Elephant on the menu for Zimbabwe's hungry cons 
Cash-strapped prison chiefs in Zimbabwe have come up with an innovative plan to provide meat to thousands of hungry inmates - feed them elephants. President Robert Mugabe's justice ministry claims there are "too many" elephants in Zimbabwe, and culling and cooking them could be a way of supplementing prisoners' meagre diets. However, the plan has sparked outrage among conservationists. Reports say most of Zimbabwe's 13,000 or so prisoners haven't tasted meat for four years. Inmates have been surviving on near-starvation rations of cabbage and beans with maize-meal porridge known as sadza, leaving them weak and prone to diseases such as cholera [...] Conservationists claim Zimbabwe's elephant population has been vastly overestimated. Johnny Rodrigues, of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, disputed claims that there were 100,000 elephants in Zimbabwe. He put the figure at nearer 35,000, with just 8,000 in the country's largest game park in western Hwange. Plans to feed elephants to prisoners could result, he warned, in the "extinction" of Zimbabwe's elephants. He said he was "disgusted" with the proposals. "They keep saying we have an overabundance of elephants and we don't" - he said - "We're trying to put a stop to poaching and then the government goes and does it. They set the example. It's unbelievable". During a decade of food shortages, Mugabe and his generals have often ordered conservancies and game parks to be raided for buffalo and elephant meat, either to feed the army or for festivities like the president's birthday party, hunters say. In eastern Manicaland province this week, a bull elephant was slaughtered to feed thousands of Mugabe supporters at a rally to celebrate Zimbabwe's 31 years of independence. State media said it was "a treat". Poachers - many of them operating in organised syndicates - also target the elephants for ivory. Police arrested four last week at Harare's Avondale shopping centre. They were found with 15 elephant tusks worth more than £5,000 in the boot of their car... Scotsman