Elephants and zebra culled to feed hungry Namibians

Hungry Namibians will be given elephant, zebra and other wild animals to eat after a planned cull in the country’s drought-hit national parks.
Environment officials said the slaughter of 700 animals would ease the effects of the worst drought for more than a century across southern Africa, which has resulted in dire shortages of food, water and grazing.
Professional hunters have started culling in parks and communal areas where animal numbers “exceed available grazing and water”, the environment ministry said. The meat was already being shared with communities whose harvests have failed in the drought.
“We are happy that we can assist the country in this very difficult time and when it is absolutely needed,” Romeo Muyunda, the ministry’s spokesman, said. The hunters’ list of targets includes 83 elephants, 30 hippos, 60 buffalo, 100 blue wildebeest, 300 zebra and 100 eland, a species of large antelope.
Namibia declared a state of emergency in May. Half of its population of three million is expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity. The drought crippling Namibia and its neighbours is driven by El Niño, a climate pattern that has led to sharply reduced rainfall in some parts of the region and flooding in others.
Approximately 68 million people have been affected who rely on small-scale agriculture to feed themselves and make a living. Zambia, which relies on hydropower dams for most of its electricity, is braced for power cuts that will last most of the day. The huge Kariba Dam, its largest source of hydroelectricity, has only 10 per cent of its water capacity available for power generation.
Malawi recently received an insurance payout of $11.2 million for the El Niño-linked drought, which caused it to declare a state of emergency earlier this year. The African Development Bank said Malawi had taken out a drought insurance policy through the bank and the African Risk Capacity Group, an agency of the African Union. Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe also took out drought insurance policies, the bank said, though payouts to all the countries would fall short of the cost of providing its populations with humanitarian assistance.