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FacebookTwitterWhatsAppFlipboardLinkedInRedditEmailShare The government is considering culling its elephant population to address food shortages and combat the effects of an El Niño-induced drought. Farai Maguwu, Director of the Center for Natural Resource Governance, expressed concerns that the proposal to cull elephants would attract widespread condemnation, much like Namibia's decision. Zimbabwe has about 100,000 elephants with a carrying capacity of about 45,000 and is unable to sell some of the jumbos because of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The country is among five southern African nations heavily impacted by the drought, leaving millions food-insecure. Namibia's decision to cull...

Australia has begun drawing up plans to cull hundreds of thousands of wild camels amid concerns that marauding herds are tearing up the environment and depleting valuable supplies of water. One-humped dromedaries were imported into Australia after 1840 to help colonial settlers conquer the arid continent’s inhospitable interior. A century later, the robust pack animals were no longer needed, superseded by trucks and trains. While some were slaughtered, many others were released into the desert where they have thrived. Apart from wild dogs, Australia’s camels have had little to fear until now. Deploying marksmen in helicopters is part of an...

South Korea to expand mass cull to curb bird flu Thu Nov 30, 12:02 PM ET South Korea is to cull hundreds of thousands more chickens after its first bird flu outbreak for three years spread to a second poultry farm, officials said. Quarantine officials had originally begun culling poultry within 500 meters of the two infection sites on the outskirts of Iksan city, 230 kilometers (140 miles) south of Seoul. But the agriculture ministry decided at an emergency meeting Thursday to slaughter all poultry within three kilometers after the potentially deadly H5N1 virus was detected Tuesday at a second...

CANADA's annual seal cull sees animals killed on an almost industrial scale, and attracts controversy to match.This year's cull is estimated to have killed 354,000 of the animals, above the Canadian government's own prediction of 325,000. The 2006 killing season was the third straight year where the death toll exceeded 300,000. More than a million seals have been killed since 2004. Some are shot, others are beaten with clubs or heavy spiked hakapiks. Around 16,000 hunters, the majority of them professional cullers, are licensed to carry out the slaughter that has become peaceful Canada's biggest single international PR problem. While...

The Queensland Liberals have called for crocodiles to be culled because people are being eaten. The party's annual state convention in Brisbane has passed a motion put forward by Senator Ian McDonald for crocodile numbers to be reduced in populated areas. One delegate, Brett Blade, told the convention that lives are at risk "You can't allow crocodiles to come into the main street of Cairns and eat people - and that is exactly what's happening," he said. "If you go up north, believe me they have come into town and they have walked down main streets. "It also helps create...

CALGARY — The document reads like a doomsday scenario for Canada's largest free roaming herd of bison. Offer bounties to encourage hunting. Set up hunt camps. Radio-collar "Judas" animals to more easily track herds. Use corral-traps to corner about 4,500 wild animals. Shoot them from the ground and the air. Get rid of the remains so the carcasses -- many infected with bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis -- won't spread diseases. All of this would happen in Wood Buffalo National Park, an area larger than Switzerland, that straddles the boundaries of Alberta and the Northwest Territories, under the stewardship of the...

Zimbabwe to kill buffalo in 'bizarre' mass cull By Basildon Peta, Southern Africa Correspondent 08 September 2003 Zimbabwe is culling thousands of buffalo to "contain" foot-and-mouth disease in a move that has sparked protests and been described as "futile and bizarre". Conservationists said the order was "stupid" and would kill off what was left of Zimbabwe's tourism sector, which has shrunk to 15 per cent of its former level since political disturbances began in 2000. Salmon Joubert, a retired executive director of the Kruger National Park, which straddles Zimbabwe's borders with South Africa and Mozambique, said the decision "ranks as...