Kill elephants, save them: why Botswana wants to gift 20,000 to Germany

BOTSWANA HAS literally an elephantine problem — it has too many elephants. And President Mokgweetsi Masisi has now said he would like to send 20,000 of the animals to Germany, where there is a proposal to make it tougher to import trophies from hunting animals.

Botswana is home to the world’s largest elephant population of 1.3 lakh animals. Hunting has helped keep their numbers in check, and brought revenues from trophyhunting licences issued to rich westerners. Germany is said to be the largest European importer of African elephant trophies.

Why are there so many elephants in Botswana?

Unlike its south-central African neighbours,botswanahasbeenasafehavenforelephantsduetoitsstablegovernmentandsmall human population. Following conflictspurred mass poaching in Namibia and Angola,elephantsinbotswanastoppedcrossingthechoberiver,atributaryofthezambezi that marks Botswana’s border with Namibia.

Botswana also implemented strict conservation policies, giving shoot-to-kill orders against suspected poachers in 2013. The following year, the country banned licensed trophy hunting — however, it lifted the ban in 2019.

And why was hunting allowed again?

Successful conservation resulted in a steady increase in Botswana’s elephant population over the years. In the early 1960s, the country had fewer than 10,000 elephants; by the mid-1990s, the population had reached 80,000, according to the independent newsroom Conservation Frontlines.

Angola

Namibia

Zambia

South Africa

Zimbabwe

Eswatini

Lesotho

Today, elephants inhabit about 40% of Botswana’s land, which has led to increased human-animal conflict. Herds often damage homes in rural communities, drink water from pipes, feed on or destroy crops, and trample people and cattle to death.

“We are forced to collect our livestock early as we are afraid of the elephants... In the cattle posts, people have deserted... By 4 pm, we have rounded off the animals...so by the time the elephants come, they do not find anyone. We wake up...to find their tracks. There are too many elephants,” a resident of Gobojango town told Voice of America.

A large population of elephants also threatens other species and leads to biodiversity loss and habitat degradation — elephants tear down trees for fodder and consume large amounts of water, which can cause a decline in non-elephant wildlife.

How does elephant hunting help?

Botswana has been donating its elephants — it gave around 8,000 to Angola last year, and 500 to Mozambique in 2022 — but this has not made much of a difference.

Liftingthebanontrophyhuntinghelpsin two ways — it lowers the population, and helps the economy as hunters cough up as much as $50,000 for each animal they kill.

A report in Morning Brew said trophyhunting brought $5 million to local communities in Botswana in 2021, according to government figures. Also, “trophy hunters injected $250 million into South Africa’s economy yearly and supported 17,000 jobs, according to one estimate in 2018,” the report said.

It has also been argued that regulated trophy-hunting ultimately helps the species as governments pump the money into conservation and share profits with local communities, which can prevent habitat loss.

So what’s the problem, then?

Western countries and animal rights advocates deem hunting to be cruel and unethical, and responsible for quickening population decline in imperilled species. “Trophy hunters prefer to kill the largest, strongest animals, whose loss causes population declines,” conservation group Humane Society International (HSI) says on its website.

According to HSI, the gains to the economy may be overstated. “In eight key African countries, trophy hunters contribute at most 0.03percentofgdpandatmost0.76percent of overall tourism jobs,” it says. It is also allegedthatcorruptionpreventslocalcommunities from benefiting from trophy hunting.

Nonetheless, many experts argue that outright banning is not necessary. Conservation researcher Enrico Di Minin of the University of Helsinki told NPR: “If countries want to ban trophy hunting, they need to have an alternative source of revenue worth hundreds of millions of dollars every year... Just banning things without knowing the consequences is actually creating more problems for the species.”