Kortbroek kramp in die........

[TopHilux Hilton]

Kan iemand my inlig nou hoekom Kortbroek nou weer wil Olifante cull ??

Ek het dit die naweek gelees in die plaaslikke koerant in Komatipoort, maar nie die hele berig gelees nie....

SWAMBO se sy het gelees ons mag ook glad nie die Olifante verkoop aan buurstate nie, maar dat hulle geskiet MOET word, en NIE deur jagters nie...

[Sakkie]

Olifant getalle beheer is maar 'n netelige sakie jong. Teveel olifante in te klein 'n area rig groot skade aan plante aan. Wat ek nie verstaan nie, is hoekom hulle nie verplaas word na plekke waar daar 'n tekort is nie, en wat maak dit saak waar dit is. Miskien onbeheerste "pouching"? Weet nie.

[TopHilux Hilton]

En terwyl die man my nou so opjaag, wat was die hele storie daai tyd met St. Lucia se mond ?? Myself and Blom spoke about it last night, but I would like to know the whole story...

Why DID they close the mouth and why didnt they re-open it again ??

[4ePajero]

Elephant culling is always a difficult subject.

They do become a problem when their natural migration habits are restricted. The tree population suffers in an area where there are to many elephants.

Culling is done on a family basis. The entire family is culled - from babies to grand parents. This is done to reduce the trauma when individuals from a family is culled (elephants have very good family ties).
Hunters obviously cannot execute this "family" culling task.

Sad.

[Sakkie]

Hilton, ek dink jy moet terugklim in die bed en weer probeer

[TopHilux Hilton]

Hilton, ek dink jy moet terugklim in die bed en weer probeer

Sakkie, die man pla my so bietjie jong...Sal smaak om hom so bietjie rond te ruk.....net n klein bietjie...

[TopHilux Hilton]

Elephant culling is always a difficult subject.

They do become a problem when their natural migration habits are restricted. The tree population suffers in an area where there are to many elephants.

Culling is done on a family basis. The entire family is culled - from babies to grand parents. This is done to reduce the trauma when individuals from a family is culled (elephants have very good family ties).
Hunters obviously cannot execute this "family" culling task.

Sad.

Very sad indeed Gerhard..

[SimonB]

It's a fact of life that elephants have to be managed if the rest of their environment is not to suffer. The bunny- and tree-huggers fail to understand this simple concept.

It's simply not practical to move elephants all the time. It's horrendously expensive to do so. In addition, when these elephants get shifted beyond the borders, the parks to which they get moved often are not adequately prepared to receive them (in terms of infrastructure or indeed existing numbers). The elephants become a problem, and what happens? They get shot!

I am not into hunting, but I believe that elephants should be culled (by whatever method) and the culling should be done by highly trained professional hunters.

All this rubbish about sterilization doesn't work. And it's expensive. Yes you might be stopping some population growth but one is artificially changing the group dynamics of the herd over time.

JMHO

[Sakkie]

Sal smaak om hom so bietjie rond te ruk.....net n klein bietjie...

Vat 'n nommer en wag jou beurt af

[TopHilux Hilton]

En terwyl die man my nou so opjaag, wat was die hele storie daai tyd met St. Lucia se mond ?? Myself and Blom spoke about it last night, but I would like to know the whole story...

Why DID they close the mouth and why didnt they re-open it again ??

St Lucia Mouth

Ricky Taylor

The St Lucia mouth closed on Friday 24 August after having been open for 175 days. This closure was expected as much sediment had accumulated in the mouth during the several months prior to closure. The closure was hastened by the windy conditions experienced during the preceding few weeks. Although the mouth is closed there has been overtopping of seawater on each high tide. It is most unlikely that the mouth will breach naturally in the near future.

At closure, the catchments areas for St Lucia were in the grip of a most extended and severe drought. As a result almost no freshwater was entering the system via the rivers. The water level in the lake was close to that of the sea. The salt concentration in the water in St Lucia, which had been a little less than that of seawater at closure, had increased to above that of seawater by the start of October when good rains fell in the whole region. Once again the rivers started flowing and hopefully this is an indication that good summer rains will follow.

Since the mouth opened in March, recruitment of marine life occurred – mainly of fish, crabs and prawn larvae. EKZNW survey shows this to have been mainly in the Narrows, but not to a great extent in the rest of the estuarine system. The present closure has been too early for the main spring recruitments.

However, the St Lucia system, although stressed by the drought that is now in its seventh year, is remarkably resilient. The management strategy of having kept the mouth closed during most of this drought period has shown that the quantity of salt in the system has not become excessively large. The best indicators of the vitality of the ecosystem are the birds. EKZNW counts in May and August showed 17 000 and 15 000 birds respectively. These are both regarded as high counts.

At present the management strategy is to allow the St Lucia Mouth to stay closed. The EKZNW will monitor the situation. If this summer brings good rains and the rivers flow strongly; then the freshwater inputs will exceed evaporation losses. Under these conditions the water level will rise and salinity will drop. It is only once the water level has risen to above that of the sea and we are assured that the drought has finally broken, that we will consider breaching the mouth to re-establish the link between St Lucia and the sea.

In the past the Umfolozi River and St Lucia shared a common mouth. During droughts this mouth would close, diverting Umfolozi water into St Lucia. Computer models have been developed that show that this would have lessened the impacts of drought to a huge degree. This situation cannot be reinstated at present because canals excavated to support sugar farming in the Umfolozi swampland allow the sediments to pass through what was formerly a swamp filter. Any Umfolozi water entering St Lucia nowadays would carry an unacceptably high sediment load with it.

R H Taylor
Ecologist: EKZNW
13 October 2007

http://www.kznwildlife.com/site/corp...th_closes.html

[TopHilux Hilton]

http://www.5050.co.za/inserts.asp?ID=7931

The Lake St Lucia estuary is once again open after being closed off for five years during one of the most severe droughts to hit the area in living history. In March 2007 huge swells of nearly four meters pounded the sandbank separating the estuary from the sea, eventually, causing the mouth to breach. Thousands of liters of salt water rushed into the mouth and pushed high up into the estuary.
This was the result of the highest spring tides in 20 years and unusually rough seas stirred up by Cyclone Gamede lashing south–west Madagascar and sweeping across the Indian Ocean.

Amazingly, it was just two weeks later that yet another phenomenon occurred, a closed low-pressure system that generated strong winds and intense rainfall over a large stretch of the KZN Coastline.

The sea conditions were even more turbulent with waves as high as twelve meters being measured in the Zululand/Maputaland area.

For Lake St Lucia this meant another influx of salt water, pushed in by an angry sea that tossed huge pipes around like plastic toys.

The spectacle created by all this soon had everyone rushing to the area to take it all in.

The flooding of water into the estuary mouth that virtually covered the whole beach, now, three months later, looks like this and the mouth, far from being wide open, looks as if it is closing up again.

Looking out over Cattalina Bay, part of the main lake system, I’m also amazed at how less than two years ago this whole area was dried up as far as the eye could see, there wasn’t a drop of water anywhere.

Richard Crompton
Now I have just seen a pod of hippos rise and fall 200 meters offshore and you would think that in fact perhaps the drought has broken in here, and yet people are not sure. There have been good rains, but I’ve tasted this water and it’s very saline.

The amount of salt that has come in is not of immediate concern to the authorities, because the recent heavy rains have helped to neutralize the water so that its salinity is no higher than that of the sea.

In fact, says Estuarine Ecologist, Ricky Taylor, the whole system is humming at the moment: the inflow of seawater has brought with it crabs and prawns and the crocodiles have had a glut of marine fish to feed on. Even the reed beds, which have been destroyed by the saline water, are providing a food source for a whole new system of saline species.

Dr Ricky Taylor – Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife
This is exactly what an estuarine needs. It needs break down of vegetation all the time, and it gets broken down again by bacteria which is the bottom of the food chain. What we’ve got here is very healthy in the system, but the healthiness only comes when the vegetation is replaced by other stuff that comes in with a higher salinity. If this died now and was killed and there was no other Estuarine Vegetation to replace this, then you would start getting erosion on the banks.

Richard Crompton
What replaces it in time?

Dr Ricky Taylor
I think you will get mangroves here in time. If you look near the heron, you can see a little green seedling of mangrove that’s starting to grow there.

On the shores of the lake the grass, which had spread into the lake bed during the drought, is also now dying because of the high salinity, and, like the reed beds, becoming the source of a whole new food chain for salt water organisms.

Dr Ricky Taylor
Richard, this is the sort of thing I was telling you about where in the shallow water you get some of the salt water coming in and it starts killing some of the vegetation, you can see here and this is what forms the beginning of a food chain in the rotting vegetation, because on this vegetation you start getting a growth of bacteria and that breaks down the cellulose and the various compounds of the vegetation is then the food for other organisms.

While a whole new saline food chain is establishing itself, the fresh water species are clinging to life in the fresh water seepage from the adjacent dunes which have been providing a lifeline for both crocodiles and hippos during the drought.

From being totally exposed when the lake dried up, crocodiles are now completely immersed in the salt water and not easily seen at the moment. Although crocodiles can stay in salt water, they need fresh water to drink because they become dehydrated very quickly hippos, on the other hand don’t become dehydrated quite so quickly because their skins are thicker, so they can spend long periods wallowing in saline water. But, they too, like crocs, need fresh water to drink which they get from the little fresh water rivulets and the dune seepage on the periphery of the lake.

The fresh water seepage is not only sustaining larger animals, but also a myriad smaller creatures such as this tadpole and a whole array of fresh water plants, some of them quite fascinating.

Dr Ricky Taylor
It is an insectivorous plant, it catches insects. You get them here, especially in these seepage areas where you get this fresh water coming out of the dunes. It is very low in nitrogen and the plant needs to supplement its nitrogen so it has adapted things to be able to catch insects. If you look at it, it has something like glue and the insects sticks on that. So the insect land on this and it gets all snarled up in this and then slowly the leave will fold and engulf the insect and digest it.

All this freshwater seepage means you have to watch where you are walking!

Richard Crompton
Am I overweight?

Dr Ricky Taylor
It is water seepage, water seeping through the sand grains here.

Dr Ricky Taylor
Here is another of these carnivorous plants growing in the seepage here, if you look, these are like little swimming insects or stations in the water. Each one of these dark bits are actually modified leaves, are the bits that catch the swimming crustacean, they are little pots that the crustacean come into, it has a spring-loaded lid. As it touches it, it triggers it off, it expands, sucking in the water and as it sucks in the water it sucks in that little crustacean. Once it is in the pot it gets digested by the plant.

Although the system may be humming right now, Ricky warns that unless the drought breaks, all these plants will die out and the crocodiles and hippos will once again be in serious trouble.

This is the sixth year of a ten year drought cycle and with each year that the drought continues the less fresh water there will be flowing from the dunes and the saltier the remaining water will become. Because of this, if the mouth closes up again, it will not be manually opened, he says.

Dr Ricky Taylor
We do have this big fear that if the drought carries on for another few years that the lake salinity will increase, the amount of salt coming in from the sea will built up and we could get into a system that is too saline for a lot of the life. I think the perception is that when we see water we see vegetation, we see fish jumping inside we think everything is very nice and working well but the drought is still very severe here at Lake St Lucia.

The fresh water from the five rivers feeding into the estuarine system is diminishing each year because of human pressure and this makes matters worse. In fact it is estimated that since the early 50’s the whole wetland area has lost on average about 70% of the fresh water that once flowed into it, 50% of which came from the Imfolozi which was manually closed off from Lake St Lucia in 1952 because it was bringing far too much sediment in from adjoining sugar cane plantations.

When the Imfolozi River flowed into the Lake St Lucia mouth, it looked more like a bay, today it has dwindled down to this sorry state, and it is not surprising it keeps closing up.

Richard Crompton
It is quite a different perspective of the mouth from here and you can, perhaps you can see where you are saying it is more likely to close-up.

Dr Ricky Taylor
It could quite easily close up. Prior to the 1950s this whole sandbank wasn’t here. In the past before the 1050s this was open water to the big dunes. This is the area known as the St Lucia Bay. It was the old St Lucia Bay which the ships used to come into in 1800s.

Richard Crompton
And it is being caused by what?

Dr Ricky Taylor
It is where the Imfolozi and the St Lucia join, they link up in one place. They then in the past, had a single mouth that went out here.

Ricky explains that the Imfolozi swampland, which is now covered in sugar plantations, used to act as a valuable filter, sifting out unwanted sediment so that only valuable fresh water reached the river and the lake. There is only one solution to the problem he says.

Dr Ricky Taylor
We have to buy out some of the farms and rehabilitate those farms into a sediment filter.

Richard Crompton
And if we don’t do that Ricky, would it mean that the system would gradually deteriorate?

Dr Ricky Taylor
Yes, I think what is happening is that we get a severe drought maybe every ten years. In St Lucia, every time we get one of those droughts the system deteriorates a lot. In between the droughts there isn’t enough time for the system to recover fully. So, slowly drought after drought the St Lucia system deteriorates to a lower and lower system.

Richard Crompton
Can that happen to a World Heritage Site?

Dr Ricky Taylor
It is happening.

What is also happening is that local communities are planting sugar cane right inside the World Heritage Site this time in the Mhkuze flood plains, another vital filtration system feeding fresh water into the lake from the Mkhuze River.

As the main river flowing into Lake St Lucia now that the Imfolozi River has been canalized, this is another nail in the coffin for a wetland system that is gradually choking up.

Richard Crompton
The Lake St Lucia system cannot survive on salt water alone, but this is the gloomy scenario facing the authority here. Since the 1950’s it has been estimated that two thirds of the water that used to flow into it and if you look at the international debate, authorities are actually starting to resuscitate, rehabilitate wetlands. They are starting to appreciate how important wetlands are. This is not just a wetland it is a World Heritage Site and yet it is dying and we are not really doing much about it. Every time we come back to this issue the same question is brought up; how are we going to take the Imfolozi river, which historically was the greater source of fresh water, how are we going to resuscitate that to allow it to perform its filtration and feeding of fresh water into the system? Something has to be done to save this World Heritage Site.

[TopHilux Hilton]

Found this on the culling.

http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEditi...aspx?id=717901

After a 14-year moratorium, the government has approved elephant culling to protect the environment. Chris Barron asked Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk …





Is there enough scientific evidence that elephants are threatening biodiversity?
The science is evolving all the time, but I believe the scientific evidence we have now is adequate to defend the decision.

How serious is the threat?
I’ve been to most of the parks where there is alleged to be overpopulation and it is quite clear that it is already having an impact. So I think it is serious, although not by far what it is in some of our neighbouring countries.

Because they don’t cull?
I have discussed this with the ministers in these countries and they are also in the process of taking a decision. We have 18 000 elephants. In Botswana, the minister told me a few days ago, they have around 190 000 elephants; in Zim it is 85 000; in Mozambique it is approaching 27 000.

Are transfrontier parks not a solution?
The parks are one of the possible solutions and that is why we have listed range manipulation as one of the options that must be considered before culling. Translocation too — we translocated some elephants to Mozambique a few years ago, but it didn’t work because most of them came back. We did it again last year. It was a better planned experiment and it may work.

Why not see if these and other options work before creating such a furore with culling?
The elephant population is growing by 6% to 7% a year, so we don’t have time to experiment. Also, some of these options are very costly. Contraception is extremely costly and still in its infant stage.

Could it be an option in the future?
The technology will still develop and I think it could be (an option), but there are some dimensions that we don’t yet understand. For instance, some of our scientists tell me that they don’t know what the effect is on elephants if they don’t reproduce.

Was the 14-year moratorium on culling perhaps a mistake?
It is a difficult call to make. The culling approach we followed before 1994 did not have the strong science base we have now. It was also a decision taken at management level by the environment agencies. There are more checks and balances in the system now.

Have we left it too late?
It is a bit late in some of our parks, but I believe we still have time to intervene.

What lessons have been learned from the way culling was carried out before?
One of the lessons the conservation agencies conveyed to us very strongly during the consultation process is that, instead of killing only a few elephants in a herd, it is better to cull whole herds because of the impact on those elephants left behind. Very often they become violent and destructive.

Will there be tighter control?
Definitely. Apart from the ecologist having to approve it even before it comes to the department and my desk, we have banned certain of the tranquillising substances that were very inhumane.

So there is not going to be an open season on culling?
There were some people from conservation agencies and nature reserves who wanted me to give a blank cheque in favour of culling. I said no, because I believe this decision will have a major impact — not only on biodiversity and the management of our parks, but also on our image as a country. Therefore it is good that we have more checks and balances.

Did economic incentives weigh on you?
There were some arguments in favour of adding an economic incentive and I decided very strongly against that.

Incentives such as?
Some people wanted us to increase hunting quotas for elephants. My view was no, because then people develop a vested interested in the culling of elephants. Culling must be a management tool based only on management considerations.

What will happen to the tusks?
They will be stockpiled. This (decision to resume culling) is not in any way meant to reopen the door on ivory trading. We won’t push to increase our ivory quota. In fact, we haven’t even sold what we were allowed to sell in terms of the Cites quota.

Has there been enough public consultation?
Some people criticised me for consulting too much. We have consulted the whole spectrum. In my view this is one of the examples we can hold up of how consultation should take place.

How long did it take?
Two and a half years.

[ScoobyDoo]

Why is it that everybody is always up in arms when it comes to culling of eliphants (and seals)? These animals can be devastating to the environment if not managed properly. My gripe is not with culling, but it becomes senseless if the animal products cannot be utilized (such as ivory). I understand the ban on ivory trade, but doubt if it had any effect on the illegal trade in ivory. Eliphants are no longer threatened or endangered. Why not use the meat to supply the poor, or drought stricken countries, or even for canned dog food or to feed captive canines. It is sad that these animals should be culled, but it is even sadder if they are not utilized.

[hbannink]

Why not use the meat to supply the poor, or drought stricken countries, or even for canned dog food or to feed captive canines. It is sad that these animals should be culled, but it is even sadder if they are not utilized.

Unfortunately I must agree

I am just glad that I do not have to pull the trigger to wipe out a whole family. If the animal is not utilized that would be a shame. I have had the privilege to eat elephant in Pilanesberg and believe me that pot mechanic knew his story it was deeelish, so when it comes to utilising the meat I will plead poverty.

As far as I am concerned seals are a totally different class of vermin. There are way too many due to man's destruction of their predator nl sharks and now they are multiplying so fast and depleting reserves at a rate of knots. Too late for any control measures as far as I am concerned just have to wait until they have destroyed their resources and watch them starve.

Henk