Angolan nature reserve to get Botswana elephants
Copyright 2001 Reuters
August 22, 2001
By Ed Stoddard, Reuters
JOHANNESBURG — A controversial project to reintroduce wildlife to war-ravaged Angola has been given a boost with a promised donation of 300 elephants from Botswana.
The Kissama Foundation, a private group that has been mandated to rehabilitate Angola's national parks, said in a statement that two family groups comprising 15 to 20 elephants would be captured in Botswana in early September.
The foundation said the elephants would be taken by road to an airbase in South Africa's Northern Province and from there flown by cargo plane to Quicama National Park, south of the capital Luanda.
The elephants will join 15 others donated by South Africa last year. The remaining elephants from Botswana will be captured and delivered at a later date.
Animal welfare groups have cautiously welcomed the project but remain concerned about wildlife security in a country that has been at civil war since independence from Portugal in 1975.
The foundation, which involves environmentalists from Angola and South Africa, says the 50,000-acre park is secured by an electric fence and more than 40 trained game guards.
"We've been keeping an eye on what has been happening, and so far our understanding is that none of the animals who have been moved there have been poached," said Jason Bell, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in Johannesburg.
Bell said sparsely populated Botswana, which is home to more than 100,000 elephants, has hinted it might resume lethal culling to bring its numbers of the animal down. "Relocating animals to restock areas where they traditionally occurred is a more humane solution than lethal culling, and we fully support it," said Bell.
He continued, "But we want the Kissama Foundation to ensure that any decisions about restocking are based on informed assessments of enforcement capabilities and that the political instability in the country always be kept in mind," he added.
The animals' new home is almost devoid of wildlife because of the civil war, and peace remains a long way off.
In the 1980s, UNITA rebels killed huge numbers of elephants and rhinos for ivory and horns, which were sold to support their insurgency. UNITA poachers also used antitank mines to kill elephants.
The ongoing war has also made observers skeptical of the government's plans to boost tourism by restocking wildlife.
South Africa's plans to relocate 1,000 Kruger Park elephants to Mozambique is regarded as a more viable plan because Mozambique's civil war ended almost a decade ago.