The elephant cull

John Moor considers an allegory for the twenty-first century

by John Moor 31st January 2014

People go to southern Africa to visit game parks, where elephants often take pride of place. To watch a herd playing at a watering hole, and to see them squirting water over each other and their babies, is a lasting joy.  These huge herbivores eat a vast amount of vegetable material. They graze grass and browse the leaves of trees. In many parks a low tree, the Mopane, is dominant. They wrap their trunk round a branch where it meets the tree trunk and pull outwards – stripping every leaf off that branch. Many trees die and this creates a tendency to convert forests to grassland. Elephants can survive but buffalo and tree nesting birds dwindle in number.