Kill the elephants

from the WAPO

Nderiki and her husband had been married 65 years before he was killed by an elephant in 2014. Like nearly everyone else in this cluster of villages, it has been years since her fields weren’t trampled and eaten up by what she calls “the giants.”

She used to grow more than 100 bags of sorghum in a season. Last harvest, she salvaged three.

Growing resentment toward the animals among farmers here and around Botswana is upending the country’s politics and prompting the reversal of policies that turned tourism into Botswana’s second-biggest earner after diamonds.

The furor has also spilled into a larger debate over race in a country where white foreigners and the descendants of colonialists control much of the conservation and tourism sectors while many who live outside the national parks eke out a living on government subsidies....

The country’s president, Mokgweetsi Masisi... said that in his view, the numbers of elephants are now “far more than Botswana’s fragile environment, already stressed by drought and other effects of climate change, can safely accommodate,” leading to a “sharp increase” in conflict between humans and elephants. He believes a limited, permit-based return to hunting can solve the crisis.....

headsup AnnAltnouse.

I was going to make the headline "kill the F....." but this is a G rated blog.

You see, all those "national geographic" etc. specials in Africa love wild animals and lament the "loss of habitat.  (translation: Those dang locals keep plating crops to feed their kids) and poachers (translation: Those dang locals kill animals to make a living),

Ah but wait a bit: You will start seeing elephants dying of starvation after the eat everything in the area, When food disappears either from overgrazing or the periodic droughts in that part of Africa, they then travel to people's farms and eat the food of the locals, and/or they starve to death.

NYTimes article from 1992:

Zimbabwe kills starving elephants for food.

Faced with the worst drought in southern Africa this century, the wildlife authorities at a national park here are proceeding with what they call the grim but essential step of killing thousands of elephants and impalas so other animals as well as starving people can survive.

While animal kills are common here and elsewhere as a form of habitat management -- wildlife officials prefer the term "culling" -- rarely if ever has a drought forced the authorities to act on such a scale and with such human urgency as in the program under way at the Gonarezhou National Park.

In the coming weeks, the park authorities plan to shoot 2,000 elephants and give the meat to farmers and their families. In addition, an operation to kill 5,000 impalas and distribute the meat from them has begun. Also under way is the large-scale relocation of rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses and other exotic animals that are in danger of dying from hunger. Unlike other African nations, Zimbabwe does not have a major elephant-poaching problem, so the authorities have long resorted to such kills to control the growth of its large elephant population.

nor is this the first time this happened:

Mr. Wright of the World Wildlife Fund said a situation comparable to the one here developed in Kenya in the early 1970's. The wildlife authorities decided then not to kill elephants during a drought in Tsavo National Park, even though they were deemed too numerous and many people living in the area of the park were in need of food. In the end, thousands of elephants died of thirst and hunger, and that in turned stirred resentment among the peasants living nearby, Mr. Wright said. When the good weather came, the elephant population in Tsavo never recovered because the angry peasants cooperated in poaching.

Periodic famines due to drought are not unknown in that area:

This article notes that it appeared to be rainer in the 19th than in the 20th century, although droughts did occur.

Article on the "great famine" of the 1870s.

The Great Drought actually was several droughts, Singh found, beginning with a failure of India's 1875 monsoon season. East Asia's drought started in the spring of 1876, followed by droughts in parts of South Africa, northern Africa and northeastern Brazil. There were also droughts in western Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia. The length and severity of the droughts prompted the Global Famine, aided in no small part by one of the strongest known El Niños, the irregular but recurring periods of warm water in the tropical Pacific Ocean. That triggered the warmest known temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean and the strongest known Indian Ocean dipole -- an extreme temperature difference between warm waters in the west and cool waters in the east. These in turn triggered one of the worst droughts across Brazil and Australia. Because the drought was induced by natural variations in sea-surface temperatures, says Singh, a similar global-scale event could happen again. Moreover, rising greenhouse gas concentrations and global warming are projected to intensify El Niño events, in which case "such widespread droughts could become even more severe."

The socio-political factors that led to the famine no long exist, she notes. Still, she writes, "such extreme events would still lead to severe shocks to the global food system with local food insecurity in vulnerable countries potentially amplified by today's highly connected global food network."

and then there was the drought 4200 years ago. 

article on the desertification of Africa.

article about Chinese project to fight desertification in Namibia.

Under instruction from Chinese technicians, Nakanyala dug grooves into the ground and filled them with grass, skillfully using a spade to build a stretch of grass pane sand fence, a proven method to alleviate shifting sands and conserve water. "Nearly a quarter of Namibia is covered by sand. It's a matter of primary importance to learn effective techniques against desertification so that we can solve food problems," said Nakanyala. The training program has been held in Gansu for almost 30 years, with nearly 1,000 technical workers and government officials from 87 countries trained, including those in Africa. The government-sponsored training courses combine in-class learning and field practice, focusing on theories and techniques of desertification control as well as ecological restoration....China has reversed the expansion of its deserts. An average of 4,400 square kilometers of desertified land has been restored each year since 2000, according to statistics. "China is at the forefront of sand prevention and control," Liu said. "It is urgent to share our methods with other parts of the world."