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Our Burning Planet

Our Burning Planet

Eating elephants and the assault on our waning wildlife

Eating elephants and the assault on our waning wildlife
Don Pinnock
By Don Pinnock
30 Oct 2024
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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.

Elephants A phalanx of game viewing vehicles lines up to get a shot of a clearly irritated lion in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania. (Photo: Martin Henfield)



Elephants, wildlife in crisis Lion bones being dried for export in South Africa. (Photo: Brent Stirton)



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. 

Read more: Conservationists decry drought-hit Namibia’s plan to cull national park wild animals for meat

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 a strong case for doing so as well. It did.

In September 2024, the Zimbabwean government said it would license the killing of 200 elephants in its national parks and distribute their meat to communities. Drought relief and crop raiding were given as reasons.

Response to these proposed culls came from 81 NGOs globally. While acknowledging the severity of the drought, they said that culling fragile wildlife populations to feed people was not sustainable and could not provide food security to millions of people requiring food assistance. 

“The distribution of game meat generates a demand that cannot be met sustainably in the long term, thereby potentially fueling poaching and illegal trade. 

“The governments of the countries concerned are not devoid of resources to implement effective measures to address the problem and should use the drought as an opportunity to employ stronger land governance and prioritise sustainable agricultural production among smallholder farmers in rural areas.”

Eating elephants is a synecdoche for failed government planning and wrongspend on excess without foresight. Zimbabwe splurged more than US$200 million on preparations to host the SADC summit in August, the second time the regional meeting was held in the country in a decade. Meanwhile, according to a report in the Independent, “it will go cap in hand to donors and co-operating partners begging them to chip in and help feed hungry citizens”.

If the government can cut back on some of its own unnecessary expenses, such as travel, the bloated civil service or resources put towards suppressing opposition, says Zimbabwean political analyst Rashweat Mukundu, then the country has enough resources to feed its own people. 

Read more: Zimbabwe to cull 200 elephants to feed people left hungry by drought

Bagging trophies


Disturbing as eating wild animals from national parks might be to many, the numbers pale in comparison to those shot by trophy hunters.

According to statistics collected by the UN trade regulation organisation CITES, in the past 10 years Namibia exported as hunting trophies the bodies or body parts of 125,995 wild animals, South Africa exported 32,334 and Zimbabwe 5,759 – that’s a reduction of more than 164,000 wild creatures from southern Africa alone. 

Of those, 3,480 were elephants, 2,878 were primates, 2,248 were lions, 2,183 were giraffes and 299 were rhinos. Some were bushbabies, one of the most endearing mammals on Earth. Many of these animals are on the IUCN Red List of Endangered or Threatened Species. 

Then there are the statistics from the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa of animals killed by foreign hunters that suggest  CITES is wildly underestimating numbers. Between 2016 and 2022 it lists 228,002 kills. 

According to the Worldwide Wildlife Fund for Nature’s latest Living Planet Report, a comprehensive overview of the state of the natural world, global wildlife populations have shrunk by an average of 73% in the past 50 years. 

Read more: WWF’s latest Living Planet Report gives us five years before it’s too late

When there is poor governance, an additional problem is poaching. A study by the Royal Society of the UK, using data on 10,286 illegally killed elephants in 30 African countries between 2002–2020, found strong evidence to support the hypothesis that the illegal killing of elephants is associated with poor national governance, low law enforcement capacity, low household wealth and health.

Zambia lost more than a third of its population between 2016 and 2022, having previously recorded an 85% carcass ratio (eight dead for every one live elephant) in Sioma Ngwezi in south-western Zambia.

In South Africa, killing elephants has a different complexion – destruction permits for so-called “problem-causing”animals. Mawana in KwaZulu-Natal is an example. Recently nine elephants were shot from a helicopter by officials for straying onto farmland and a permit to cull more has been obtained.

So should we be culling, hunting and eating wildlife?

Let’s take stock. Across the planet wild creature numbers are plummeting. Ecosystems around the world are being degraded and 1 million species are threatened with extinction.

The Living Planet Report shows the scale of the crisis. Based on around 35,000 population trends across 5,495 species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles between 1970 and 2020, it found the size of wildlife populations plummeted by 73% on average, but 76% in Africa. 

“While some changes may be small and gradual, their cumulative impacts can trigger a larger, faster change,” it reports. “When cumulative impacts reach a threshold, the change becomes self-perpetuating, resulting in substantial, often abrupt and potentially irreversible change. This is called a global tipping point.”

When a population falls below a certain level, that species may not be able to perform its usual role to keep ecosystems functioning. Crossing tipping points could cause cascade extinctions, threaten all our food supplies, trigger widespread disasters such as fires and flooding and destabilise economies and societies everywhere.

When a country starts eating its wildlife, it not only signals a massive sustainability failure but also undermines tourism initiatives that supply the funds to support proper resource development. 

More than 90% of African elephants have been lost in 100 years – from around 5 million in 1900 to 430,000 today, less than the population of a small town. Around 10% of survivors are believed to be killed annually, but evidence is limited, and many deaths are undocumented. 

Responding to the plan to eat elephants and other game park animals, a community member in Matabeleland, Davy Ndlovu, said it wasn’t just about providing meat but about sustainable solutions to address the drought. “Meat won’t bring rain or help us grow crops. We need irrigation systems, boreholes and long-term investments in water sources to support our agriculture and livestock.”

Taking stock


The act of consuming elephants is not merely a reflection of immediate survival needs, but a harbinger of a deeper, systemic failure – a failure to prioritise sustainable solutions that honour both humanity and the natural world.

While drought may drive desperate measures, the voices of those like Davy Ndlovu remind us that true resilience lies not in the short-term relief of culling wildlife but in investing in long-term strategies that nurture our ecosystems. 

If we continue down this path, we risk not only the extinction of magnificent species but also the very foundation of our own existence. We need to ensure that future generations inherit a world with rich biodiversity – a world where elephants are not mere commodities or food but vital threads in the intricate web of life. Wildlife is in precipitous decline. It should be protected and, unless specifically farmed, not eaten. DM

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