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How booming elephant numbers are reshaping SA's savanna trees
Venter said: 'This can potentially lead to long-term population declines or local extirpations of trees that need to be large to reproduce, such as the marula.
'From observation, 10 years ago there were quite a few large marula trees on Madikwe and most are dead now.'
Prof Herve Fritz, of NMU's Sustainability Research Unit and REHABS International Research Laboratory, said: 'What the study offers is more precise information as to what to monitor in ecosystems where the architecture and type of modification of trees is a critical indicator of change, in addition to the effect on or disappearance of specific iconic trees.
'The concern is that there are signs at Madikwe that we are getting close to a serious change in the ecosystem.'
Referring to the 85 elephants that died at the reserve during the drought in 2024, Venter said some people argued that if you let nature take its course and a number of elephants died when the habitat deteriorated, then the ecosystem would, in time, restore balance.
'The problem with this is an ethical issue.
'When you are dealing with the confined system of a fenced reserve, where the elephants cannot migrate as they would have done historically, it is morally questionable to allow them to starve to death.
'The hard truth is that the 85 elephants that died don't even make a dent in the elephant population at Madikwe, where there are too many for the reserve.
'Hunting is definitely not an option. Ethics and politics aside, you cannot control this number of elephants with hunting.
'Contraception will help and translocation to far larger areas with low elephant densities is an option, but it is a major operation that is also limited to how long elephants can remain in the transport truck — generally limited to a distance of ±1,000km.'
Expanding protected areas was often flagged as a solution, Venter said.
For the past 30 years, Madikwe and the Pilanesberg Game Reserve planned to connect the two reserves and create a wildlife area of more than 200,000ha, but they had achieved only a ±7,000ha expansion as they encountered various challenges, including landowners who did not want to sell and communities who could not agree to combine their areas.
Several reserves, including Madikwe, were established in the 1990s and are approaching 40 years old.
Most introduced the big five and Madikwe brought in about 250 elephants.
In 1995, the government put a moratorium on elephant culling.
Madikwe's large founder population grew, and it now faces an acute ecological crisis caused by decades of indecision on elephant management.
'Madikwe offers a strong example of what can happen in other enclosed protected areas if populations and ecosystems are not carefully managed,' Fritz said.
'The evidence from this research provides some ecological foundation for urgent, science‑based management decisions with targeted interventions to prevent further habitat collapse and animal suffering.'
The Herald
