Wikidrama redux? South Africa tries to control its elephant population

Way back in 2006, Stephen Colbert started a feud with a little website known as Wikipedia and dared us, the fledgling Colbert Nation, to reverse the course of extinction of the African elephant by editing the relevant Wikipedia pages. Colbert University has the history, and you can watch the Wørd segment that started wikiality fever here:

Watch Stephen’s continued reporting on actual elephant populations (and vasectomies) here:

Now, a year and a half later, South Africa has announced that it will lift the ban on killing elephants because the population has nearly tripled in size since the ban went into effect.

South Africa to sanction killing of elephants
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP)

South Africa announced Monday that it was reversing a 1995 ban on killing elephants to help control their booming population, drawing instant outrage from animal-rights activists.

Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk did not say how many elephants could be killed, saying only that some animal-rights groups’ estimates of 2,000 to 10,000 were “hugely inflated.”

“Culling will only be allowed as a last option and under very strict conditions,” van Schalkwyk told reporters. “Our simple reality is that elephant population density has risen so much in some southern African countries that there is concern about impacts on the landscape, the viability of other species and the livelihoods and safety of people living within elephant ranges.”

The Johannesburg-based group Animal Rights Africa threatened to call for international tourist boycotts and protests and to take legal action.

South Africa’s elephant population has ballooned to more than 20,000 from 8,000 in 1995, when international pressure led to a ban on killing them.

Read the full article here.

This is a controversial and emotional issue. The South African national park service says that if elephants had not been killed between 1967 and 1994, their population would be about 80,000 strong right now. But culling elephants from their tribes will be difficult due to their social nature and strong family groups, and animal rights activists are understandably outraged.

So as not to start a heated animal rights discussion, let’s leave it at this: Stephen was talking about tripling the elephant population in 2006. Today, South Africa has more elephants than it can handle. Just how great is the power of wikiality?

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