I believe this is the reason for culling: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,470919,00.html

South Africa is one of many African nations that has always resisted the ivory ban. It's all about human greed. There is no excuse for murdering these intelligent and emotional creatures. If overpopulation and destruction of environment is reason enough, when do we begin culling humans? This whole thing sickens me.

How distressing that culling is again back on the menu of "management tools" for elephants. I do wonder if the advancements in non-lethal "*control and influence" with elephants (eg. Chilli or electric fences, contraception, trans-frontier migration etc) would ever have come about were it not for the 1994 moratorium on culling. Many elephant experts disagree that culling is a sensible and sustainable way of "managing" elephant populations. World renowned expert Cynthia Moss (who bought us the great documentary Echo of the Elephants) and other people working in the field, have come out strongly against culling in the past. You can find their previous statement here:

http://www.elephantvoices.org/index.php?topic=tools&topic2=tools/documents/AERPCullingStatement1-06.pdf

 (It is a pdf file so you may need to click "allow" the page to download once you have navigated there.)

Thank you Ingwe for posting that article.  Even though I realize that ellies are becoming a problem, it is still heartbreaking that they might be hunted again.  They are such a wonderful animal and one of my favorites.

I know here in Michigan the white tailed deer are overtaking everything. Even though they are allowed to be hunted for a couple of months each year, they are ruining crops, killing trees, they cause hundreds of car accidents , and sadly many of them starve to death in the winter. 

The problem here is, as is the problem over most of the U.S.,  humans keep building more and more homes and shopping malls, and the wilderness, where all the critters live, is disappearing.

We are going through a big argument in my area. Two golf courses have closed and homes have been built on them. Now, Jack Nicholas wants to put in a new golf couse....taking over part of a public nature park !!  Sad

Just my thoughts.

I hate that we have to resort to such measures, but, I understand that some measure must be taken, considering the impact of Elephants on an ever diminishing amount of land and forest and the needs of the human population.

I do fear for the impact on the growing youngsters if they kill the mature members of the herds.  It seems (and I'm no expert) there was evidence that this soft of loss led to the unbalanced young bulls that became aggressive.  I had thought for that reason there were going to be moritoriums on culling until it could be re-thought.

A hot topic yes. And a very emotional topic.

I understand very well about culling, and it breaks my heart. I'm sure that everyone here feels the same.

Please read this speech made by Marthinus van Schalkwyk, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.

Particularly this sentence

This is not an open invitation to go out and kill elephants. It is a well thought out strategy, made by people who care very deeply for all of Africa's wildlife,  and it's future.

Hey yall, me too..  I talked about it on a forum chat yesterday and most agree this is a mistake to cull ellies. 2 did not seem to understand that culling is wrong but that's a minority of about 30 africamers.  Hot topic that's for sure.

I said when is comes to man vs wild, man has always won or so they thought...   Big mistake to do this..

I just read this today at work Sterre and I'm horrified.