natural reserve
Animal rights activists relocate 250 elephants inside Malawi
A herd of elephants taking a dust bath at Majete Wildlife Reserve in Malawi. (Archive image) Photo: Trevor Samson/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
A mammoth task: 250 elephants are being relocated from Liwonde National Park to Kasungu National Park in Malawi in south-east Africa. Why should the pachyderms be resettled?
Animal rights activists want to relocate 250 elephants within Malawi.
The pachyderms are due to be relocated from Liwonde National Park in the south of the country to Kasungu National Park in the center next week. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said Tuesday that this would help prevent elephant overpopulation in Liwonde, create healthy habitats and reduce human-wildlife conflict.
In cooperation with the Malawian nature conservation authority DNPW and the animal protection organization African Parks, the elephants will be taken between June 27 and 29 on a five-hour drive about 350 kilometers north. Large numbers of buffalo, impala, sable, warthog and waterbuck are also expected to be relocated from Liwonde to Kasungu during the period, it said.
Poaching severely restricted
Since poaching in Liwonde was severely restricted in recent years, the number of elephants has increased steadily and put a strain on the ecosystem, IFAW said. Kasungu, with its current 120 elephants, has enough space for an additional 250 pachyderms. In 2016, African Parks had already relocated 520 elephants within Malawi in order to more evenly distribute the population of the gray giants in the Southeast African country.
According to estimates by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), there are only 350,000 elephants left in Africa; In 1970 there were about two million. Along with poaching for the ivory trade, habitat loss is a key threat to elephants.