Botswana is home to more than 33 per cent of Africa’s savanna elephants

The excellent field protection that Botswana provides elephants has led to a steady movement of the animal into that country from neighbouring countries in southern Africa. But the rising numbers are putting stress on the vegetation of this mostly dry landscape and increasing instances of conflict with people.

A herd of bull elephants in the Savuti region of the Chobe National Park (11,700 sq. km) in Botswana.

“ Africachanges you forever, like nowhere on earth. Once you have been there, you will never be the same.”

— Brian Jackman in the book The Last Elephants

In September 2019, we spent three memorable weeks in Botswana travelling from the Chobe National Park to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and camping at different places (“ Unforgettable Kalahari ”, Frontline , January 3, 2020, and “ Breathtaking Botswana ”, Frontline , April 10, 2020). After this trip, we realised that Botswana had come to occupy a special place in our hearts. The trip was all the more memorable because of our 10 wonderful Indian travelling companions and the obliging and excellent African staff who accompanied us.

In the Chobe National Park (11,700 square kilometres) and the Moremi Game Reserve (5,000 sq. km), we saw about 160 adult elephants and 28 calves and other wildlife, including the African wild dog, the leopard, the lion and the rare roan antelope. Our visit was brief, but we observed that the vegetation was reeling under pressure from the elephant population, which in Botswana alone numbers around 130,000. This figure is based on the 2016 Elephants Without Borders (EWB) Great Elephant Census of savannah elephants carried out under the leadership of the dedicated Mike Chase, director and founder of EWB.

A bit of history

Botswana (581,730 sq. km), a landlocked country in southern Africa bounded by Angola and Zambia in the north, Namibia in the west, Zimbabwe in the north-east and South Africa in the south, is globally known for its varied, abundant and well-protected wildlife. Around 90 per cent of Botswana is under savannah, which consists of shrub savanna in the south-west in the dry areas and tree savanna composed of trees and grass in the wetter areas. The famous landscapes within Botswana, known for their characteristic plant and animal life, are the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the Okavango Delta (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), which is influenced by seasonal floods.

Botswana is also an active participant in the ambitious Kvango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (about 520,000 sq. km) peace park, whose primary goal is to sustainably manage the Kvango-Zambezi ecosystem for the benefit of the wildlife, people and communities in and around the region.

Botswana is home to more than 33 per cent of Africa’s savanna elephants as opposed to less than 3 per cent some 50 years ago. Botswana, which has the potential habitat for up to 200,000 elephants, provides the pachyderm with excellent field protection, and this has led to the steady movement of elephants into the country from neighbouring countries, where they were under pressure because of expanding rural communities and increasing levels of poaching. Elephants faced severe problems in Angola because of the civil war there from 1975 to 2002 (Maps 1 and 2).

In the decades leading up to the 1980s, ivory was a sought-after international fashion product. African elephants were slaughtered in great numbers for their tusks and other products. It is said that at one time, close to 100,000 elephants were killed annually, equivalent to an elephant being poached/killed every six minutes. The current situation is that an elephant is killed approximately every 15 minutes, which is an improvement but still a huge cause for worry.

During the period of harassment and poaching, elephants were listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which mentions animals that could become threatened if commercial trade in the animal and/or its parts is not controlled; trade in ivory and other elephant products was permitted if certain conditions were met. In those days, security was non-existent along Botswana’s porous and unfenced borders, and poachers had a free run in the country’s wilderness. As a result of experiencing massacres, elephants, known for their amazing intelligence, were understandably nervous, withdrawn and aggressive, often chasing tourist vehicles.

The wary elephants would hide in the forest during the day, rapidly moving to the waterways late in the evening for a quick drink before dashing back to the safety of the forest. But the situation turned around in the early 1990s, when Africa’s elephants were listed in Appendix I of CITES, which led to a worldwide ban on all ivory trade. Elephant populations across Africa finally had some peace, stabilised and began increasing for the first time in many decades. Botswana’s elephants began to relax and quickly learnt that people in vehicles no longer posed a danger.

In the early 1990s, Botswana turned its back on mass tourism and actively put in place high-tariff/low-volume/low-impact tourism. Visitors were given opportunities to create jobs and training for rural citizens. The country’s former vast hunting grounds were carved into smaller concessions (on average 1000 sq. km each), which were given to tour operators solely for photo tourism. Safari companies invested in building small, high-end lodges, and many jobs were created in rural areas, which reportedly benefited about 40 per cent of the people who had been weaned from poaching for bush meat to conservation. The many eyes and ears in the concession areas deterred poachers; the elephants calmed down even more and no longer chased safari vehicles.

Interestingly, when elephant hunting for sport resumed in 1996 and CITES downgraded Botswana’s elephants back to Appendix II, which lasted until 2013, some elephants again became aggressive and many became very shy of people. It is reported that late in 2017, one of the safari concessionaires in northern Botswana noticed that his normally relaxed elephants were suddenly jittery and aggressive. A few days later, the reason for their aggression came to light: the carcasses of a number of poached elephants were discovered nearby. Lawrence Anthony, author of the book The Elephant Whisperer , and Mike Chase vouch for the remarkable reasoning ability of elephants.

Chobe and Moremi

Our first encounter with elephants was in the Chobe riverfront. The peacefully flowing and life-giving Chobe river, which arises in a mountain spring in Angola forms the northern boundary of the Chobe National Park, but the river often becomes dry before it flows as the Chobe, and the bulk of its waters are the backwaters of the Zambezi river. It is said that in Africa, the oldest roads are largely along elephant paths. As we drove along the right bank of the river, a herd of elephants—bulls, cows and calves—was walking on the road. We stopped our vehicles to watch and photograph them. Although they were a little alarmed by our presence, they walked across the road calmly and made a beeline for the river.

The negative impact of a high-density elephant population on vegetation has been studied in Botswana and many other African countries. We observed that the vegetation on the Botswana side of the Chobe was sparse, yet there were more trees and shrubs than on the Namibian side across the river, where it looked more like a marshland with reeds and tall grasses. On the Chobe riverfront, feeding by elephants, in particular, and fire were found to be the major factors affecting the vegetation. It is to be noted that before 1980, when hunting was allowed in Botswana, the reported elephant population was around 10,000. Naturally, their impact on vegetation was less.

An aerial study showed that the woodland vegetation on the Chobe riverfront declined from 60 per cent to 30 per cent between 1962 and 1998, while the shrub land, most likely because of coppicing, increased from 5 per cent to 33 per cent. Riparian (riverine) vegetation in 1962 covered a continuous area along the riverfront, but in 1998, only fragments were left. There were more signs of feeding on the browsable species—such as red bushwillow ( Combretum apiculatum ), oleaster bushwillow ( C. elaeagnoides ) and knobbly creeper ( C. mossambicense )—closer to the river (< 2 km) than away from the river (> 7 km), where there were more frequent signs of fire damage.

It is often said that African elephants do not need a passport and can move to any African country they like. Elephants in Botswana can move to parks in Namibia and Zimbabwe because they all occur in the same landscape. If that happened, it would reduce the pressure on vegetation. However, the Great Elephant Census indicates that there may be no benefit in having parks nearby as elephants tend to come into Botswana rather than leave it and go to other countries.

After the Chobe National Park, our next destination was the Moremi Game Reserve, which is named after the third wife of Chief Moremi, who was the chief of the Ba Tawana tribe. We saw more elephants in the reserve as we stayed there for four nights (compared with two nights in Chobe). The ecological strength of the Moremi Game Reserve is that it has permanent water: the Okavango Delta covers nearly 70 per cent of the reserve, and water is also provided for the wildlife in the dry woodland and savannah habitat in the north-east of the reserve. In Moremi, one can go on foot accompanied by an armed guard (which the lodges usually arrange) or by boat in the waterways of the Okavango Delta or drive around in vehicles or cruise in a mokoro (a type of canoe common in the delta) along one of the channels leading to Okavango. We drove around in our vehicles, sailed by boat in Okavango, avoiding the hippos, and saw elephants close up and cruised by mokoro on the narrow Khwai river, observing and photographing the elephants peacefully feeding on the bank.

The diversity of flora of the Okavango Delta and surrounding landscape is noteworthy: papyrus ( Cyperus papyrus )-lined waterways are peppered with flowers such as the white Egyptian lotus ( Nymphaea lotus ) and the blue water lily ( N. nouchali ) and the open grass plains are dotted with the strong-smelling inedible wild sage ( Pechuel-loeschea leubnitziae ) and trees such as the real fan palm ( Hyphaene petersiana ), the wild date palm ( Phoenix reclinata ), the marula ( Sclerocarya birrea ), the sausage tree ( Kigelia africana ), the African mangosteen ( Garcinia livingstonia ), the jackalberry ( Diospyros mespiliformis ), ancient baobabs ( Adansonia digitata ), the camel thorn ( Acacia eriobola ), the candle thorn ( A. hebeclada ), the knob thorn ( A. nigrescens ) and the mopane ( Colophospermum mopane ).

A large number of elephants stay in and around the Okavango Delta as the floodplains support extensive tall-grass habitats with excellent fodder species such as common reed ( Phragmites australis ), hippo grass ( Vossia cuspidata ), pampas grass ( Cortaderia selloana ) and wild rice ( Oryza longistaminata ). Adult elephants shake the real fan palm trees and feed on the fallen nuts while the young search for fallen nuts on the ground. The feeding of elephants helps in the dispersal of seeds. The bark and fruit of marula trees are eaten, but research has concluded that the legendary stories about elephants getting drunk after eating fermented marula fruit are not true!

The fruit of baobab trees is eaten; the seeds are dispersed and the elephants debark and feed on the fleshy interior part of the stem. This behaviour is much more widely prevalent in the dry season and in the very dry areas; such feeding can lead to the death of baobab trees. We saw at least three species of birds (the helmeted guineafowl, the red-billed spurfowl and the southern red-billed hornbill) getting some food from elephant dung.

In the dry zone

Elephants using the dry zone have forage trees such as African teak ( Baikiaea plurijuga ), camel thorn and mopane, which are not that edible and so grow fast and do not leave much space for other species; thus they look like a monoculture crop. The leaves and bark of the mopane tree are rich in tannin, which elephants do not usually like but will eat when nothing else is available. In the dry zone, the elephants have larger ranges as they move between water and the foraging grounds. Research shows that the daily range of cow-calf herds can be a maximum of 5 km, but the bulls who are responsible for the death of trees from ring barking and uprooting may range 15-20 km from water-available areas. Calves, particularly those born in herds with large home ranges, become weak during the dry season because of insufficient feed of adequate quality. Weak calves often get killed by lions.

Lion predation on the calves may be necessary to check the growth of the elephant population in Botswana as it is preferable if the population stays below the carrying capacity of the land. A large number of elephants in a dry country like Botswana could be the great enemy of the vegetation there. The assumption that the country can have more elephants may not be ecologically healthy for it as its human population grew from five lakh in 1960 to two crore in 2010 and is bound to increase further.

Recent deaths and hunting

The mysterious deaths of 350 elephants in and near the Okavango Delta in May-June 2020 makes one wonder whether this was related to the large number of elephants in Botswana. President Mokgweetsi Masisi recently came forward with a plan for the hunting of nearly 200 bulls in areas of high human-elephant conflict and to use the money thus raised to alleviate the problems of the people living in these zones. However, the President has been criticised for withdrawing the military grade weapons that wildlife guards had carried and were vital for them to fight heavily armed poachers. It is reported that the withdrawal of such weapons has in led to a boom in the poaching of elephants.

Africa has fewer than 450,000 elephants according to the Great Elephant Census, well down from the three to five million just 100 years ago. And while the human population is rapidly increasing, elephant numbers are plummeting in most places other than in Botswana. Botswana has a population of 500 rhinos (450 white and 50 black), and in 2019, although the best possible protective measures were in place, the country lost 50 of them.

Prince William wrote in his foreword to The Last Elephants that in 1982 when he was born, there were about one million African elephants, but in 2015 when his daughter Charlotte was born, that number had come down to 350,000 and he feared that the elephant might be extinct by the time she turned 25.

Increasing human population, growing levels of human-elephant conflict and poaching seem to be the inevitable order of the day. Common sense should make us understand who will be the loser.

Interestingly, Asian elephants, of which there are around 40,000, may survive as poaching removes only the tuskers and there are tuskless bulls (makhanas) to continue breeding. Also, in most parts of the Asian elephant’s range, the pachyderm is not killed for meat, which is a problem in Africa. In 2018-19, well over 500 people were killed by elephants in India, which has around 25,000 of the animals, according to the noted elephant conservationist S.S. Bist, who served as Director of Project Elephant and retired as the chief of the West Bengal Forest Department. But in Botswana, the number of people who get killed by elephants seems to be fewer than 50 (no accurate figures are available), which is a reflection of the human population density: Botswana’s is about 4/sq. km and India’s nearly 400/sq. km.

If poaching is not stopped, the epitaph for the African elephant could perhaps read as follows: The loss of such an intelligent and magnificent species that has been with us throughout our existence would be a dark stain on the human race and a reflection of the unbridled greed of man, whose population and consumption rate sadly grows uncontrolled.

A.J.T. Johnsingh is with the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysuru, WWF India and the Corbett Foundation. S. Murali is a retired professor of the Ayya Nadar Janaki Ammal College, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu.

This article is dedicated to Ajay A. Desai, who had served as the co-chair of the IUCN Asian Elephant Specialist Group and who had a heart attack and died on November 20; he was just 62. He was passionate about wildlife conservation and good-natured, so his death is deeply mourned by elephant lovers and wildlife conservationists.

The authors thank Madhavi Sethupathi, R. Raghunath and Mervin Johnsingh for their help with the article.