The Economist: How war affects wildlife

African elephants | Unsplash

Conflict’s other casualties: when humans fight, animals suffer too

HUMANS bear the brunt of war. But other creatures get caught in the crossfire. During Mozambique’s bloody civil war from 1977 to 1992, giraffe and elephant herds in the Gorongosa national park shrank by more than 90%. Between 1983 and 1995, while the Lord’s Resistance Army terrorised Uganda, topi and roan, two species of antelope, were wiped out completely in the country’s Pian Upe reserve.

Sometimes, however, fighting can help conservation. Elephant numbers rebounded when war-torn Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) became too perilous for poachers in the 1970s. A survey in 2016 identified 35 cases of this “refuge effect” around the world. For some radical environmentalists, the notion that culling humans may be good for animals makes intuitive sense. Yet it is wrong.

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