Africa: Eating Elephants and the Assault On Our Waning Wildlife

Our relationship with the wild animals on our planet, whose numbers are rapidly declining, is deeply problematic. With the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in session in Colombia this week, it’s time to take stock.

There are millions of people who will pay considerable sums just to see wildlife. There are others who are prepared to pay equal amounts to kill it. In between are governments which, though tasked with protecting it, are planning to kill it for food. To say our association with wild creatures is complicated would be an understatement.

The two photographs below, which feature in the forthcoming book Africa’s Last Lions by Don Pinnock and Colin Bell (Struik), illustrate the point.

Consider the disturbing business of eating elephants. In August 2024, the Namibian government announced it would cull 723 animals for drought relief, including 30 hippos, 100 buffalos, 50 impalas, 100 blue wildebeest, 300 zebras, 100 eland and 100 elephants, sourced mainly from five national parks.

There is clearly an El Nino event and climate-change-induced drought across much of Africa, and people are in dire need of food. It’s an ongoing continental problem, which, decades ago, was predicted to increase and needed to be planned for. It was not.

Biologist Dr Keith Lindsay noted in August that there was a risk that eating elephants would give neighbouring nations…