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There are thousands of surplus elephants in Southern Africa and tens of thousands - some say as many as 150 000 - swishing about like an ebbing and flowing tide between northern Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The damage in parts has been devastating and to thin out the herds before they rewrite Southern Africa's scenery forever will take something akin to an international military operation.

Part of the problem is in Europe. The people of Europe, many of whom carry a lot of weight with wildlife funding agencies, mean well but often don't understand the problem. They have threatened to cut funding and discourage tourism if we try to thin out the elephants.

One of those people is Brigitte Bardot, the delectable, pouting French film star of my youth. What? You haven't heard of her? Ask your dad and stop interrupting me. Miss Bardot - she's a bit sun-dried these days - became an animal rights activist and wrote an impassioned plea to Nelson Mandela asking him to intervene to stop Zimbabwe and Botswana from culling their elephant herds.

It is difficult for people living in areas where elephants are rare - such as Birmingham, Los Angeles and San Tropez - to comprehend the environmental impact of elephant overpopulation. One has to consider not just elephants but the ecosystem as a whole.

Certainly the people of Europe have no idea of the flatulence problem elephants have. Their voluminous bowels are filled with methane gas. This is why these animals are so enormous. If an elephant were to be totally degasified, it would be the size of a warthog. If you were to light a match behind an elephant, you could create a bizarre and noisy parody of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster.

Almost 15 years ago, I felt compelled to write to Miss Bardot, with whom I was in love from 1953 until around 1969 when my wife told me to stop it. I feel my letter to her has even more relevance today.

Did you know, by the way, that lovers in France call each other ‘little cabbages'? It accounts for the start of my letter. I like her to know I am at home with her language.

Miss B Bardot
La Beach
St Tropez
France

Mon petit cabbage,

Bonjour, etc. Comment ça va? Enchantée I'm sure. I fear you do not understand what all these surplus elephants are doing to our environment here in Africa.

Do you realise how much flatulence - if I may be so bold - there is in just one elephant? I know I can discuss such matters freely with you because I saw you in Doctor in the House in 1953. One elephant lets off half-a-ton of methane a year. Five hundred kilograms! (Don't ask me how scientists weigh it but, indeed, somebody has done so.)

There are 70 000 elephants criss-crossing between Zimbabwe and Botswana. If they are left to go on increasing - and elephants breed just like rabbits, except there's a bit more huffing and puffing - they will produce enough methane gas to greenhouse the world. Because they have demolished the forests that used to sustain them, they now have to live mostly off grass, which produces in them a degree of flatulence you'd not believe. They could, one day, blow a hole clean through the ozone layer. They could turn your precious St Tropez into a tropical hellhole filled with mosquitoes, rampaging government troops and crazed dictators.

A herd of 70 000 elephants living off grass will release in one year 35 000 tonnes of methane. When even a small herd passes through a wooded area, yellow-eyed canaries fall out of the trees like ripe plums.

Elephants live 50 to 60 years. Thus, in a lifetime, this herd will produce 1,7-million tonnes of gas! Bearing in mind that methane, as a greenhouse gas, is 20 times more effective than carbon dioxide, these elephants are going to pass into the atmosphere (if you will pardon moi) the equivalent of 30-million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Then you have the problem of elephant dung. Well, you don't because you are fortunate enough to be sitting on the beach at St Tropez rubbing dolphin-friendly sunblock on your bare whatsits. But we do.

Those 70 000 elephants would leave more than two-million tonnes of le poop grand in the veld in just one year. If we don't cull them, the volume will increase by five per cent per annum compounded. Can you imagine two million tonnes of the stuff? Compounded?

Just think how in a few years from now, because of you, innocent people will be knee-deep in elephant droppings not daring to strike a match.

Well, mon petit epinard, I hope you now realise how misguided your campaign against culling is.

James F Clarke

She never did reply.

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