South African officials announced Monday that the nation’s 14-year-old culling ban regarding elephants will be lifted despite the protests of wildlife activists, who consider the practice as cruel and unnecessary.

In 1994, when culling was first banned in South Africa, the elephant population counted 8,000 elephants, while now it has reached 20,000. So the government does not consider the ban necessary anymore.

Elephants are among the most popular African animals, but they are also the most destructive. They live to be around 60 years old and during their lifetime they eat more than 300 pounds of grass, barks and leaves every day.

Kruger National Park has been greatly damaged by hungry elephants, which trample the trees and have transformed the vegetation from woodlands to grasslands.

Kruger Park is merging with other neighboring parks in Mozambique and Zimbabwe to obtain more space for the elephants to migrate, as the experts say this would reduce the environmental impact of the elephants on the vegetation.

Another idea of the scientists was to use contraception as a method of controlling the elephants’ population, but it is quite risky, as the animals might have a strange behavior.

Christina Pretorius, a spokeswoman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said that the group disagreed with the lifting of the moratorium, but that the new rules are still better than the ones before 1994. Between 1967 and 1994, more than 14,000 elephants were culled in Kruger National Park.

"We would be pleased that culling is listed as a last option," Pretorius said, according to the Washington Post. "We hope and pray that it stays that way."

The animal rights activists have not accepted the government’s explanations. They threatened to call for tourist boycotts and take legal action.