JOHANNESBURG Reuters - Experts questioned the wisdom of using culls to contain swelling populations of African elephants, saying the science was dubious. South African authorities are keen to resume culling -- a practice they halted over a decade ago in the face of public outrage -- to cut growing elephant numbers in the country's flagship Kruger National Park. No decision has been made but government scientists say the animals, whose numbers are estimated to have almost doubled in a decade to close to 12,000, are now eating themselves and other animals out of house and home in the 2-million hectare park. Culling is also being mooted as an option in other parks, which in South Africa are enclosed by fences, meaning the big animals only have limited space to breed and feed in.

But experts at a workshop in Johannesburg last week said the science behind such reasoning was questionable and could even have an adverse impact on other species. Bruce Page, a lecturer in ecology at South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal, said that many African parks had been devoid of large animals before they were proclaimed because of overhunting and so the landscape was often in an "unnatural state" with too many trees. Kruger officials contend that elephants are devastating woodlands -- but many of these forested areas sprung up before the park was proclaimed over a century ago and it may now be reverting over the long term to its previous state.

Until the practice was halted, Kruger officials employed regular culls to keep the elephant population at close to 7,000, a number that Oxford-based ecologist Keith Lindsay described as not based on science. He also questioned the conventional view that limiting populations of elephant -- the world's largest land mammal -- would give other creatures more space, promoting biodiversity. Much opposition to culling is based on grounds of cruelty. The operation typically involves the rounding up by helicopter of entire family groups which are shot from the air, a process that even its staunchest advocates admit is nasty. Alternatives to culling including relocation and expanding park spaces. But on an impoverished continent with growing numbers of rural people such options cannot go on indefinitely.

Reuters