Elephants: Trimming the Herd
This research is taking place in South Africa in a wildlife
park called Kruger. The experiment is to see if either one of two different
methods can effect the birth control rate of elephants. This would hopefully
take the place of the traditional version of birth control: culling. Elephants
have managed to destroy many parts of the South African countryside by
over population and have made it unlivable for many other species. Kruger
Park officials say that they can only hold up to 8000 elephants and any
more would unbalance the whole system. So to keep the numbers at this every
year they have to kill a certain number. When this is done they prefer
to cull the entire family as to make sure that one member is not left being
alone. The elephants live in such a tight family that this would normally
lead to death anyway. This raises a concern that contraception may lead
to a generation gap in the family unit. The two teams were trying different
techniques. One method was using estrogen implants in the females but this
lead to the females to be constantly on heat, which means they attracted
too many males and never had time to raise the young that they had before.
This lead to the loss of two infants due to lack of attention. The second
method proved to be the better but it will take a few more years to get
solid results on the contraception for elephants.