By Don Pinnock – Daily Maverick
Questions have been raised over why nine elephants including a pregnant cow and calves, were shot from a helicopter by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife authorities on Mawana Game Reserve despite there been an opportunity for non-lethal measures to be tried first.
In June 2023 a bizarre story emerged of the co-owner of a beautiful private KwaZulu-Natal game reserve summoning a culling team to slaughter 3,600 of its wild animals. By the time other members of the Mawana Family Trust stepped in to halt the operation, between 800 and 900 animals, including giraffes, were dead.
The cull permit had been obtained by Una Coetzee, who said she needed to sell the meat to pay for the upkeep of Mawana Game Reserve, which she and her siblings inherited from their father. The reserve had between 30 and 40 elephants, but they weren’t on the permit. She said the cull was part of her fight to keep the elephants fenced in.
“I’m trying to fight for those elephants,” she told Daily Maverick.
On 31 August, nine of those elephants, including a pregnant cow and calves, were shot from a helicopter by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife authorities.
At a community stakeholder meeting three days later, Thomas Mbedzi, a Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment representative, said an application for a cull permit for the entire herd — estimated to be 45 animals — had been made but not approved.
However, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife spokesperson Musa Mntambo said the animals were legally killed as “damage-causing animals” under a permit referred to as a “standing permit”. This permit has not been produced, nor has any report detailing the incident or any mitigation measures to prevent the destruction of the animals.
Proposed fencing for Mawana. (Image: HSI/A)
The backstory
As always in wildlife management that takes a ruthless turn, there’s a backstory. There is also a cautionary tale: if you want elephants on your property, you must be prepared to manage them effectively, including appropriate fencing as per the regulations.
In 2003, Kerneels van der Walt introduced 12 elephants on to his property, Mawana. By the end of 2016, the herd had grown to 24. That year they breached the reserve’s fences and wandered on to surrounding farms. Seven bulls were shot — some on Spoor Safaris’ property as well as on Mawana — underscoring the rising tensions between human activities and wildlife.
In 2018, to assist in tracking them, the NGO Elephants, Rhinos & People radio-collared two bulls.
Elephants, being elephants, followed their long noses to tasty crops on nearby community farms. In May 2018, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife served Mawana with a non-compliance order for the keeping of elephants after receiving complaints from people on an adjoining farm, Oudewerf.
The order was unambiguous: contain the elephants or face the consequences. The Mawana owners did nothing, claiming a lack of funds. However, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife failed to enforce the order.
Two years later, Una Coetzee’s husband, Beyers, used thunderflashes and gunshots to chase the elephants back to the reserve and was trampled to death by a bull.
In 2020, Humane Society International/Africa (HSI/A) funded an elephant fertility control programme on the Mawana herd using an immunocontraception vaccine to manage population growth. Because the previous collars were no longer functional, HSI/A also fitted three additional ones on a cow and two bulls for behavioural monitoring for the research programme.
Two years later, Mawana had still not adhered to the requirements of the compliance order, which included fencing. However, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife once again failed to enforce the order.
In 2022, a collared bull was shot by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife when it appeared close to a football field and not far from a spaza shop, and another non-compliance order was issued.
In March this year, a community farmer, Lungelo Buthelezi, was injured by an elephant while herding his cattle. The incident sent shockwaves through the community, culminating in a heated meeting in March at which representatives from Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife were present.
Plans submitted
In May, upon invitation from Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, a consortium of wildlife NGOs submitted a comprehensive plan to contain the elephants.
The consortium raised R4.5-million in pledges to herd the elephants back into the reserve and erect a temporary fence (to be followed by a permanent fence once the boundaries had been confirmed). They would also train an elephant shepherding unit, provide anti-poaching rangers and work with communities to reduce conflict situations.
When asked whether Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife was aware of the containment plan, its head of Biodiversity Conservation, Vuyiswa Radebe, said the question was not relevant to Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife.
“If there is funding towards a plan, then the best person to respond to such is the recipient of the funding as to why the project plan was not implemented.”
This seems to suggest that either she had no knowledge of extensive discussions with the NGO consortium, despite Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife officials being at the meetings, or that they chose to ignore them and the proposed plan.
One has to ask why, despite being aware of the problem for six years, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife did nothing except issue non-compliance orders. Then it tracked down the herd and shot nine of them as “problem elephants”.
According to Julie Rack of LionExpose, the killing took place in the Thaka Valley while the elephants were grazing.
“Two Cruisers and a helicopter were involved. They removed the tails and ivory. Some of the elephants had been shot multiple times. One calf was shot through the ear.”
When we asked Coetzee for comment, she responded: “I would rather never speak to you again. Your last article was completely wrong and, if you only knew the truth about the elephants since 2016, you would have not written the article.”
In confirming that nine elephants were destroyed, Radebe said they were res nullius (ownerless), had wandered on to private farmland and were posing a threat to human lives and damaging property.
She said Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife had a standing permit to kill damage-causing animals. (Given the various non-compliance orders issued by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife to the owners, the animals could hardly be described as ownerless and accordingly, res nullius.)
Cull permit
There are several queries about the existence of a cull permit and the validity of a damage-causing animal permit as well as the circumstances surrounding the killing of the elephants. Concerned stakeholders have requested that the national and provincial governments institute a full investigation into the incident.
“If KZN Wildlife had tried non-lethal mitigation methods and failed, that would be one thing,” said Dr Audrey Delsink of HSI/A. “But there has been no communication, our joint proposals were not attempted and now we’re left with this tragedy.”
HSI/A said that — given its long history of engagement with Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife about solutions to the wandering herd — the destruction was disheartening. Feedback was not received before the incident.
“Where there is no immediate threat to a person’s life or livelihood as determined by the regulatory provisions, the killing of even a single elephant is a tragedy, so the deaths of so many elephants with whom we have worked for several years is devastating,” said the organisation.
“For humane solutions to human-wildlife conflict to be effective, all parties need to be engaged, transparent and committed to this as a sustained effort. Resorting to killing elephants without exhausting all possible humane routes is a deeply regrettable moral failure.”
