Zim plan to sell young jumbos

ZIMBABWE hopes to sell about 50 tame juvenile elephants to foreign zoos to fund its national park, to compensate for the end of income from American hunters after the US banned the import of wildlife trophies.

Most American hunters, banned since last year from taking Zimbabwe trophies home with them, are now shooting elephants in South Africa.

Safari operators and Zimbabwe’s professional hunters say the ban has crippled their industry.

Zimbabwe Environment Minister Saviour Kasukawere said he hoped to export about 50 young elephants, which would be tamed before being exported.

He admitted that selling the elephants would be controversial.

In December, Hollywood star Pierce Brosnan, a long-standing campaigner for animal rights, criticised the “gruesome” announcement that 36 baby elephants had been taken from their mothers and were awaiting shipment to the UAE and possibly China.

That deal was never confirmed, but Kasukawere was unrepentant.

“We need to fund [national] parks because of sanctions and sport hunting bans,” he said. “We are between a rock and a hard place.”

Colin Gilles, a long-time elephant counter and executive in the Wildlife and Environment Society, said the sale of the elephants was “the best of two evils”.

“Exporting sub-adult elephants is better then culling them, as long as they are looked after,” he said.

“I don’t like it, but I know national parks desperately need funds, and if these funds are received by parks, we have to live with this.” – The Telegraph