SOUTH AFRICA

-- While conservationists across the world
are raising an alarm over
depleting numbers of elephants, wildlife managers in
South Africa's Kruger
National Park are trying to
check its jumbo population
by culling. But under fire
from animal rights activists,
they have decided to reduce
culling by half. "In order to
maintain an ecological balance, animals have to be
taken out," says conservation
officer Chris Vonderlender.

Since the '60s, culling has
been going on with 300-400
pachyderms being drugged
and shot each year. While in
most parts of Africa elephants have nearly become
extinct due to poaching, in
South Africa and Zimbabwe,
they are in excess. But animal
rights activists have alleged
that culling is being done
more for commercial reasons than for conservation.
Each elephant carcass is converted into products worth
more than US $22,000. South
Africa is now lobbying for
revocation of the international ban in the trade of
elephant products which was
imposed in 1989.