February 22 2008 at 05:00PM

Animal Rights Africa (ARA) has threatened boycotts, protests and legal steps if South Africa legalises culling to control elephant numbers.

Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk is expected to announce the national norms and standards for elephant management (NNSEM) on Monday.

ARA said on Friday that promoting international tourist boycotts, public protests and legal challenges were among the measures it would resort to if the NNSEM persisted in legalising culling as a means of controlling elephant numbers in South Africa.

"We will appeal to the international animal rights community to use its not inconsiderable membership and corporate influence to support a call for tourists to boycott our national parks should elephant culling be retained as a management option in the NNSEM, and we will continue to campaign relentlessly for an end to the captive elephant industry in South Africa."

Since the process of drafting the NNSEM began, ARA had consistently presented strong and irrefutable ethical, scientific and historical arguments opposing the inclusion of culling as a management option, it said in a statement.

However it seemed Van Schalkwyk and his team had not taken heed of what was presented to them and continued to bow to pressure from private landowners and South African National Parks (SANParks).

"These ideologues and proponents of 'sustainable use,' want to reduce elephants to mere objects and commodities and want culling as a 'tool in their management box' based on the untrue contention that there are 'too many' elephants.

"While having publicly expressed concerns about elephant welfare on the one hand, even making references to the 'rights' of elephants, the Minister will still be allowing the undeniably cruel and morally reprehensible act of culling to be retained as a management option," ARA said.

A management policy showing genuine concern for elephants, and who they really were, would acknowledge recent studies on neurological development showing humans and elephants shared the same generalised "emotional brain" as well as associated physiological and behavioural traits.

'How much like us do elephants have to be before killing them becomes murder?'

These included fear conditioning, attachment and social bonding, pain, aggression, anxiety, and facial recognition.

Elephants showed a diversity of higher cognitive capacities including tool-use, exceptional long-term and episodic memory, intention, complex chemosensory and auditory communication, context learning, reasoning, problem-solving capabilities, and the ability to perform premeditated acts.

The latest research proved elephant had a sense of self-awareness, placing them in a unique category together with great apes, dolphins and humans.

"How much like us do elephants have to be before killing them becomes murder? Elephants are being commodified into goods and chattel," ARA said. - Sapa