The Elephant Dilemma: A Long-term Perspective on the Management of African Savannas - Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change - page 14

and utilization (see Chapter 1) (Weddell 2002). The former advocates strict protection of wild-
life in protected areas that are as far as possible kept as 'wilderness, while the latter argues
that economic value is the best incentive for conservation, and that we must use wildlife, or
lose it. Heated and often acrimonious debates have resulted in unsuccessful compromises,
such as a limited trade in ivory, which only served to feed the market while at the same time
restricting supply, thereby driving prices up and fuelling the incentive for poaching (Gillson
and Lindsay 2003, Bennett 2014).
Though governance is certainly an issue (Smith, 2003), part of the complexity and uncer-
tainty arises from the lack of long-term data on savanna landscapes; with historical records
from most of Africa spanning little over a century, we have sparse information on how
savannas looked when elephant populations were unmanaged, when early humans began
to manipulate fire, and when pastoralism, cultivation, and iron-smelting began. The parks
and reserves that sprung up in the twentieth century were taken as benchmark, pristine
wildernesses that would persist unchanged if protected from human use, were in fact they
were landscapes that bore the legacy of long-term human management and recent Euro-
pean impact. For example, the nineteenth century saw wildlife numbers plummet during
decades of overhunting for ivory, skins, and trophies, and diseases like rinderpest wiped out
swathes of ungulates in the 1890s (Dublin 1991). As a result of the unusually low herbivory
pressure, it is likely that the landscapes of these times developed unusually high tree den-
sity, and yet these transitory conditions became conservation benchmarks and manage-
ment targets.
When viewing nature through the lens of an equilibrium paradigm (see Chapter one) loss
of tree cover can be perceived as a potentially disastrous disruption of nature's balance.
Under this world view, culling elephants to their carrying capacity seems logical. However,
when non-equilibrium ideas are used, fluctuations in elephants and tree cover can be under-
stood as part of normal ecological functioning, and a different conservation approach is
required, which aims to keep elephant population and tree cover within the range of variabil-
ity that is normal for that habitat (Caughley 1976, Coughenour and Ellis 1993, Gillson 2004b,
van Wilgen and Biggs 2011). Case studies from Kenya and South Africa illustrate how eco-
logical ideas led to very different elephant management approaches, and demonstrate the
potential role of long-term data in savanna management.
he Tsavo 'experiment'
The Tsavo National Park, Kenya, was founded in 1948, a time when prevailing ecological the-
ory predicted a stable balance between elephant numbers, vegetation, and climate. Accord-
ing to the predominant equilibrium paradigm in ecology, elephant numbers, and tree density
would be stable at carrying capacity, and, therefore, protecting savannas from human distur-
bance would help to maintain this balance (Wu and Loucks 1995). By the 1960s, however,
elephant numbers had increased dramatically and tree cover; specifically the Acacia-
Commiphora woodland that was typical of the park, was declining. Elephant culling had
already taken place in Uganda, and the proponents of this cull argued that the vegetation