The draft strategy is skewed in favour of anthropocentric benefits - economic, spiritual and cultural - and cannot function in practical terms. South Africa's Draft National Elephant Heritage Strategy, which closed to public comment at the end of February, demands that South Africa's elephants must depend on human social and economic development for their future survival. While there is a nod to the spiritual and cultural significance of elephants to the people of South Africa, the central tenet of the draft strategy is that elephants, as a single species, are to be press-ganged into solving human political and administrative management issues that currently plague much of the natural landscape of South Africa. In other words, elephants are to be "utilised" to develop small businesses enterprises. This will include the use of live elephants - in the form of ecotourism, encounters with captive elephants, zoo experiences and live exports - as well as trade in their body parts and derivatives. The latter, according to the strategy, will include consumptive uses such as trophy hunting, trade in elephant hair, leather, ivory and meat. In short, elephants would have to be killed - and lots of them - if they are to meet the draft strategy’s goal of uplifting rural communities out of poverty. That, of course, would be impossible to achieve since the country simply does not have that many elephants, but has hundreds of thousands of poor rural South Africans. According to SANParks, South Africa has about 44,000 elephants within the country’s boundaries, 30,000 of which are in the Kruger Park. It does not seem conceivable that hundreds of thousands of impoverished rural South Africans will have any hope of benefiting economically from a few thousand dead elephants. And, if not all community members, then who exactly will benefit and how will they be selected?