango consultants stress that southern Africa isn’t a Disneyland filled with mild jumbos as portrayed in Western kids’s movies.
Neither, in lots of components of Africa, are elephants an endangered species, regardless of the claims of animal rights charities and their rich Western donors.
The consultants add: ‘Elephants usually are not fluffy toys. A lion isn’t a vegan. These are wild animals that, to outlive, will eat or kill every part of their path identical to they all the time have.’
Right now, the hideous penalties of Sango’s elephant overpopulation are clear. A few of the conservancy resembles a desert.
Almost 80 per cent of the grass has disappeared as a result of ever-hungry elephants use their highly effective trunks to tear up stems and roots collectively – which implies it will possibly by no means regrow.
A 3rd of Sango’s forest of mopane bushes, native to southern Africa, at the moment are useless or stunted as a result of the elephants wish to gorge on them.
A whole lot of giant 1,000-year-old baobab bushes have toppled over after being assaulted by beasts that must eat 300 kilos of vegetation a day and drink sufficient water to fill a tub.
The animals tear off the baobab bark as much as 19 ft, the peak their trunk suggestions can attain.
Then they suck the sap inside to slake their thirst. Beneath this assault, the traditional tree is hollowed out. Lastly, it collapses, leaving a pile of what resembles sawdust.
The result’s a single baobab can die in just a few weeks. Identified in Africa because the ‘the other way up’ tree (as a result of its branches resemble roots), the baobab has thrived at Sango for the reason that Center Ages – till now.
As a rule of thumb, ecologists say an grownup elephant wants nearly a sq. mile of the southern African bush to thrive (with out destroying its personal habitat). However even in huge Sango there are 5 residing on this house ‘excess of we will feed’, mentioned Pabst.
David Goosen, a Sango director and wildlife skilled, added: ‘We had to determine a strategy to save our 950 elephants from themselves.
‘We could must cull over and over into the long run to maintain down numbers. They’re destroying their very own habitat and that of different wildlife too.’
The controversial motion at Sango follows final yr’s resolution by the Zimbabwean authorities to kill elephants to regulate numbers.
It ended a 35-year hiatus on culls, which wildlife activists worldwide dubiously, however efficiently, argued have been ‘merciless and pointless’.
In desperation, ignoring the critics, Zimbabwe slaughtered 200 elephants to feed its residents left hungry by the worst drought in a long time.
Almost half the nation’s individuals confronted ‘acute meals shortages’, mentioned the United Nations.
The surroundings minister mentioned huge elephant numbers – greater than in any nation aside from Botswana – have been endangering human life.
Marauding animals had marched into villages and grown fearless of individuals. Some 31 individuals in Zimbabwe died from elephant assaults final yr.
A number of have been farmers amassing their livestock within the night or tending their crops.
Youngsters and outdated individuals strolling close to their spherical thatched houses, often called ‘rondavels’, have been killed or injured when the animals confronted them.
In the midst of final yr’s state-ordered cull, I visited villages deep within the bush the place desperately hungry Zimbabweans have been being handed elephant meat by authorities officers.
The individuals mentioned they hated and feared elephants and wished them useless. ‘They’ve develop into so harmful and there are such a lot of of them,’ mentioned one.
‘We can not exit at evening with out hiding from an elephant. These animals, which we by no means used to see in our villages, take every part now we have.’
So it was on a Wednesday morning that I watched the primary shootings at Sango. They have been run like a navy operation after months of planning.
Because the early hours, a helicopter pilot with a vet had begun looking Sango’s rivers the place elephants collect to drink.
When a herd with as much as 100 animals was noticed, their place was radioed to a group under, which arrange an enclosure, or ‘boma’ in Swahili, product of black plastic sheeting to seize a few of them.
The boma web site was chosen close to a highway in order that vans carrying skinners and butchers may transport the carcasses.
The meat was taken away to a chilly retailer to await distribution to native communities or sale on the business market (with villagers sharing within the proceeds).
At 9.34am that morning, an appropriate herd of elephants had been noticed from the air.
4 shooters have been prepared, hidden from sight on a platform on the high finish of the boma and overlooking what the Sango group name, with brutal honesty, the shoot field.
The helicopter started gently driving the herd, the wind behind them so they may not odor the plastic sheeting or shooters, from the bush in the direction of the 100-yard-wide entrance of the boma.
As they moved alongside, with the helicopter sounding an occasional siren to chivvy them, the animals cut up naturally into household teams. One consisted of seven animals chosen from the air.
This group (two females, 4 calves and the 22-year-old bull) was then pushed in the direction of, and into, the boma, which narrowed because it led in the direction of the shoot field.
Because the elephants trundled on, a sequence of curtains – once more product of black plastic – have been pulled shut behind them. As soon as previous the primary curtain, there was no going again. The animals have been destined to die in only a few minutes’ time.
The Sango group anticipated the matriarch, the chief and most skilled feminine of any elephant household group, to paved the way and be shot first.
However the bull was forward and he entered the capturing space on his personal. A marksman immediately stood up and fired a bullet into the animal’s mind in entrance of the left ear.
As soon as he was killed, the shooters deserted the platform, leaping down and strolling in the direction of the remaining six elephants, killing them from the bottom.
‘We had no selection. They have been already far into the boma however wouldn’t have gone into the field with the useless bull forward of them,’ defined one. It was a clear sweep, over within the blink of an eye fixed.
Some elephants escaped the cull. One household group, led by a wily matriarch, refused to enter the boma. It hid beneath a patch of bushes to keep away from the helicopter.
‘We allow them to go. They deserved their freedom,’ the shooters instructed me.
There are few options to culling. Firing contraceptive-laden darts from the air has been tried – nevertheless it failed.
The mass translocation of herds to new habitats usually results in sad and unsettled elephants, frightening extra battle with people.
A number of years in the past, Sango despatched 101 elephants lots of of miles by highway to a different conservancy. Vets put monitoring collars on the 14 matriarchs to trace them.
Eight of those females, essential to every household group, have unexpectedly died from what Sango’s wildlife consultants imagine is stress.
Later, as we talked, sitting on a rock among the many carcasses, one of many Sango wildlife vets mentioned: ‘That is the primary time on the earth that our boma technique has been used to cull elephants. It’s humane, there isn’t any screaming by them, no panicking, no stress.’
Of the group of seven shot that day, he made this suggestion: ‘We predict the lone bull had joined this household group as a result of a feminine was on warmth.’
The vet group, Sango ecologists and researchers, watched by Zimbabwe wildlife displays, examined the animals instantly after they fell to the bottom.
They counted the bullet wounds, taking the exact measurements of enamel, ears, tusks and limbs with a view to study extra concerning the herds roaming the conservancy.
Quickly sufficient, the large our bodies have been carried by crane or lorry to the butchery space arrange in a bush clearing.
Over the subsequent few hours, on a mercifully cool, cloudy day, they have been skinned and de-boned, with the flesh sliced from each inch potential so nothing was wasted in a rustic dogged by poverty.
Overhead, vultures from Sango’s 85 nesting websites arrived on the bloody scene. They circled over the carcasses, hoping to swoop down for the remaining scraps and shreds of flesh.
That morning at 11.50am, one other eight elephants have been culled, bringing the tally to fifteen.
It was late afternoon earlier than the grisly job of coping with the our bodies was over.
To at least one aspect of the location, the place the bottom was stained crimson, a village chef referred to as Livingstone, 49, was cooking scraps to make kebabs.
He handed me a stick of the meat to eat, as I attempted in useless to overlook that it got here from a wild animal residing free within the African bush till that morning.
In what had develop into a celebratory environment, Livingstone handed kebab sticks to villagers of all ages who gathered in droves.
‘The youngsters aren’t terrified of consuming elephant,’ he mentioned. ‘They’re completely satisfied that they’re useless.’
The Sango cull was not a reasonably enterprise. A few of the useless feminine elephants have been pregnant. One was carrying a male calf three weeks from being born.
This was eliminated respectfully from her physique by the butchers, watched over by the vets, and laid gently on the bottom.
The trunks of the grownup beasts got to the village chiefs as a present. They’re a delicacy, which is usually cooked for 2 days in milk and onions to make a stew.
Simply after the primary 15 have been culled, I visited the village of Muvava, close to the place lots of of elephants dwell, to see the primary of the meat distributed by Sango’s group liaison supervisor Tsumbei Nemabwe.
The youngsters clapped with pleasure and a gaggle of ten yr olds on the main college instructed me, sweetly: ‘We love consuming the elephant’s meat. It’s our favorite.’
Winfilda Nedombkie, the 49-year-old chief councillor and mom of two daughters, mentioned: ‘The elephants eat our crops, they injury and trample on every part in the event that they get into the village or our fields.’
She mentioned that an electrical fence had been put up between Sango Conservancy and Muvava village to attempt to halt a continuing stream of marauding, hungry, elephants coming in.
A number of years again, an outdated girl from the world was killed by one of many beasts as she walked in a dried-up river mattress.
As we sat within the village sq., Winfilda mentioned: ‘The meat from this cull will give the youngsters diet, some protein. We usually have a food regimen of greens, beans and maize mash. That doesn’t assist our younger ones develop sturdy bones or get tall.’
As we drove away, the youngsters ran after our automobile shouting goodbye. All of the sudden, the motive force introduced us to a pointy halt alongside a settlement of small rondavels on the village outskirts.
In a single was a 60-year-old referred to as Estanaty who was offered with a big slab of elephant. Due to her frailty, she was awarded the meat early (the remainder of the village have been made to attend just a few extra days till the official distribution).
Estanaty’s response was to offer an infinite toothless grin. ‘Thanks. I’m more than happy at the moment,’ she mentioned, holding the meat aloft.
To this hungry Zimbabwean, residing hand-to-mouth as so many do close to Sango, the meat she acquired that day was as valuable as a bar of gold.
This article by Sue Reid was first printed by The Day by day Mail on 2 November 2025. Lead Picture: Members of the Zimbabwe Nationwide Parks and veterinarians look at the bull elephant, capturing knowledge on the dimensions and weight of the animal.
What you are able to do
Assist to guard wildlife by donating as little as $5 – it solely takes a minute!
Our conservation companions spend no less than 90 p.c of the cash raised on precise fieldwork moderately than administration and fundraising.
