Massive Secret Problem

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30842, 30 August 1965, Page 13

Massive Secret Problem

(N.Z.P. A. -Reuter —Copyright? NAIROBI, Aug. 29. Elephants in one of Africa’s largest national parks are suffering from a population explosion. There are 5000 too many of them in the Tsavo park, in Southern Kenya, and they must be disposed of to bring the elephant population down to the manageable level of 10,000. This is reported in the

Kenya news magazine “Reporter,” which described Tsavo’s elephant glut as Kenya’s secret problem. Tsavo is 8000 square miles, but a normal healthy elephant is said to need two square miles of munching territory, so there is no room for 15,000, the magazine said. Two short-term solutions have been considered by a special committee set up last year, the magazine said. (1) Nature should be allowed to take its course. In an inevitable food shortage, weaker elephants would die. Any elephant at-

tempting to move out of the park area would be shot. (2) A short-term solution would be selective culling within the park—mass extermination of several thousand. But this would create such a disturbance within the park that it would drive out not only elephants but other game.

A long-term solution might be to control accidental bush fires in Tsavo, thus providing plenty of food for elephants, the magazine said.