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Progress in elephant conservation
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ISSUES IN ELEPHANT CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT
While there is general agreement that elephants represent species of urgent concern to the conservation community, there is considerable controversy about what needs to be done if we wish to mitigate the threats and protect and conserve the remaining animals. Such controversy is widespread in conservation today and we are beginning to understand why.
A major reason is that debates about controversial issues in wildlife conservation generally bear little resemblance to the facts as they are known. More often than not, discussions focus on distracting abstractions of reality, and on myths or fables, promoted by various participants as they attempt to advance their personal and institutional values, opinions, objectives and agendas. It doesn’t matter what the issue is, the facts are typically misrepresented or ignored by most of those involved. The climate change debate is a classic example. Elephant conservation is no different.In this chapter, we discuss a number of issues that hinder progress in elephant conservation today.
THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN SCIENCE, POLICY, AND MANAGEMENT
In modern conservation, there is an ever-increasing disconnect between science, policy, and management. Sometimes referred to as the science-policy gap, it is widespread, both in conservation generally, and in elephant conservation in particular.
They are heard at meetings and inscribed in documents of international conventions, including the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), and the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.
Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, formerly the chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development, went so far as to say,
“… there is no other basis for sound political decisions than the best available scientific evidence.”
THE QUESTION OF CULLING
In situations where humans decide that there are more elephants in the local environment than individual people or society-at-large desire or are willing to tolerate, we typically hear calls for culling programs to reduce the number of animals. This issue is sufficiently widespread that it deserves further comment.
Culling programs involve either the killing of individual animals (lethal culling) or their translocation to other places (non-lethal culling). Irrespective of the species involved, culling programs are almost universally initiated without specific conservation goals; without adequate scientific assessment; and without any serious consideration of any alternatives to culling that might actually achieve the presumed objectives, both for the target animals and other ecosystem components, including human society.
ELEPHANT CONSERVATION, DEVELOPMENT, AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION
These days, when the conservation of biodiversity is discussed within the conservation community, it is usually paired with something else, whether it be development, jobs, livelihoods, or poverty alleviation or eradication.
This point was made over 20 years ago, at the opening session of the 18th assembly of IUCN – The World Conservation Union in Perth, Australia. It was there that His Royal Highness, Prince Phillip – at the time President of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) – remarked that:
“the issue of preventing the steady decline in biological diversity is quite big and complicated enough without getting involved in matters beyond the professional knowledge and expertise of the conservation movement.”
He went on to say:
“The need for someone to stand up and champion nature, and speak for the Earth with wisdom and insight is urgent.”
The time has come to get conservation back on track. The protection and preservation of wild plants and animals, and the ecosystems they inhabit, must once again be the foremost consideration of conservationists everywhere.
Elephant conservation would look remarkably different today if policy and management decisions were informed and guided by knowledge from all learned fields of study. But, before we discuss that issue, let us outline a few aspects of elephant conservation that are based on selective use of available information and on prevailing myths that bear little resemblance to the reality on the ground.
