A crisis in search of a policy: How KZN’s elephant ‘overpopulation’ is used to justify culling

The claim by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife that KwaZulu-Natal faces an elephant “overpopulation crisis” has been advanced with striking confidence – and strikingly little evidentiary foundation. Framed as an urgent ecological emergency, it invokes the threat of biodiversity collapse to justify what may become one of the largest elephant removals in recent South African history.

At the heart of the issue are two contradictory realities.

On the one hand, the public has been presented with a crisis: more than 1,000 elephants said to be exceeding ecological limits, placing biodiversity at risk, and requiring urgent intervention. On the other, a recent written reply to the KwaZulu-Natal legislature states unequivocally: “There is no plan to relocate 1,050 elephants.”

This is not a technical clarification. It is a direct contradiction. A crisis is being asserted. A number is being circulated. But the plan that supposedly justifies both is, officially, not a plan at all.

The science that isn’t there

The same reply exposes another problem: the absence of clearly presented scientific evidence.

When asked to provide peer-reviewed studies and ecological data justifying the proposed intervention, the response does not cite specific research. Instead, it refers broadly to internal monitoring, annual censuses and Elephant Management Plans.

This is not the same thing.

There is no body of recent, site-specific, peer-reviewed research demonstrating that elephant populations in KwaZulu-Natal are currently driving irreversible biodiversity loss at the scale now being claimed. Even in Tembe Elephant Park – one of the few sites where elephant-vegetation interactions have been studied – the evidence points to complex, context-dependent impacts rather than ecological collapse.

The distinction is critical. Ecological change is not ecological failure. Yet the former is being used to justify the language of the latter.

Timing of the narrative

What is being advanced, therefore, is not a demonstrated ecological crisis, but a policy position built on conjecture.

Furthermore, the timing of this narrative – emerging in the lead-up to local government elections – invites scrutiny. In South Africa, the distribution of wildlife-derived resources has long intersected with rural political economies, raising questions about whether such considerations are shaping the current push for intervention.

That the recent spate of elephant-related announcements coincides with severe economic stresses within Ezemvelo raises further questions: Is Ezemvelo’s call an insincere attempt to dupe the public into believing that they are seeking non-lethal solutions, while planning and motivating for lethal removals? Could they be planning to blur the lines between culling and hunting to economically compensate for successive budget cuts and a dysfunctional operations-salaries ratio?

This uncertainty extends beyond gaps in the science and political manoeuvring to the regulatory process itself. In response to a parliamentary question on 20 March 2026 – requesting details of all approvals for the culling or lethal removal of elephants – Environment Minister Willie Aucamp sidestepped the issue. He stated that his department had not received any culling “permit applications”, before adding, somewhat confusingly, that no applications had been rejected.

This distinction is significant. While the issuing of permits is a provincial function, the prior approval of a culling plan rests with the minister. The absence of permit applications, therefore, does not preclude the possibility that culling plans have already received ministerial approval. If so, it is entirely plausible that Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife has either issued, or is on the verge of issuing, the necessary permits.

It is also unclear whether all affected reserves have current, approved Elephant Management Plans, which are legally required and typically stipulate that culling may only be considered as a measure of last resort after non-lethal alternatives have been exhausted in line with the Norms and Standards of Management of Elephants in South Africa.

Process without clarity

So, either the process is still in its early stages – in which case the language of urgency is premature – or decisions are being taken at provincial and national level without clear public articulation of how they align with national oversight.

In both cases, the result is the same: a lack of transparency.

The public is being asked to accept the necessity of intervention without being shown, in clear procedural terms, how that intervention will be authorised, regulated or implemented.

No place to go

One of the most revealing elements of the official reply is what it says – almost in passing – about relocation. Despite years of searching, “very limited opportunities have arisen” to move elephants into suitable areas. No receiving sites have been identified. Future engagements are described as contingent and exploratory.

This matters. If elephants cannot be moved, then “removal” begins to mean something else.

The same reply makes it clear that, in the absence of viable relocation options, lethal measures remain part of the available management framework under national norms and standards.

Culling is not being explicitly announced. But it is clearly being positioned.

The narrowing of choice

The government maintains that non-lethal measures – contraception, habitat expansion, corridor development – are being pursued. But it also states that these are insufficient on their own, given land constraints and fragmentation.

This is how inevitability is constructed.

Options are acknowledged, then dismissed. Constraints are emphasised. Timeframes are compressed. Gradually, the range of possible responses narrows until only one appears viable.

What remains – culling – is not presented as a choice, but as a necessity.

A crisis of thresholds, not elephants

Even on its own terms, the argument raises deeper questions.

“Carrying capacity” is repeatedly invoked as the basis for intervention. Yet in fenced reserves, such thresholds are not fixed ecological limits. They are management constructs, shaped by artificial water provisioning, fire regimes, fencing and historical land-use decisions.

In several KwaZulu-Natal reserves, these thresholds have reportedly been exceeded for extended periods – yet without clearly documented ecological collapse. There is no publicly available scientific basis explaining how these limits were derived, when they were last updated, or what specific ecological indicators they reflect.

If such thresholds can be exceeded for years without demonstrable system failure, their sudden invocation as evidence of crisis demands scrutiny.

The politics of ‘conflict’

The language of human-elephant conflict reinforces the narrative of urgency. But in South Africa, this framing is often misleading.

Elephants are largely confined within fenced reserves. Conflict typically arises not from sustained competition over shared landscapes, but from breaches in artificially bounded systems.

Yet the language of conflict is intensifying. This is not incidental. It performs a political function. By framing the issue in terms of human vulnerability, it transforms a question of land use and governance into one of urgency.

The prominence of this framing in recent national debates – advanced by senior political figures, including Deputy Environment Minister Narend Singh – raises legitimate questions about whether “conflict” is being used less as a precise ecological diagnosis and more as a policy lever.

This is reinforced by his boss. Aucamp’s public positioning reflects a clear tilt towards a more utilitarian model of conservation, in which wildlife is increasingly framed in terms of use, value and management efficiency. In such a framework, the move towards lethal intervention is not a last resort, it becomes a logical extension of the minister’s ideology.

A question of accountability

If decisions of this scale are to be taken, they must be grounded in transparent evidence, coherent policy and accountable process. At present, none of these elements is in place.

What is in place is a narrative: urgent but impossible to reconcile with the official record. A crisis is being constructed, not demonstrated. And in that space, the most politically difficult decision – killing elephants – is being normalised before it is openly acknowledged.

The issue is not ecological. It is whether the provincial and national government, backed by a minister prepared to stake his reputation on this course, is moving to act first and explain later. DM