The Elephant Dilemma: A Long-term Perspective on the Management of African Savannas - Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change - page 19

vegetation near the three main permanent rivers increased, leading managers to install bore-
holes and artificial water-points throughout the park, with the aim of spreading animals more
evenly through the available space and reducing pressure on riverine vegetation.
Elephants had been hunted out of the area completely in the nineteenth century, but they
began to return in the early decades of the twentieth century, and their numbers steadily
increased, with effects on tree density. By 1967, the estimated carrying capacity of c. 7,000 was
reached, and culling was introduced with the aim of stabilizing the population. Thus, the
philosophy of protecting 'nature's balance' in fact led to a highly interventionist approach to
conservation, and an artificially managed landscaped in which one intervention necessitated
another to counterbalance it (du Toit et al. 2003, Ladle and Gillson 2009). The culling of ele-
phants and artificial provision of water both disrupted density dependent mechanisms, such
as longer calving intervals and later sexual maturity, which could otherwise have curbed ele-
phant population growth. Culling is likely to have increased the rate of population growth,
keeping rates of reproduction high, just as managers of harvested populations attempt to do
when they are aiming for a sustainable off-take (see Chapter 1). Thus, culling became an inef-
fective means of population control (Figure 2.2) that probably enhanced the rate of reproduc-
tion and perpetuated the need for further intervention (van Wilgen and Biggs 2011).
The command and control era of Kruger Management epitomized an approach to conser-
vation based on the balance of nature paradigm, which dominated ecology until the 1970s
and 1980s, when a revolution in ecological thinking took place of such magnitude it was later
termed a paradigm shift (see Chapter 1) (Pickett and Parker 1992). Over the past few decades,
ecologists have increasingly recognized ecosystems as dynamic and heterogeneous, and this
Figure 2.2 Estimated elephant populations of Kruger National Park, 1900-2007 (Whyte 2007).