Botswana's problem elephants

Abstract

Referring to his article of the same title in Pachyderm no 13, p14-19 Spinage notes that the 1979 population figure for northern Botswana was a consensus figure arrived at by those who considered Sommerlatte's 1977 figure of 33,000 too high. He also that although Smither's range map 1969 range extends to the Namibian border recent surveys have detected no elephants west of the Okavango. He suggests that the logistic curve presented in his own article should be taken literally, the present habitat could not withstand such a high population as the curve suggested stabilization might occur.