The construction of wind farms near a national park in South Africa is putting into question what is considered one of the largest elephant sanctuaries in the world.
Wildlife activists, who have drawn attention to the cause, fear that the 200 turbines planned for Addo Elephant National Park will ruin the landscape and endanger the lives of animals.
“It is catastrophic. The wild experience that involves a safari is at risk and an area of high environmental and ecotourism value is being jeopardized”, lamented William Fowlds, a veterinarian who manages a lodge next to the park.
The protesters also fear that the noise from the turbines could disturb the approximately 600 elephants that live in the park, which communicate using low-frequency infrasound.
“There is a real risk that this could affect their way of communicating and cause them stress,” Anglea Stoeger-Horwath, an expert in animal behavior at the University of Vienna (Austria), explained to AFP.
Nature guide and wildlife photographer Jeni Smithies added that animals can get “frustrated and aggressive.”
The South African Ministry of Environment has already rejected a popular petition to halt the project, claiming that the energy produced by the wind will alleviate the huge dependence on coal, responsible for 80% of the country’s electricity.
The Government guarantees that the visual impact of the project will be limited.
