By Mr. Black
Imagine that you’re a nine-year-old living in rural Zimbabwe. Much of the year is dry and, in recent years, the rains have barely come at all. Your family relies on a small maize crop to survive, supplemented by food provided by international aid organizations.
Once you arrive home from school each day your afternoons are spent carrying a plastic five-gallon bucket hundreds of yards to a dry riverbed. There, you’ll dig down until you hit water which often means a hole deeper than your height. You carry the water back home, pouring what didn’t splash out on the half-acre of planted corn. You repeat the cycle until dark and hope that the lions don’t find you as dusk approaches.
This is the life that you live, day after day, year after year. Then, just as the corn matures, a bull elephant comes calling in the dark, knocking down the makeshift fence and wiping-out a season’s worth of work within a few minutes. This isn’t fiction; this is real life—far away from the ritzy photo camps in Mana Pools and the tourist mecca of Victoria Falls. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, just as many hunters have.
This is the reality in today’s Zimbabwe: too many elephants, too many people, not enough rain. Zimbabwe has a steady population of elephants—estimated at 85,000-100,000—which is roughly twice its carrying capacity. Elephants do devastating damage to their limited habitat and conflicts with humans are inevitable, common, and deadly. At least 31 Zimbabweans were killed in human-animal conflicts in the first half of 2024. On a personal note, in August, 2022 I was in the Dande Safari Area in Zimbabwe’s Zambezi Valley and four locals had been killed so far that year by elephants. I would have been the fifth victim, but that’s a story for another day.
Drought conditions have plagued the region in recent years, turning an already difficult food situation into a humanitarian crisis. In order to cut down some of the overpopulation of elephants and to help feed locals, Zimbabwe’s government is planning to follow in the lead of nearby Namibia and begin a culling operation.
Zimbabwe intends to cull 200 elephants which will provide much-needed meat to thousands of starving citizens. Namibia’s culling process has just begun and, already, they’ve provided 125,000 pounds of meat to citizens in-need. I’ve seen an elephant come apart and can promise you that not a single ounce of meat will be wasted.
Many will scoff at the idea of killing elephants. From the comfort of a New York City apartment or suburban American home, the concept probably sounds appalling. Here is the truth though: Zimbabwe has more elephants than its habitat can handle. Human populations continue to expand, further depleting habitat. Chinese mining operations are popping up throughout the country, disrupting the ecosystems even further. People don’t have enough food and what they attempt to grow for themselves is often destroyed by the elephants. Something has to give.
Culling potentially solves both the elephant overpopulation problems and the nutritional deficiencies faced by the citizens. To animal rights activists, it won’t be pretty but sometimes the real world isn’t. What’s worse: a dead elephant or a starving child? You can’t have it both ways.
My Krieghoff double is clean and lubed if they need help. Just saying.
