GHANA FACED WITH ELEPHANT TROUBLE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31248, 21 December 1966, Page 8

GHANA FACED WITH ELEPHANT TROUBLE

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter)

ACCRA.

Ghana is experiencing elephant trouble over a wide area and farmers are complaining about the damage which the rampaging animals are causing to their crops. Dislodged by the clearing of forest and shrub land, the elephants are attracted to the green plantations growing up around new villages.

They feed greedily on the plantains and bananas, eating not only the fruit but also snapping the stems and sucking the sweet sap. They are also raiding ripe cocoa pods stacked ready for the market

Angry farmers with antique guns shoot at the lumbering invaders. Elephants which escape with wounds do not forget Bad-tempered, probably in great pain, they come back later, crash into the compounds, push over the frail huts and trample them underfoot

Elephant trouble extends over about 1000 square miles of Ghana, according to Mr Emmanuel Asibey, game warden in charge of the Wild Life Division of the Ministry of Forestry. He maintains that only a wounded elephant does wilful damage. “In one month,” he says, “nine elephants have had to be killed because they were destructive and dangerous to human life. Most of them had wounds—bad wounds. As complaints continue to come in through the police and district commissioners, we must decide soon how many more we have to kill.

“We do not know how many elephants there are in Ghana. No census has ever been

taken, but there must be thousands in the forest reserve of Brong Ahafo and the Western Region. If the numbers of elephant are not controlled, the local people develop a hatred of them and demand that the Government take drastic measures.”

The policy of the Wild Life Division is to steer a scientific middle course between over-population and wholesale slaughter. Bushmeat, especially used in Ghana and an important part of the cocoa farmers’ diet, ranges from elephant, royal antelope, buffalo and warthog to baboon, porcupine, genet and cane rat.

An analysis of bushmeat displayed for sale by wholesalers one day at the rural market of Nkoranza showed that as much as 4911 b of rat were for sale at about 4s. sd. per lb. There was no elephant meat for sale, but much is on offer every time one is killed.

A five-ton bull, if the flesh is properly dressed and on sale within 12 hours, is worth about £l3OO. There is a tradition in Ghana that when a hunter kills an elephant he gives the local chief a hind leg. He also gives the chief the tail, ears and one of the tusks.

One of the limbs goes to the men who cut up the huge carcase, and those who carry

the pieces away claim the neck. The hunter has what remains. When the executioners are Government game officers, all traditional claims are waived and everything is on the open market.

The private hunter has only to pay £24 for a licence to shoot elephant. He must, however, prove that he has a rifle sufficiently powerful for the job.

To bring hunting as well as the elephants under proper control the Ghanaian Government needs a large staff of wild life officers. Game in Ghana, Mr Asibey says, is ruthlessly exploited when it is not completely neglected, yet game is a natural resource that replenishes itself with protection and conservation.

Assisting Mr Asibey is a United States professor of zoology sent to Ghana by the Food and Agriculture Organisation and a young graduate. Six key posts are vacant, and it is hoped they will soon be filled by men who understand animal welfare problems and especially the problems of elephants

Mr Asibey says: “In India and Ceylon the elephant is understood. It has been domesticated for centuries. But the African elephant is an animal about which we still have a lot to learn.”