overburdened national parks to Namibia after at least 50 starved to death.
Namibia has an elephant population of about 16 000 and grazing is scarce. Namibia’s problem was compounded by the fact that elephants from the Chobe National Park, in neighbouring Botswana, were fleeing to the Caprivi Strip due to dry conditions in the park.
This week Caprivi residents urged the Namibian government to relocate some of the elephants as they were exhausting the limited water resources and were destroying crops. Zimbabwe national parks chief Morris Mutsambiwa warned that if the trend continued “we are going to have a major disaster in Zimbabwe”.
“Vegetation will be destroyed and water will run out in parks. If we have a major drought we are going to have massive deaths of elephants and other animals as they run out of food and water,” he said, adding that farmers had been urged to buy elephants. – Own correspondent
Post published in: News