Grabbing tourism by the tail

A CONSERVATION program involving elephant relocation is drawing adventure tourists to Africa's Malawi, as Chris Pritchard reports.

Elephant

AN ENORMOUS elephant has successfully eluded darting with a sedative and seems reluctant to be relocated – so a conservationist grabs the beast by the tail and pulls.

The bulky pachyderm barely notices the assault, contemptuously flicks its tail free and flees into the African bush.

It is later found, darted and relocated.

The trouble with African elephants – Earth's biggest land-based mammals – is that they congregate in large numbers in small areas.

What's more, they eat a lot.

Just watch an elephant use its trunk to rip entire branches from trees and shovel them into its mouth. At many a waterhole in South Africa and Botswana, upwards of 50 highly sociable elephants turn up to drink together at dusk.

Visitors can drive through vast areas where it seems almost every tree is dying, if not dead.

Like Australia's koalas, elephants eat themselves out of house and home.

Pressure from growing human populations only makes it worse.

Farmers complain hungry elephants flatten their crops. If given the chance, they kill the marauders.

Recently, I watched helplessly as elephants rampaged through a cornfield in next-door Zambia.

Some environmentalist sources suggest five million elephants roamed Africa in the 1930s, but competition for land eroded elephantine habitats.

Worse, poaching for valuable ivory sped up the population decline.

Conservation groups estimate there are around 600,000 African elephants left, with numbers on a slow increase.

However, although population growth is widely welcomed, it is not without potential problems.

When more elephants are present than vegetation can support, some human experts propose culling.

Emotional debate inevitably ensues. Opponents of culling range from those who advocate doing nothing and letting nature take its course, to those who encourage alternatives such as contraception.

A third way is relocation, moving elephants back into areas from where they have all but disappeared.

This method has been successfully used in South Africa, but is expensive.

Malawi, a small and poor central African nation, is trying relocation financed by paying tourists observing the activity.

Malawi's Liwonde National Park has more elephants than its landscape can support and nearby farmland is often raided for food.

Government policy supports relocation to Majete Wildlife Reserve and other degraded Malawian parks where elephants are now rare.

Following a successful relocation initiative last year, five groups of tourists will this year join missions to relocate 70 elephants that will be moved in cohesive family groups to avoid stress.

Tourists who go on these tours aren't allowed to engage in dangerous derring-do such as grabbing elephants by the tail, but they will be in the thick of the action, observing from helicopters the darting of targeted creatures, including large bulls.

Back on the ground, they will accompany teams moving sedated elephants into sturdy crates and on to large trucks for road trips south.

They will then watch when the elephants are freed in groups.

In between, the visitors will stay in luxury safari lodges and sightsee from the air as well as by road in four-wheel drive safari vehicles.

Aside from elephants, hippos and crocodiles are common in Liwonde National Park. Monkeys screech constantly in the trees but lions are seldom seen.

Elephants are numerous at South Luangwa National Park, in neighbouring Zambia, so it is commonly added to Malawian itineraries.

Wildlife conservationists say relocation programs have been proven to work with many types of wildlife.

But for novice observers a nagging question remains: why can't elephants be relocated simply by tugging their tails?


Sunday Mail (QLD)