Pretoria, South Africa: South Africa said on Monday it will allow elephants to be killed to control their population but promised no wholesale slaughter, reversing a 1995 ban and immediately drawing boycott threats from animal rights activists.
The comprehensive policy on managing and protecting elephants included a ban on capturing wild elephants for commercial purposes - a move likely to draw fire from a fast-growing industry in elephant-back safaris.
Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said his government was drawing up regulations for treating the 120 elephants in captivity in the country, saying his department had received "numerous complaints" about cruel training practices including the use of electric prodders.
The minister would give no indication how many elephants might be killed, saying only that figures of 2,000 to 10,000 being bandied about by various interest groups were "hugely inflated."
"Culling will only be allowed as a last option and under very strict conditions," van Schalkwyk said.
South Africa's elephant population has ballooned from 8,000 in 1995, when killing was banned under international pressure, to more than 20,000.
The national parks service said had there not been a policy of killing for population control between 1967 and 1994, the current population would have been 80,000.
South Africa is proposing killing even though elephant populations in other countries are low, elephants are classed as "vulnerable" worldwide, and trade in ivory has been banned since 1989 to try to combat poaching.
Van Schalkwyk said the debate was marked by "strong emotions." "There are few other creatures on earth that have the ability of elephants to 'connect' with humans in a very special way," he said.
