South Africa’s Kruger National Park will kill at least 350 hippos and buffalos to give relief to the park’s eco-system due to the most severe drought that the region has experienced in more than thirty years.
According to the national parks service the animals’ number are at their highest level ever with hippos being at 7500 and Buffalos at 47,000. The park officials will distribute the animal’s meat to the poor communities living around the park since the severe weather conditions has also left the people in need of food as per the report by AP.
Hippos and buffalos huge consumption of vegetation which further alarms the situation
Rangers are targeting hippos in “small natural pools where they have concentrated in unnatural high densities, defecate in the water, making it unusable to other animals,” Phaahla wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
Drought in the early 1990s reduced Kruger park’s buffalo population by more than half to about 14,000, but the population rebounded.
Kruger, one of Africa’s largest game reserves, is home to a large population of buffalos, with animal’s population being large in Africa. The hippo species in the Park is not defined as endangered, though it faces threats from poaching and human encroachment elsewhere in Africa.
South Africa’s parks service stopped killing elephants to reduce overpopulation in 1994, partly because of public opposition.
