Biodiversity

The conservation status of elephants in Namibia is more than satisfactory - their numbers already exceed what many would consider desirable for the available habitats. Indeed, Namibia might want to avoid habitat changes of the sort that have happened in large parts of the elephant range in northern Botswana as a result of an overabundance of elephants (DG 2004, p7). Elephants have been identified as a possible threat to other species ((Martin 2002, 2003, 2004).

Elephants are classified as Specially Protected Game under Namibian law (Schedule 3, Nature Conservation Ordinance, Order No.4 of 1975). The original justification for such a listing may well have disappeared. However, designating the species as Protected Game (Schedule 4) or as Huntable Game (Schedule 5) or as a Problem Animal (in terms of Section 53(1)) would not introduce any greater flexibility in the management of the species as long as the provisions of section 37 (hunting of game to protect grazing, cultivated lands and gardens) expressly exclude elephants from being hunted either by private landholders (subsection 37(1)(a)(i)) or communal lands residents (subsection 37(1)(a)(ii)) in defence of their own livelihoods. To achieve the objectives of this Management Plan, several revisions to the legal provisions for elephants under Namibian legislation would be desirable.

Cites

The population of savanna elephants in Africa was thought to be around 3 million animals in the 1970s although this number is little more than an informed guess. Martin (1986) estimated the population at about 1.2 million. In the late1980s it was claimed that the population had crashed to some 300,000 animals (ITRG 1989) but the estimates of elephant numbers were incomplete and speculations where no survey data existed may have suffered a lack of impartiality. In 1998, the population was estimated at over 500,000 elephants (African Elephant Database, AfrESG 1998). More than half of the current African population is in southern Africa and more than half of this number occurs in Botswana (DG 2004).

The African elephant was listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) at the 7th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties held in Lausanne in 1989. In his concluding remarks at the end of the session on elephants, the Director-General of IUCN (Dr Martin Holdgate) stated that the meeting could be pleased that it had concluded its business but that "it should not pleased with the intellectual rigour which had gone into its deliberations". At the 10th CITES meeting in Harare in 1997 the elephant populations of Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe were transferred to Appendix II which, in theory, enables these countries to trade in ivory and elephant products. In practice, numerous obstacles have been placed in the way of trade.

More recently, the African elephant has been classified as Endangered in the latest IUCN Red Data Book. This classification was based less on the actual numbers of elephant and more on the fact that the population was fragmented and had suffered recent catastrophic declines in some countries. It is of interest that the new criteria used for the classification were very similar to those submitted originally by Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe to the 8th CITES COP Meeting as criteria for amendments to the Appendices of CITES, which, with modifications, were adopted at the next CITES meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

This draft proposal was part of the conceptual evolution of the southern African countries thoughts about the CITES treaty. In the text of the draft resolution (para.35) it is stated that -

The "perfect" system would be one which notes the biological status of species but treats matters of trade entirely independently of this status . . .