if they were doing it to humans...

…what would we call it?

Photographs taken over several decades show that parts of Kruger National Park -- a New Jersey-size sliver along South Africa's eastern border -- already have begun the shift from woodlands to grasslands. Kruger's elephant population has grown from 8,000, when culling stopped in 1994, to 12,500 today. At current growth rates, the park would have 34,000 elephants by 2020, officials say.

Elephants often live to be 60 years old, while eating more than 300 pounds of grass, bark and leaves every day. Even a few of Kruger's massive baobab trees, some thousands of years old, have succumbed to the tusks and voracious appetites of elephants, as have countless marula and acacia trees, which can be consumed in a matter of hours.

Culls typically are conducted by trained sharpshooters, often on helicopters. The bodies of the elephants are butchered into meat, and the tusks saved for possible sale into the highly restricted global ivory market.

Entire families of elephants generally are killed at once to lessen the grief for survivors.

…read it and weep:
South Africa wants to thin flourishing elephant herds to aid habitat
by Craig Timberg, Washington Post, March 1, 2007