Much has been written about the plight of elephants across the world. Their overall numbers continue to decrease due to habitat loss and poaching. However, Kruger National Park in South Africa has a different kind of elephant problem. It has too many elephants for the park to sustain. The estimated habitat of the park will sustain about 10,000 elephants, but it likely has over 21,000. Large numbers of elephants are destroying native vegetation and trees, and causing loss of habitat for other wildlife.
What are the park managers to do? The options given are:
Let them build to a level where they will starve to death be
Allow hunting and cull the numbers to a sustainable level
Moving large numbers to other locations seems to be too difficult, too dangerous and too expensive.
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