Elephant birth control

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 14:01:00 +0000

African elephants face two terribly contradictory threats: In some parts of the continent the animals are being hunted into extinction for their valuable ivory tusks, but in other countries elephants are so heavily overpopulated that they pose a threat not just to themselves but to entire ecosystems.

South Africa faces the latter problem. There are now more than 18,000 elephants in the nation—too many to fit into the increasingly smaller territories in which they have been confined. Too little space means not enough food, and hungry elephants have been known to strip a habitat of every piece of edible vegetation, killing all local plants and leaving nothing for other animals to eat. If rapidly growing populations are not controlled, South Africa says it might need to once again start widespread culling of its elephant populations. South Africa stopped culling in 1994 but put the option back on the table in 2008. It has not yet put it back into practice.

Salon.com > Elephants and overpopulation

Elephant birth control