The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority said Tuesday it would kill dozens of elephants to control the animals’ population and share the meat with citizens.
The authority, also known as ZimParks, said it has issued permits to Save Valley Conservancy, a large private game reserve in the southeast of the country, “for an elephant management exercise.”
“The management quota is meant to address the growing elephant population in the region and will initially target 50 elephants,” ZimParks said in a statement. “According to the 2024 aerial survey, there are 2,550 elephants against an ecological carrying capacity of 800 elephants in Save Valley Conservancy.”
The reserve has moved 200 elephants to other areas of the country over the last five years “to manage the elephant population and protect the wildlife habitat.”
“Elephant meat from the management exercise will be distributed to local communities while ivory will be State property that will be handed over to the ZimParks for safekeeping,” the agency continued.
A spokesman for Save Valley Conservancy said that the first phase “will be to understand the ecological, logistical and financial constraints involved in carrying out elephant management exercises, which may have to be an ongoing feature in the future.”
“Our first choice is (of course) to try and find alternative homes for the elephants, however there now seems to be no areas of suitable habitat that are empty of elephants and within a feasible distance,” the statement continued.
“Obviously safety and habitat management are top areas of consideration and we are therefore constraining our initial exercise to small numbers (approximately 50), the exact number of which will depend upon what size herds we find within the selected management area and how well the logistical enterprise of dealing with the carcasses in a respectful (not wasteful) manner,” the spokesman added.
