Elephant, Kruger National Park, South Africa

You can not visit Kruger National Park in South Africa right now without quickly realizing that Kruger is in trouble. 2 years of intense drought has brought water levels in the dams and natural watering holes to record lows. Many once reliable sources of water have dried up entirely. Large sections of Kruger look more like desert than savannah or scrub woodland. And the park is overpopulated with large herbivores…elephants and hippos in particular. The elephants are surviving so far by pushing over trees to get at the edible bark of the roots. In some sections of Kruger there are very few standing trees left, which, of course, further alters the environment: reduces shade, accelerates desertification, and reduces habitat for birds, reptiles, and mammals that depend on the trees. The hippos, who rely only on standing grasses, are simply dying. 30 died the week I was there. The day I left, the park took the unprecedented step of culling 300 hippos and distributing the meat to surrounding villages. Sad as that is, having been there I know that the choice for those hippos was between a quick death and slow lingering death by starvation. And unless the rains come this South African summer, beginning this month and next, the elephants will begin to die too. Elephants need 200-600 pounds of fodder per day to survive…and up to 50 gallons of water. The park does still operate several bore holes with windmills and tanks and pools, and we saw big male elephants standing on the buttresses of the water tanks, tanks as tall as a two story house, and putting their trunks up over the tank walls to drink. The debate is on as to whether in the long run it is a kindness (or ecologically sound practice) to provide supplemental water to a population of elephants that is already considerably over what the land will bear. There are no good solutions, and even if the rains come this season, the park will take generations to recover.

Because water is scarce, the wildlife is concentrated. Herds of elephants come to the dams, off and on all day, to drink and cover their hides in mud. This is a large female, drinking her bathtub full of water for the day.

Sony RX10iii at 247mm equivalent field of view. 1/800th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.

The long range forecast models for South Africa are producing mixed results. Some models predict lower than normal precipitation this summer, some predict higher than normal…some predict a dry spring and a wet fall, and some the reverse. If you are a praying person, and the animals of Kruger matter to you, you might spare a prayer for a wet summer for South Africa…this year and for several years to come.