← The Origins Foundation Podcast
The Origins Foundation Podcast
Episode 552 - Dr. Jeannetta Selier || Are There Too Many Elephants in Kruger?
01:07:50
In response to news of a BAN on “exotic animal skins” in London’s fashion week, Robbie is joined by Christy Plott Gilmore, a 4th-generation crocodile and alligator industry specialist whose family has owned a tannery for generations in Georgia. Christy invited Dr. Patrick Aust, the Director of the African Institute of Applied Herpetology and expert in innovative solutions to reptilian management to join this conversation. If you have ever been interested in understanding the world of sustainable use of wildlife then listen to this podcast!
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- [00:00]
Mike Axelrod
Fishing trips anywhere, anytime fishingbooker.com Midway USA brand product designers have one straightforward develop high quality technically sound products and deliver them to customers at reasonable prices. If you are immersed in the shooting sports industry and pay close attention to every single detail, you know our products are built right and stand up to everyday use. Who has shooting mats and range bag systems to hunting clothing and just about everything for the outdoors? Log on and shop 247 with superfast shipping midway USA.com hunting is not easy. It never has been. It takes dedication, motivation, a lot of patience and quality gear. If you manage a food plot, put up stands or need just one more game camera, we can help. @midwayusa.com we opened our doors in 1977 and continue to put customers first by offering super fast same day shipping for just about everything. For the outdoors go to midway USA.com Dr. Janetta Seiler works at the South African National Biodiversity Institute. Sambi and I met her at the Custodians Conference convention in November of 2024. She gave a presentation around Kruger national park and its elephants. If you've been living under a rock or typically an American audience doesn't really know much about this. Kruger's elephants are the hottest topics when it comes to elephant management in Africa, period. There's constant debate around Kruger's elephants. There's constant debate on how many there should be this constant debate on that there's too many elephants. And really that's what it comes down to is are there too many elephants in Kruger? And then you can take it down to a microcosm and look at places like Madigwe in which there's too many elephants in in my opinion. But I wanted to have Janetta on here because she's been in this game for 15 years. She's probably one of the foremost experts when it comes to elephant management and the science behind elephant management. And I think you'll find this to be a very fascinating conversation about a part of the world that you may not know about or an issue that you may not know about. Educate yourself, learn about it, think about it, ask yourself some questions and enjoy. So there's a reason why I started Blood Origins and that reason is simple, is that I wanted to convey the truth about hunting. It brings awareness to non hunters that it's more than just killing animals.
- [02:42]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
How do I start it? Brittany? My name? Does my hair look okay?
- [02:47]
Mike Axelrod
My name is Mike Axelrod. Start again. Yeah, I hated it too. Braxton, you said something in the car to me. You said that you were living on borrowed time. There's a perception around who hunters are, what we're supposed to be. And a feminist that works for a non profit that is a hunter that has only eaten wild game from the last 20 years is likely not the thing that people think about when it comes to hunter. So I think the best thing about what we do from a blood origins perspective, we get to go around the world, which is amazing. But even more amazing was you get to meet amazing people and listen to cool. I wouldn't even call it a story. I would cool information around wildlife. And I'm a scientist, obviously. My background is science. Been in the restoration ecology field for 25 years. Have my roots in Kruger. That's where I cut my teeth as a restoration ecologist, as you know, trying to figure things out, like with the Rhone antelope and the Rhone enclosures on the northern plains of Kruger. And so I was at custodians last year and I was fortunate enough to be the program coordinator. So I got to introduce all of these wonderful people. And one of the people that I got to introduce was Janetta Siler. Dr. Sila, but I won't call you Dr. Sila because that's just proper. And nobody calls me Dr. Kroger. So we're just. Janetta was one of the keynotes. And would you say that the topic that we're going to talk about today and your presentation, it's not controversial at all, right?
- [04:34]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
At all? Not at all. It's. It's a very hot topic in South Africa and Southern Africa at the moment, but I think specifically in South Africa, the last couple of months it's been an extremely hot topic.
- [04:50]
Mike Axelrod
So Dr. Genovesaila, welcome to the Blood Origins podcast. It's probably not the last time that we will talk on a podcast like this because you obviously are involved in ideas and topics and thought processes that we're always interested in exploring and having debates and conversations around and discussions around. Introduce yourself your background, who you work for.
- [05:10]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
A senior scientist with the South African National Biodiversity Institute at the moment, providing scientific support to the scientific authority of South Africa and then also the wildlife economy. But seminar, I have my roots in agriculture. I studied animal husbandry and wildlife sciences and then continued into the wildlife management field and spent for probably 15 odd years in the field working specifically on elephants. First in a small game reserve in South Africa was reintroduced, reintroduced elephants, a small juvenile herd and then for the better part of 10 years in the Mapungupwe Transfrontier area, specifically looking at the elephant population there. And the challenges of managing a cross border population.
- [06:04]
Mike Axelrod
Did you start in Pilonsburg? Is that the juvenile herd that you were talking about? From an elephant perspective?
- [06:09]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Even a smaller reserve than Pilandsberg? This is a reserve in the Bella Bella region, Bellabella area.
- [06:18]
Mike Axelrod
Oh fantastic. Fantastic. So the presentation I listened to was and obviously you talked a little bit about it is was all about elephant management in Kruger and obviously it's one of the hottest topics today. And even as you said, take a step back just elephant management in general is just a hot topic. Maybe I'll just ask the hardest question to start with. Why do you think it's such a hot topic? Janetta? Look guys, I'm a hunter, right? And when I go hunting I like to figure out how to get my trophies back home as expeditiously as possible. Well, you don't have to look much further than Safari Specialty Importers. We know that trophy importation can be quite a headache. That's why Safari Specialty Importers strives to make it as easy and hassle free as possible. They have access to a bonded warehouse, you won't be charged storage fees and you get a dedicated team that's readily available and will update you at every step in the process. They'll even go one step further. Safari Specialty Importers is working with us at Blood Origins and they are going to donate $100 from every shipment that they work with to conservation projects that include anti poaching, community development and wildlife conservation. At the end of the day, choose to spend your money with a team that's dedicated to you and is dedicated to helping show how hunting is a great conservation model. Hassle free logistics, fuel and conservation go with Safari Specialty Importers. Did you know that in 42 states it is 100% legal to buy a suppressor and protect your hearing? Silencer Central pioneered the simplified silencer buying process. It allows you to buy a suppressor online or over the phone. You go through all the paperwork with a certified expert and that suppressor ships directly to your front door. I don't even believe it, but I've done it and it's come to my door. You can buy a suppressor and have it shipped to you. They offer the best in service, a suppressor expert to make sure you get the suppressor you want. And from there they take care of everything. They take care of the paperwork, the applications to the atf. They even set up a free trust if you want one. And if you don't have the money, put down an interest free payment plan. It's incredible. You get access to your own customer portal online and it tracks your progress. So why not go get started today? Go to silencecentral.com or call 866-811-6536. And with today's fast approval times, you're actually going to be shocked at how quickly your suppressor arrives at your door. Bushnell has been a longtime supporter of Blood Origins and in keeping with the spirit of our collaboration, we've come up with an amazing idea. Bushnell is eager to help you get set up for conservation success. That's right. They want to help you. The conservation and research community is dominated by good people doing good things and investing significant time and effort for the benefit of habitat and the species. So what do you need to do? Pretty simple. Send us your conservation story and or your conservation wish. Could be managing whitetails, could be understanding your environment or species or something else related to conservation. What would you be able to do if you had a great trail camera setup? We will select the best story every other month and send you a camera bundle, cell camera, normal SD camera, SD cards, as well as optics. Everything you need to get set up for success. I can't wait to see what you submit. You can email us@infoloodorigins.com DM US. Message us whatever you want. We are not hard to find. Good luck.
- [09:57]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Well, I think firstly elephants are one of those amazing creatures that people easily identify with. They scare us, they we at awe when we look at them. We can relate to a lot of their behaviors, their social interactions. So everybody has their own value system around elephants and that differs from individual. Individual. It differs also based on your experience with elephants. If you're in a global north, your experiences are linked to Dumbo and elephants are amazing creatures. If you live somewhere in rural Africa next to an open park with elephants, your perception and view of elephants is going to be very different. And that they threaten your life and that of your family, they threaten your livelihood. And it's a challenge living with them. But it's not to say that rural communities don't have values and don't have these important links. A lot of cultural, spiritual links are within our rural communities and elephants. So they probably have a bit more of a balanced view of elephants than most of us. And then of course, everybody has different values when they look at our biodiversity. For some people, some people will see a baobab and think that's the most amazing thing. It would could link cultures and history and everything with that. Other people do the same with elephants. And then when those two giants collide, values collide because of course, elephants can impact on baobab. So now, which is more important, the elephant or the baobab? And how do we manage the interactions between the two?
- [11:43]
Mike Axelrod
So how do we, how do we. You know, in my brain, the hardest thing to grapple with, and I'd love to hear your opinion on this, is temporal scale. And that we as humans are a blip on the time spectrum.
- [12:00]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Right?
- [12:00]
Mike Axelrod
We have 90 years, 100 years, give or take. Know a little bit. That's our viewpoint. That's our view window. When you think of a baobab, a baobab's view window is 2,000 years. Okay? An elephant is about the same viewscape. It's actually less, I would say 50 ish is probably. Or even less probably from an average perspective viewpoint. Is it wrong of us to think in the baobab timeframe for what's coming next from a human perspective? And is that why there's a clash?
- [12:36]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
So I think people project forward and then also people have the. You know, when we started conservation, we had a certain. The environment around us looked a certain way. And if you think about the Kruger system, when we started Kruger national park, there were lots of areas in Kruger with lots of big trees. And it looked a certain way, but as time progressed, it changed. And the question really is, is that change bad? Is that destruction or is that changing a system to something that is adapted to living with this megafauna? And in order to do that, we shouldn't just look forward, but we also should look back and we should ask the question, so what happened in the past and how did these species coexist in the past? If the baobab lives was put for 2000 years, it lived during the time when there were lots and lots of elephants. So how come it's still there? What changed at the baobab now is predicted by some to go extinct, you know, and then, you know, you have to look at.
- [13:53]
Mike Axelrod
People have said that elephants were to go extinct in the 70s and 80s here within five years or 10 years, FYI.
- [14:00]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yes. Yeah, exactly. You know, and so then we have to step back and we say, okay, so what is the history? And if we look at southern Africa and let's just stick to South Africa because that's Kruger national park, we went through a phase where, you know, historically there were lots of elephants. Elephants were across the whole of the southern African landscape and across the whole of South Africa. Then we had a period where there was a lot of hunting There was a lot of killing and there was a lot of competition between agricultural people establishing themselves in South Africa and wildlife. By the mid. Towards the end of the 1800s, elephants were gone from the landscape. But it wasn't only elephants that were gone. Rhinos were gone, large megafauna, giraffes, hippo, all of those species were at very low numbers. Even general came with low numbers that, that we didn't kill out also then got hit by rinderpest. So we, going into the 1900s, we were at a probably all time low looking at our wildlife numbers. As animal numbers decrease, your environment adapts to those changes. So tree species and elephants are like us. They have ice cream, they have cabbage and spinach, and then they have species that they avoid that they don't like. So ice cream species, if there's elephants around, are going to be in very low densities because elephants will seek them out. The cabbage and spinach will always be there because those are the trees that are adapted to living with elephants and the rest of the trees across your landscape. So with elephant numbers and the other megafauna declining, our ice cream species, tall trees, those things started increasing in numbers. And there's also a whole bunch of other ecological processes that we shouldn't forget that are taking place at the same time. Then we start conservation and we grow these elephant numbers, um, and things start changing. Now we start getting worried, are these changes good or bad? So that's where we started managing elephants. But at the time Kruger started managing elephants, they didn't not. They not only managed elephants, they also had a very strict fire regime. They were controlling other animal numbers, uh, and all of that in. And then basically intensely managed situation that was around the 60s, starting in the 60s and intensifying around the 80s and the 90s.
- [16:39]
Mike Axelrod
Janet, from perspective, from a history perspective though, do we feel like if we go back in the record, the Kruger landscape obviously historically was open. Okay. Do we think historically there were elephants in the Kruger landscape? There were maybe. So give me a little bit of a time frame there, because it sounded like there were elephants. Maybe we're talking 1600, 1700s. But then in the 1800s things started sliding down up into the 1900s.
- [17:16]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yeah. So I would say we probably had up until. And it's hard, I don't have the exact. But roughly, I would say probably until the mid 18, late 1800s, Rinderpeist then kicked in. So going into the 1900s, there were a remnant population left around Oliphants river, and that's where Kruger's population then, you know, we never reintroduced elephants into Kruger. They grew from the remnant population that remained within that area. Um, so, yeah, Kruger always had elephants. But also remember that while Kruger had elephants, there were also people in Kruger. You know, prior to the establishment of the national park, there were people living in parts of Kruger national, what is today Kruger National Park. And that would have also had an effect of where elephants were spending their time in that landscape.
- [18:12]
Mike Axelrod
Yeah, we talked a little bit about it when we were together. It's almost when you start looking at Kruger, you know, Kruger is a closed system. It's a very intensely managed system. And when it comes to management, you know, you have to, you have to ask the question, a big question like, what is management? Management in my frame of reference, and this comes from speaking to people that are doing the work, is essentially implementing things that are missing in the system because you've closed the system off. And it sounds like we talked about it, humans is part of that, like the role of humans in Kruger, where they lived, how they interacted with wildlife, how they pushed animals around. I think we've tried, or maybe you can speak to it, we've tried to be replicate those things, but maybe we haven't done it exactly the way that it was happening historically.
- [19:21]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
So I think, yeah, maybe, maybe to start from the beginning, what you were saying. So we did manage Kruger very intensively over the 80s and 90s, and that wasn't actually very successful. If we look at the culling program for elephants, the purpose of culling was the assumption that if we bring down the numbers or manage the numbers, trees won't die. That didn't work out that way. Trees were still dying at the same rate then they were dying. Prior to bringing elephant numbers down, we also had the fire regimes and all of that. And Kruger was fenced from about the late 90s, early 2000s. We actually let up on our management. We started managing less intensively and following the process you were saying, in looking at maintaining, restoring and where we can't do that, mimicking ecological processes that we think is absent in the system. So with the elephants, we realized one of the key drivers for where elephants are within the landscape and how long the time they spend in the landscape is water. Kruger in the 60s, 70s and 80s established a huge amount of artificial waterholes, mainly for tourism purposes. So we closed down a lot of those waterholes and we opened up Kruger. So Kruger is actually only partially fenced. Kruger is open to Mozambique and also to Zimbabwe. So we now actually have a system where we've got a shared elephant population that goes out of Kruger into Mozambique, walk length of Mozambique, go back into South Africa and go visit the Thembe elephants and they make their way back to Kruger. So we've let up in our management and that has also allowed for certain ecological processes and biological processes and elephants to kick in self regulation, self management of numbers that couldn't kick in because we were managing so intensively. And interesting enough, once we started letting up on some of these very intense management systems, we also started seeing other species numbers increase, for example, Rhone and sable. And a lot of species that numbers were declining because of the intensity management. Not saying that Sabal declined because of a cult elephant, but all of the management things that were taking place, the artificial water holes, the burning regimes that changed the grass composition and attracted certain species that would not necessarily have occurred in that area.
- [22:02]
Mike Axelrod
One of the key things that I noticed in the presentation was this whole idea of water, the sort of artificial placement of water and how it skewed. I'm going to use movement, but how it skewed, different uses of the landscape of elements. Elephants.
- [22:28]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Absolutely. What did you find? I mean, water is.
- [22:30]
Mike Axelrod
Talk to that, what, what you found there.
- [22:34]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
You're 100% right. I mean, water is one of the key drivers for elephant and where they spend time, how long they spend time in those areas. So when you have. When you have a natural system where there's only little bits of water and waters less during your dry season, more during your wet season, what we see is that elephants are concentrated around these permanent water holes during the dry season. And I have to spend a lot of time moving because food and water is far apart and that then impacts the survival rate specifically of the young juveniles. So the first year that a calf is independent of the mother, so roughly three, four, five years, and you see high mortality rates there, elephants lose condition and in the wet season comes, there's water everywhere. So water is no longer a driver and they spend more time away from these intensively fertilized areas of the dry season in a broader landscape, also allowing those natural eco processes to take place. A best hub for recovery of an area is the wet season. Mean most, you know, any agricultural, any farmer would tell you that you want to have an area recover, let it recover over the best time of the year. So elephants do that naturally. But now what happens when we have water everywhere? Then why do I need to move? Why do I have to go anywhere else? So then I use the area that I'm in more intensely for a much longer time period, and then we start seeing negative impacts. We also see the impact that calves don't die. Now, for some people, that would, oh, that's good. But if calves die, if elephants don't die, then there's no regulation of numbers. And in a natural population, that is when nature regulates the population is firstly in a juvenile age. And then if we have these massive droughts, of course, then you start seeing reproduction decreasing and you also seeing the old animals dying. So if, if we don't have that more calf survives, numbers increase more rapidly and impact increases, because elephants are spending lots and lots of time in the same area. We actually tested this with science. So we looked at home range overlap across Africa, and in most parts of Africa, the overlap between the wet and the dry season were anything from 0 to 35%. In Kruger, before we closed down the waterholes, elephants were spending 75% of their time in exactly the same place.
- [25:24]
Mike Axelrod
Interesting, interesting. And that, and when, when elephants are staying in the same place for three quarters of their time, has the science shown? Because obviously logic makes this argument going to hit all the ice cream species, they're going to get smashed. Okay, so are we seeing those negative impacts on those ice cream species because of, because of that 75%. So you are seeing changes in those species, whether it's trees or whatever it is. Right.
- [26:03]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
So we have seen that and we also see that in our smaller reserves where a lot of these processes can't take place. We can't change the way elephants utilize their space. So in Kruger, just by closing down the water holes, we forced elephants to move. When we started seeing increases and juvenile mortalities, are we seeing the drop in the growth rate of the elephant population across the Kruger landscape? And we're seeing elephants using the landscape more variable. And that's also what we want. You know, the elephants are ecosystem engineers. They change the landscape. And we want a landscape that heterogeneous. So there's heterogeneity across the landscape. It's a terrible word to pronounce. And the more heterogeneity you have across the landscape, the more difference, more species can survive. So you have places where the little daiko is going to be happy. You can have places where certain bird species would be happy. When the area is homogeneous, there's a very small number of species that can survive. So that's the balance that we are looking for with elephants. If elephants change the entire landscape to look the same, that's a problem. If elephants change certain areas in the landscape, That's a good thing. The trade off is still with ice cream species and especially when we look at a smaller landscapes is how do we balance the marula tree and elephants.
- [27:33]
Mike Axelrod
Right.
- [27:33]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
And that is a very complicated thing and there's no simple solutions to that. And sometimes it's admitting that we can't have both in the same area and making decision. And this is the Marula reserve.
- [27:47]
Mike Axelrod
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. That's the thing, right. You've got to decide. Well, there is a. People would argue that there is a balance, I. E. Control your elephant numbers and we can have 10 marulas. Unlikely, you know, or we'd prefer 10 versus 0.
- [28:04]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yeah, probably unlikely.
- [28:06]
Mike Axelrod
Why do you say unlikely?
- [28:07]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Because, you know, elephants are like kids. You can hide the ice cream or the sweets anywhere you like in a house. They're going to look until they found them. And similar with elephants. So those ashkemb species, except if they on a ridge somewhere where an elephant can't get access to them, they are going to find those trees. But there's also ways of thinking about botanical reserves within reserves and creating botanical reserves around lodges. Most of our lodges are fenced because we don't want elephants next to the tents that people sleep at night. So creating those little reserves within a broader reserve we can protect some of those ice cream species and often ice cream species. The marula tree is not endangered. And a lot of our reserves, if you drive through the areas leading up to the reserve, there are lots of marula trees and then you get into the reserve and they're very scarce. But the bigger the landscape, the more likely you are to be able to balance all these things out. It's in the smaller landscapes, in the fence landscapes that the trade offs are often quite difficult, that Kruger's still got marula trees.
- [29:22]
Mike Axelrod
Are you suggesting though for that balance of the tourist that says, I want, you know, I've been seeing marula trees forever in Kruger now, I don't see any that at the current elephant population of, let's just call it 30,000, 31,000, whatever it is in Kruger, that to achieve any sort of semblance of what you're used to, the elephant population needs to be at such a low density that really the ice cream species overwhelm what density of elephants they are on the landscape.
- [29:58]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [30:01]
Mike Axelrod
And, and you're saying that the, the, the, the fact that you grew up in Kruger. I grew up in Kruger. Seeing all the marulas and whatnot was an artifact of. And again, I don't know, the Temporal lifespan. Going back to the original question of temporal scale, I don't know the temporal lifespan of a Marula. I'll give know to get into a say a 50 centimeter diameter tree if that's a 50 year or 60 year or 70 year or 30 year. I don't know what that timescale is but it makes sense. If you looked at Kruger from 19, let's just call it 1920 through 1970, a 50 year timeframe where your elephant density was likely less than 2,000, you know, or 2,000 to 6,000, let's just call it, you know, a range, let's put a range on there that there wasn't enough elephants in the landscape to change really anything that you were saying?
- [31:04]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
I think so. I mean, you know, I must be honest, I haven't looked at the data in that much detail but it would make sense to me. And then you know, again until Kroger started as a national park there, there were also areas where those trees were protected by people in villages that were living there. Areas that people, there was high people activity and humans are one of the, or safety is one of the other drivers for elephants. So work that I've done in a greater map on GU showed that especially breeding herds select safety above good resources. They first go to places where they're safe and then they select for the resources that's available in that safe space. So similar Krugers within Kruger elephants would have avoided areas with high human densities and those areas that is where some of your sensitive species would probably have persisted for much longer. And if you think where people like to live is generally on river edges, close to rivers, close to wetlands where all their resources are easily accessible. So that's probably why we see these niches within Kruger as well where we have these sensitive areas that have persisted for a much longer period than other parts of the landscape. So for us it's now also looking and say well how do we mimic human presence in the Kruger landscape? So maybe putting a ranger station there, you know, so what are the kind of things that we could do that create a disturbance effect for elephants in avoiding or spending less time in those areas and then not having as high impact because they now, I mean this is where all the ice cream is. Why am I not going to be there? Something needs to make me not go there.
- [32:57]
Mike Axelrod
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeanette. Oh Janetta, sorry. Do we historically think that there was this many elephants constantly in Kruger like on a. And I think this is the, that's the, this is the Key. We've been, we've been talking about it the entire time. I would say that and I don't want to put words in your mouth, the answer is probably yes, but in the 16, 17, 1800s, but they weren't residents, they would move out, right?
- [33:33]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Not necessarily.
- [33:35]
Mike Axelrod
It'd be more of a.
- [33:36]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
So elephants.
- [33:37]
Mike Axelrod
Go ahead.
- [33:38]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Sorry, sorry. Yeah, so elephants are also very much like us. They homebodies, they don't move. You do get migrating elephants and elephants would have moved when resources are limited. So if you have these massive droughts, they would have moved somewhere where they would find what they need. But in general, if you look at elephant behavior is the set home ranges that, you know, a breeding herd occupies in the dry season, the wet season, and it hardly changes year on year. So my feeling is that there were parts of Kruger that probably always had elephants and there were parts of Kruger where they probably less elephants because the resources didn't really allow for it or they would have only been there at certain times because it's away from water. So areas with less water would have only had elephants in the wet season and areas with, you know, long perennial rivers would have had elephants all year round. We also got to remember and, and.
- [34:41]
Mike Axelrod
Or, and, or humans. Right, and, or humans. Humans on those river systems.
- [34:46]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Exactly. So you would have had this patchwork across the landscape. And then we also got to remember that our river systems looked a hell of a lot different than they do today. I mean, if you think about the 1800s, 1600s, 1800s, Lompoco river was a massive perennial river. Today it's a dry riverbed, you know, with water for a couple of months in a year, if we're lucky. So that also changes the dynamics not only of elephants, but also of the trees that persist in that area. So we like to keep things the same, but ecosystems are a continuous flux. They're constantly changing, adapting. And what we want really is a resilient system that can take these knocks, climate change, rivers that stop flowing. If we have a resilient system, it can adapt and change. If we maintain a system in a certain constant state, state it won't be, it's not resilient, it won't be able to adapt to the changes.
- [35:52]
Mike Axelrod
Janetta, do you think that the elephant population, again this is data that you showed me. Do we think the elephant population in Kruger is going to stabilize? Because right now all it seems to be doing is increasing.
- [36:08]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
So the, the science have shown that stabilizing dynamics kick in in a Kruger, the broader Kruger system roughly at about 35 to 40 odd thousand elephants and we seeing the first signs of that in Kruger. Our growth rate has come down quite a bit. Of course we obviously looking at a much bigger landscape than just Kruger. There's the Lampapo national park, there's Gonorzo, you know, kind of Kruger elephants are visiting themby. So it's really hard to look at this across the landscape. But within Kruger definitely we've seen a drop in the growth rate and we've seen these fluxes of elephant numbers going down in Kruger and then slightly going up which seems to be more artifact of immigration and emigration than rapid growth rate. Population increasing in numbers because of this.
- [37:06]
Mike Axelrod
I thought I saw in your presentation you had a graph of Gona Rougeau as well though that had gone through very similar system that Kruger's gone through, right?
- [37:14]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And similar with gonna Roseau. They, they showing they're expecting density dependence to kick in at roughly 10 to 15,000 and similar that is starting to happen there.
- [37:31]
Mike Axelrod
So I guess the biggest question we have to answer, and we, and we both said it already, is how do we from a management perspective put this human factor around the sensitive ecosystems in a way that I don't want to put it very bluntly but tells the elephants to hey, you don't want to be in here. I've got a simple solution.
- [38:02]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
So what is your solution?
- [38:05]
Mike Axelrod
I think you've got to make a landscape of fear and you've got to, you know, this idea of I again this is going to be the most controversial thing and if people like blip me out and say this is what I'm about, it's not. But if this is a landscape of that humans used to dominate, used to push elephants out of, they used to come in sort of sneakily at night, got their water and out they went. You know, I'll give you my, I think the solution then. I'll give you a silly solution but I think with the ranges that you have on the landscape and you know if you put you put one elephant down in those systems, just a female something or juvenile. Or juvenile tied to your density dependence scenario, okay, that creates a landscape of fear because of elephants and their interaction with humans. And they're going to be like we don't want to spend any more time here because hey, something happened that we don't like. And I honestly think again that is probably the simplest solution and something worth trying. I'd love to see the science behind it. I'd love to see like the movement patterns of elephants and you'd have to do, you know, again, look at vegetation before and after, do a. Some sort of P. T Test or a backy design or a silly solution is allow the tourists to walk the riverbeds. You know, just let them out and let them walk and interact with the.
- [39:40]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Earth and just sign an indemnity. Yeah.
- [39:45]
Mike Axelrod
Make them sign at the front. Yeah.
- [39:48]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
But I mean, I think there are many different ways and definitely, you know, landscape of fear can be created in many different ways. The first thing that you need to establish is why are elephants spending time there? So is it because of the water? Well, then it's very simple. Move the water, you know, close the water down there.
- [40:11]
Mike Axelrod
Move the water on a. On a river. On a big river.
- [40:14]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yes. Yeah. So and then we also, you know, you also got to balance people and people needs, elephant needs. So, and making sure that there are other, other places for elephants to be. But let's say this is a sensitive area around a river, creating any kind of disturbance. And you're right, you know, in small reserves, we are thinking we're looking at a meta population management strategy for South Africa. Guidelines for meta population management. And there the key thing as well is to mimic natural processes. So if you want to mimic mortality, it doesn't help. Culling a whole herd, that doesn't happen. But if you were to take out a number of juveniles, so you take out in the same age class as when nature would have taken at the animals, yes, it has an impact on the breeding herd, but they also have natural coping strategies to deal with that, because in her lifetime she's going to lose a number of calves. It's a natural process, so she can cope with it. And there's not many coping mechanisms for elephants to deal with. A whole herd being shocked by a thing that's flying in the sky, you know, that's not in their natural processing. So we're not saying it won't have an impact, but they have natural coping mechanisms to deal with that. And it's less intrusive than some of the other method, other options out there. And we could theoretically also use it as a disturbance factor. And then again, is what, what makes elephants stay in that area and then what are the actions we can take to create a landscape that elephants don't want to spend a lot of time in there either put humans in the area, that disturbs them. So, you know, temporary rangers camp or creating a disturbance through. Yes, in some cases it may be that we need to shoot an elephant or two to create. If it is a sensitive enough area where we do feel that this is an area that needs immediate, an immediate response and a severe response then it's possible. You know I'm not, I don't want to talk full Kruger. These are theoretical options. Sure.
- [42:38]
Mike Axelrod
Of course not that Kruger could possibly. Of course not.
- [42:41]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
And, and they of course everything they would do will fall within the legislation of South Africa and will be captured within the elephant management plan.
- [42:51]
Mike Axelrod
Yeah, yeah. No, no, 100%. I want to move just, I want to move beyond Krueger to these smaller reserves because these smaller reserves seem to, it's, it's obviously Krueger on steroids in that the management will needs to be so intense. And obviously Medique has been in the headlines, still is in the headlines. It's going to be back in the headlines once everything dries out again. What, you're a scientist, you're also a pragmatist. What do you do? Like in my brain again? I'll be the martyr here. When I look at a modiquir. To me there's only one solution in Mediqui is 800 elephants need to go.
- [43:38]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
But maybe again maybe let's go back a little bit and say okay, well what happened to these populations? So when we stopped culling and Kruger, there was a big demand for elephants across the South African landscape. It was at the same time. Well, correct, yeah. It's about the same time where we had the Game Safe act being implemented and private landowners now had the right to own under certain conditions, wildlife and benefit from wildlife. So lots and lots of, lots of reserves wanted elephants. It's probably one of the very few cases where if you ask for five, you've got 10. It generally doesn't happen. But we were constrained in the size of the elephants that we could deliver. First it was only the very young animals. So literally looking at two juveniles, teenagers and later we could introduce young family groups. Now earlier you mentioned, you know, elephants live for 50, 60 odd years, sometimes a little bit longer if the resources are good. So if we introduce 15 year old elephants into a game reserve with lots and lots and lots of ice cream and great resources, lots of water, they don't have to walk far, they bunch of juveniles. What is going to happen? Well we're going to see breeding at a rapid rate and that's exactly what we saw in these populations. The age structures were skewed, the sex ratio was skewed. We hardly had any bulls in these reserves. They were no bull structure, very young females and we had records broken in Our South African reserves and maximum growth rate for elephants at 8% while ours exceeded 12% plus. And that growth rate will continue until the first elephants start dying. But when, when are elephants are going to start dying? Well, when they reach 50. So how many years are that of growth? Well, we introduced them at 15. Was it 45 odd years? You know, let's say 35 odd years until the first elephant is sure, 35, yeah. You know, so we're still in that growth phase. Most of our populations actually haven't hit an elephant. Madigra is the first where we now start seeing old elephants dying and now we're concerned about it. But elephants also have an age limitation and what we've seen in Mediquin now is the juveniles dying. So that is what would happen in the natural population is that first year of weaning that those animals are dying and we started seeing about a couple of older animals dying. So while I do agree that I think there is some concerns of Modiquir and it's more around the homogenization of the reserve, the numbers is not so much. For me a concern is the fact that elephants are not using that landscape variably. The fact that we're seeing elephants dying I think is fantastic. It's showing that certain natural processes are kicking in. Removing 800 elephants from that population is going to be a massive challenge and I think the repercussions of that is going to be enormous. Not just reputational, not just on the ecotourism product, but also on the elephants. And all that's going to happen. We're going to end up exactly where we were at a rapid growing population that's going to try and reach a certain density and we will have to continue doing what we're doing now. We could look at contraception so we could say, okay, we're going to bite the bullet, we're going to take off bunch of elephants, put them on contraception to reduce the growth rate over time and potentially. And then we'll need to look at, how do we look at variability in that system. Unfortunately, Modequa is also not a very varied system. So there is not naturally a huge amount of variability in that reserve. There is a task team that is.
- [48:17]
Mike Axelrod
Janetta, did they, did they, did they not have a, again, in my brain and again when I said 800 need to go, it was a very simplistic, hey, this is what needs to happen. But I think again this is the point of this discussion is I wanted to open people's eyes to things that they need to consider. So if 800 animals have to go, then what? Because as you say, you've now created an abundance of resources that the elephant population will refill over the next 10 to 15 to 20 years. In my brain, and I'd love to hear your thoughts here, is these smaller reserves have to come to a decision on a couple of things of value. Aesthetics is big and that's the social component, which is what we're hearing a lot of. There's no trees left. There's no nothing left. Well, that's an aesthetic value, that's a social value. Okay, if, if the, if the decision of medicu was we're okay it looking homogeneous, then that's a decision that's been made. Or the decision is again and with that homogeneous, we want the, we want a density dependent elephant population in Modiquin. Okay, if that's the goal, then we're on the right track. Or do we want a balanced, we want lots of trees, we want all the game not to be, you know, in balance with one another. That's a different set of ideals in which a scientist can say, look, if based on the competing values that you've said, you have priority around, we can't have 1500 elephants. We can only based on our, based on your decision of what you want. We think we need to keep it at 500. So then the question is, how do you keep it at 500?
- [50:31]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
You. And, and also, you know, in that it also has to be realistic, you know, so again, just coming back to the whole, you know, the, the initial thing is impact is not linked to elephant numbers. Impact is linked to where elephants spend time, how long they spent in that area, what they're doing when they're in that area. You know, so even if you, but.
- [50:57]
Mike Axelrod
That must be tied to numbers in Mediquia, it has to be not really.
- [51:02]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Because certain tree species are Mediqui. Again, whether you have a hundred elephants or a thousand elephants, elephants can utilize the whole of Medequa and they will utilize those trees first and they will spend time in those areas where those species are that they like longer because that is where their resources are. That's where the things that are that they like. And because you have a system that's not so variable, these patches of sensitivity are very clear and they will utilize them. So you, you either have to prevent them from getting to these patches or you will have to sacrifice these patterns. And it's got to really got nothing to do with numbers. It's got to do with the Fact that elephants can move across that entire landscape. And if the landscape is small enough or too small to have this variability in use, you know, we could try it in some places. But our focus has been for so many years so strongly focused on if we manage numbers, we're going to manage impact that we've never really tested whether that's, you know, except for Kruger, they've done it and they've shown it doesn't work, whether achieving our outcome. So again, now we will need to go back and we'll need to start adaptively managing and we need to start managing impacts at the local scale. So where is the issue? What part of my reserve, where my reserve are my sensitive areas, the areas that I need to look after and how am I going to manage the impact in that specific area? Reducing elephant numbers across are not going to address sensitivity issues within a reserve. It needs other strategies.
- [53:02]
Mike Axelrod
I agree with you. I agree with you. I think that, I think there's two things at play here. Is one, sensitive species, the ice cream species you've been talking about and as we've discussed, as we talked about in Kruger and we both agreed, there's an elephant number under which sensitive species are going to survive. Okay. However, I would disagree in terms of the numbers argument when it goes beyond the sensitive species, and that's when we've been talking about, in my brain is the homogenization of the landscape is in a modiquir reserve. I don't see how it's not tied to numbers when you go beyond the sensitivity argument, beyond the sensitive ecosystem argument. But now we've gotten rid of the ice cream species, now all that's left is, is spinach and cabbage and everything else that we're going to smash because we have to eat it and we're homogenizing everything. To me, that has to be a numbers issue.
- [54:09]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yeah, it's not really. And what is interesting, you know, we were looking at modiquo and, you know, one of the arguments that were put forward prior to the modique situation where we're in now and look, there's a lot of work still need to be done, you know, you know, and a team at Madekwe is looking at all the different things. And as I said, there's also a task team that's been, you know, that northways are busy putting up, putting together to delve even deeper into this. But what was interesting is people were saying, well, elephants will be the last to survive. By the time elephants start dying, everything else is going to be gone. You know, all other animals are going to die. What we've seen in Modekwe this year is that everyone else is doing fine. The body condition of some species have dropped, but that is expected. It's the end of the late dry season, it drops every year. But there's hardly any other species mortalities. Even the black rhino, which competes with elephant full brows were doing fine. The white rhino were doing fine and there were no mortalities within these species. So for me that's an indicator that resource limitations are not the major issue at the moment. It's resource limitations in certain levels and the impact on juveniles at this stage. So I'm not saying numbers are completely out of the game, but thinking that numbers are going to, if we sort out the numbers, we bring the numbers down, we're going to sort out impact. It's not going to happen. What we do need is also to look at, you know, as I say, my decoys through the natural process because they haven't contracepted now got to an age structure that seems to be more representative of a natural elephant population. A lot of our reserves, what we trying to do is through contraception is to slow down the growth rate so we can get to those eight structures and not have that drop at growth rate. So you know, that's where we, you actually pre planning, you're planning ahead and saying I realize what we've done and we're going to contracept to a point, not contracept the entire population, but contracept so that we reduce our growth rate so we can get our age structure right so we can get interdependence at some stage kicking in where we have births and deaths. Now we just have births, we don't have deaths.
- [56:50]
Mike Axelrod
Yeah, it's a, it's a fascinating discussion and argument because I, I think that there's things that people don't consider in this whole scenario. Okay. And I think one of the things that you just mentioned from the anti side, from the NSPCA side, the anti people who hunt side and I think a little bit the hunting community understands this better. I don't think they understand it completely, but is the idea of death and that death is, is part of the natural cycle. We're a part of it. We're the, from a hunting community. We, we operate as that predator, as the predator that does mitigate, that does put death into the system, that does manage populations just like any other predator does. Now elephants are unique because elephants don't have predators. Okay? And so the only thing that's going to control elephants for Time Memoriam, like we've just discussed is a landscape of fear through humans because humans have been interacting with elephants for forever. Okay. And some sort of density dependence that says, okay elephants, you need to control yourselves. And we're going to start knocking down those that can't, which is the juveniles and calf, and we're going to slow your growth rate down and. Or some sort of disease comes into the population or drought, environmental, that knocks the population down back to, you know, whatever it is, you've got a, you roll on top of that. The fact that we're now living in a society or not a society, we're now living in a world in which these habitats that used to be completely open, that were free flowing, immigration, immigration, the whole king caboodle are now confined. And the smaller the confined area, the more we have to be diligent about management. But I think as I've mentioned, we have to be more diligent about what is it that you want?
- [59:02]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Correct.
- [59:03]
Mike Axelrod
What is it that you want out of this area? If it is, we want just a beautiful aesthetic, large trees and everything's going to be fine, then you shouldn't have elephants. Okay, but you have elephants. And so if you want a balance, then there's things that we can think about and everything should be on the table. Every tool should be on the table. Contraception. Your metapopulation idea of moving elephants around, bringing in elephants that are older age class. Now that we have the technology to bring in an older age class elephant, Instead of a 15 year old, bring in a 35 year old. I think I just saw the thing in Kenya. Like the biggest elephant ever was translocated, what was it, £11,600. Stupid big elephant. Okay, we can do that nowadays. But I think and then death and then, you know, self regulating and death. Like you see baby elephants dying. It's shocking. It is. And could we have done something about the image of the death? Maybe if again the conversation had been made about what do you want? If you want ecotourism? From an ecotourism perspective, as many elephants as you possibly can have in Mediqui, this is what's going to happen.
- [60:26]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yeah. You know, my mom always used to say, can't have your cake and eat it. And if we, you know, on the one hand we have people opposed to managing elephants, we need, need to let them go and they need to live happy lives. But happy lives also mean dying. And for an old elephant to die, basically they die of starvation. That's how elephants die, they molas are worn down, they can't chew their food properly and they can't get in the resources that they need. Juveniles die for a similar reason. They can't get enough resources to sustain the distances that they have to walk over the dry season. But all of that is built in. That's how elephants have been living long before we were on this planet. And I have again had those natural coping mechanisms to deal with that. So for me this is not a welfare issue. This is a natural systems process that's taking place. When we start managing. We need to think about the duty of care and we need to think about how do we manage and is our management in line with the coping mechanisms that animals have. And that way we think about maintaining, restoring, mimicking processes that have naturally taken place. And you're 100% right. In today's scenarios that we live in is very fragmented, human dominated landscapes where people also need to make each other living. And so countries socioeconomic development is extremely important. Everything should be on the table. The conservation toolbox should be big, not small. We shouldn't be taking out tools, we should be putting in more and we should be discussing those tools rather than saying trophy hunting is off the table because I don't like it. Rather have a discussion around so what is best practice? Which when we talk about trophy hunting for elephants, if we want to cull, what would be best practice? What should we call that it mimics processes and that we are considering our duty of care as managers and custodians of these animals. This whole division in fighting about tools for me is very, it's unproductive and is not helping the conservation of the species. They need to be more frank, open debate and discussion around conservation.
- [63:14]
Mike Axelrod
Well, I think that there's great models, I think there's great models all around Africa, even in South Africa that people actually don't even know is actually happening.
- [63:23]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yeah, no, I agree.
- [63:24]
Mike Axelrod
Where hunting and ecotourism are harmoniously working together.
- [63:28]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yeah, yeah. Namibia is a really good example. The community conservancies in Namibia is a very good example.
- [63:36]
Mike Axelrod
Yep.
- [63:37]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yeah.
- [63:37]
Mike Axelrod
And look, I think in my, the example I would use is Timbavati. Timbavati is a, is a great system that works very well. High end ecotourism, highest end ecotourism you have in South Africa perfectly marries with hunting and it's not. And trophy, trophy hunting is used as bastardized in terms of its, its terminology and its name and its moniker. Really trophy is in the eye of the beholder. So if somebody like Tom Pardi has, when people dig into it, has the strictest elephant hunting protocols in the world.
- [64:14]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Absolutely.
- [64:15]
Mike Axelrod
And there's significant consequences for breaking those protocols. And they're not the big 80, 90, a hundred pound protocols. They're 30 pound, 35 year old elephants, but you know, are not trophies in anybody. In, in, in, in, in the bastard sized word of trophy hunting, there's no way you can even classify it that way. But for the person who's decided that that's the elephant they want to them, that's a trophy.
- [64:42]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yeah.
- [64:43]
Mike Axelrod
Whether it's the experience, the adventure, the people, whatever it is. Yeah, I think you're right. I, I'm with you, man. When I start thinking about land use that is beneficial for wildlife around the world writ large, you think about everything that has a land use in this country, in this world, you're probably left with single digit percentages of uses that are wildlife based.
- [65:07]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Yep, exactly.
- [65:08]
Mike Axelrod
And then when you expand that single digit out, you've got ecotourism, you've got photographic ecotourism, you've got hunting tourism, you've now got obviously the carbon biodiversity credit component to it. You've got your philanthropic model, you've got your state, national park, government driven model and quasi wilderness. Yeah, that's it.
- [65:32]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
Exactly. Exactly.
- [65:36]
Mike Axelrod
Well, Janetta, I appreciate your time and I love the fact that these are the kinds of conversations I love because, you know, I've got an opinion, you have an opinion. It's very, it's the kind of, it's the kind of thing that society needs, is just good amicable discussion where people can banter around ideas and almost use each other as sounding boards because there's things that I hadn't considered that you had said.
- [66:02]
Dr. Janetta Seiler
You know, I, I, I agree. I mean, the more we discuss this, we learn from each other. And you know, the model that Southern Africa has been using as adaptive, adaptive management, learn by doing. And so we make mistakes, but we try and learn from them and try and do better next time. And it's great to have. We should be having more of these conversations, open and frank with our judgment.
- [66:31]
Mike Axelrod
100%. Well, I look forward to the next one. Maybe we'll do it in South Africa. Okay, sounds good. Well, that's it for today. I appreciate you listening. As always, leave a review, share it with your friends, and most importantly, do what's right to convey the truth around hunting. Want to plan your next fishing trip without the hassle? FishingBooker.com is the best way to find and book a fishing charter anywhere in the world. Whether you're chasing trophy fish or just looking for a family day on the water, fishingbooker makes it simple, fast and secure. With thousands of experienced guides, verified reviews and 247 customer support, FishingBooker takes the guesswork out of planning. Visit fishingbooker.com and book your trip today. FishingBooker Fishing Trips Made Easy Explore historic.
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