A PH’s Elephant Musings
FIFTY-TWO YEARS ago, I was a 17-year-old cadet game ranger in Rhodesia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management, and I was about to witness for the first time the extremely close social cohesion within an elephant cowherd.
Mere months out of school, and still under tutelage when it came to elephant hunting, we were patrolling in the Gonarezhou’s Gulene-Tshefu corridor. I was accompanied by our Chipinda Pools HQ’s senior ranger, the late John Osborne. At the time, the Gonarezhou had yet to be gazetted a National Park, and elephants within the corridor were shot as part of the tsetse-fly eradication programme. This meant the exercise would be written up as part of my training.
When we came across an elephant cowherd, John instructed me to shoot one in an attempt to force them out of the area.
