Elephants and humans at risk — deaths, disinformation and a search for solutions

At the Southern African Elephant Indaba at Bonamanzi Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal last week, landowners, provincial officials, conservationists, academics and some NGOs gathered for two days of fierce debate. 

The meeting was framed as a search for a solution to human/elephant conflict (HEC), but from the opening sessions a deeper tension was clear: was this about people’s real struggles, or about justifying a return to widespread culling and hunting? Or both?

Deputy Environment Minister Narend Singh reminded delegates that elephants can mean fear and ruin rather than folklore: “Fields of maize flattened overnight. Water infrastructure destroyed. Fences broken. And most devastating of all, lives lost – human and elephant alike.” 

For a child walking to school at dawn or a farmer whose only source of income is trampled in a single night, he said in an opinion piece written after the indaba, the elephant becomes not a cultural treasure, but a source of fear and economic ruin.

The indaba was linked to the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF-7) Human-Wildlife Conflict project, which has earmarked $3.4-million to address HEC in South Africa over the next four years. The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, backed by the United Nations Environment Programme, will lead implementation, piloting practical solutions such as community rangers, better fence management and early warning systems in hotspots such as the Greater Mapungubwe and uMfolozi nodes.

South Africa is not the same 

Yet delegates quickly flagged a paradox. In South Africa, unlike in many African countries, all elephants live inside fenced reserves. Nationally, HEC is far lower here than in regions where elephants roam freely across farmland. The real issue here is not too many elephants spilling into villages, but collapsing fences and poor management in underfunded provincial and some private reserves.

Examples abound. Conservationist Adam Cruise, who recently toured 53 provincial reserves, described to delegates a sector in collapse: “Half a dozen, even a dozen, don’t exist anymore. Others are in such disrepair that fences are down, and elephants rampage into communities. 

“For example, Songimvelo in Mpumalanga was closed when I visited in May because elephants were raiding crops. Authorities? Doing nothing.” In Limpopo’s Letaba Ranch, too, elephants breached broken fences and raided again. Provincial authorities looked the other way.

In the Mawana private reserve in KZN, broken or absent fences have led to one death and the culling of nine elephants near rural communities.

North West’s Madikwe Game Reserve illustrates the pressure within a park. Elephant numbers ballooned from just under 300 in the 1990s to more than 1,600 in 2024 – among the highest densities on Earth. Provincial officials admit that translocation is no longer feasible and contraception too late unless preceded by drastic reductions. 

But these crises are less about elephants’ behaviour than about human failure to invest in infrastructure and long-term management.

Against this background, many delegates worried aloud that “conflict” was being weaponised to advance an agenda of large-scale killing. As one group report put it: “These are real and tragic events, but they do not amount to an epidemic. Across the span of a decade, they number in the tens rather than the hundreds. The problem isn’t elephants but poor elephant management.”

Without reliable baseline statistics – no national database of incidents, no public record of Damage-Causing Animal (DCA) permits – it’s impossible to know whether HEC is escalating or not. In such a vacuum, terms like “crisis” become rhetorical tools rather than quantified conservation challenges.

Push to cull

Still, the push was unmistakable. In one online session, a participant, Ina Mayer, declared flatly: “The only solution left for South Africa at this stage is culling.”

Kruger Park section ranger Richard Sowry argued that culling was an ecological necessity – “simulated predation” in the absence of lions or other natural regulators. Without intervention, he warned, elephants would over-impact vegetation and collapse biodiversity. Others lined up in support. “Kruger is dying from top to bottom,” said Mayer, whose affiliation could not be established. 

But resistance to culling was also vocal. Professor Rob Slotow of the University of KwaZulu-Natal countered that humans were never elephants’ natural predators: “Their numbers were controlled ‘bottom up’ through the availability of food and water.”

Conservationist Bruce Page warned against oversimplification: “Ecosystems are complex, and simplistic solutions cause harm. History shows catastrophic consequences of oversimplified management – remember Mao’s sparrow campaign.” (He ordered the killing of sparrows to protect the grain crop which was then destroyed by insects.)

The economics of elephants

Underlying the clash was a deeper question: who benefits? Cruise was scathing: “The idea that making money from elephants will benefit people is false. It will benefit an elite few, certainly not the people on the ground.” Fifty years of “sustainable use” in southern Africa, he said, had not lifted rural communities out of poverty and provincial reserves were collapsing despite the rhetoric of a biodiversity economy.

Private landowners, by contrast, stressed their large contribution: 20.5 million hectares under private conservation versus 18.5 million in state hands. They criticised restrictive elephant norms and standards imposed since 2008, which they said left them unable to control populations or benefit economically from elephants. Some warned that they would remove elephants entirely if legislation was not relaxed.

Beyond domination

Other delegates urged a shift in thinking. Dr Audrey Delsink of Humane World for Animals argued for a “One Well-Being” approach, balancing human, animal and environmental needs: “Management must not be equated with domination. Private and provincial landowners must meet their legal responsibilities – particularly in maintaining fences – before blaming elephants for conflict.”

Delegates often circled back to fences. Group discussions acknowledged their double-edged nature: both practical tools for preventing conflict and bitter symbols of exclusion under apartheid. Yet failing to repair them leaves both people and elephants in danger. Solutions proposed included environmental monitor programmes along fencelines – “a fence of people” providing jobs and safety.

For conservation NGOs, the absence of systematic national data on elephant damage was a glaring hole. Without transparent figures or DCA permits, neither Parliament nor the public can judge whether lethal control is justified. The risk, as one delegate noted, is that “conflict becomes more rhetoric than reality.”

This lack of accountability erodes trust at precisely the moment when unity is most needed. As Singh himself wrote [link]: “If we act now with urgency, accountability, and unity, people and elephants can indeed thrive together.”

The indaba unfolded against the backdrop of South Africa’s White Paper on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity and parallel court challenges on animal wellbeing. From the outset, the meeting’s framing of HEC as an existential crisis is likely to feed into these national policy debates. The fear among conservation NGOs is that the indaba’s outcomes will be used to justify loosening restrictions on hunting and culling just as animal welfare protections are under review.

Next steps

If there was a single thread through the debates, it was that South Africa’s elephant problem is not elephants – its governance. Provincial reserves collapsing through neglect. Broken fences left unrepaired. Private landowners frustrated by restrictive laws but often too quick to reach for the gun. Communities bearing losses but seldom sharing benefits.

As one group noted, the real question is not “to cull or not to cull”, but “what are we trying to achieve?” If the goal is healthy ecosystems, stronger fences and better water and fire management may matter more than bullets. If the goal is thriving communities, equitable benefit-sharing from tourism and conservation funds is more urgent than selling tusks or meat.

Singh has set a tight timetable: a technical group must refine the indaba’s interim report within weeks, with a final version submitted to Parliament soon after. The government, he said, will act on the recommendations “within set timeframes” and with “community-inclusive approaches”. DM