All the food wasted by western nations means these elephants don’t need to die.
I have grown up in Zimbabwe and spent extensive time in the various national parks, while sad this is unfortunately a necessary measure when there are too many elephants and not enough food. When there is a food shortage elephants tend to just eat and destroy everything. Every single tree will be stripped down to the bark, every single blade of grass will be eaten to the point where certain places are left as bare dirt and start to look like a dessert.
In previous years when this happened my family used to say that the parks were bombed out, because all you saw were uprooted remains of dead trees, grey dirt and giant holes in the ground where elephants were digging to get at ground water or salt. All the other animals suffered during these times because the elephants ate everything.
In some of the smaller parks local farmers used to sell excess hay for the wild animals, but I’m not sure if that is possible this year and definitely not possible for the Hwange which is the largest park.
2 comments
All the food wasted by western nations means these elephants don’t need to die.
I have grown up in Zimbabwe and spent extensive time in the various national parks, while sad this is unfortunately a necessary measure when there are too many elephants and not enough food. When there is a food shortage elephants tend to just eat and destroy everything. Every single tree will be stripped down to the bark, every single blade of grass will be eaten to the point where certain places are left as bare dirt and start to look like a dessert.
In previous years when this happened my family used to say that the parks were bombed out, because all you saw were uprooted remains of dead trees, grey dirt and giant holes in the ground where elephants were digging to get at ground water or salt. All the other animals suffered during these times because the elephants ate everything.
In some of the smaller parks local farmers used to sell excess hay for the wild animals, but I’m not sure if that is possible this year and definitely not possible for the Hwange which is the largest park.