One country is so stressed out by its elephant population it's threatening to send them to Europe
One country is so stressed out by its elephant population it's threatening
to send them to Europe
Mithil Aggarwal, NBC News
April 3, 2024
Botswana is fed up.
The country is home to almost a third of the world's savanna elephants, a
population that has tripled since 1984, and Botswana is often hailed as a
conservation success.
But European nations, most recently Germany, are attacking a lynchpin of
Botswana's elephant management strategy: trophy hunting.
The German environment ministry is pushing to ban the import of elephant
trophies, which it began discussing in 2022, across the E.U. Last week,
they delivered their plan to counterparts in Botswana, a spokesperson told
NBC News.
Germany is one of the E.U.'s largest importers of hunting trophies. Animal
trophies can be the entire hunted animal, or any part of it, like the head,
skin, or tusk, kept as a souvenir.
The potential ban, which would disincentivize European trophy hunters from
going to Botswana, sparked the country's ire. In response, President
Mokgweetsi Masisi said Tuesday that he will send 20,000 elephants to
Germany from Botswana's population of 130,000.
“It’s not a joke,” Masisi told the German tabloid newspaper Bild.
But a spokesperson for Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation
told NBC News, “There is currently no formal request of a transfer of
20,000 elephants from Botswana to Germany.”
“It is very easy to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in
Botswana," Masisi said. "We are paying the price for preserving these
animals for the world.”
In Botswana, elephants kill livestock and trample crops and people.
While trophy hunting can seem like a visceral representation of how humans
endanger animals, the relationship is complex. Trophy hunting is not
“threatening the survival of species as a whole,” Dilys Roe, chair of the
International Union for Conservation of Nature's Sustainable Use and
Livelihoods Specialist Group, told NBC News. The IUCN is an international
conservation organization that assesses whether species are threatened or
endangered, and analyzes the measures needed to safeguard the natural world.
In fact, Roe said, trophy hunting could aid in conservation by “giving
value to wildlife and therefore increasing the tolerance of local people to
put up with dangerous wild animals on their doorsteps.”
Trophy hunting can also bring in much-needed revenue for conservation
efforts and prevent the wildlife from venturing into nearby farms and
villages as hunting scares them away. Banning it could hurt the local
community, who rely on the tourism revenue.
However, animal rights groups like the People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA), say the practice is a "cruel and bloodthirsty business,"
and Botswana should instead focus on promoting ecotourism.
PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk called the Botswanian offer “a shameless
publicity stunt,” telling NBC News in a statement that the “public has no
desire to be complicit in the recreational slaughter of elephants and other
magnificent species.”
Germany is considering joining neighboring Belgium, which voted in late
January to ban imports from a range of threatened animals, including
elephants.
“You should live with the animals the way you try to tell us to,” the
Botswanan president said, referring to the German officials who are
spearheading the push.
Earlier this month, Britain’s parliament also approved a ban on the import
of hunting trophies, prompting Botswana officials to threaten to flood
London's Hyde Park with 10,000 elephants.
This is not the first time outside influence has pushed Botswana's elephant
conservation policies. Under pressure from animal groups, Botswana banned
trophy hunting in 2014.
“Elephants are intelligent creatures and so steered clear of the hunting
areas as far as possible until hunting was banned,” Roe said.
But once the ban was in place, she said, the elephants “not only
re-inhabited those areas but also ventured out onto the adjacent farmland
with huge damage to crops and livelihoods.”
In 2019, Botswana reversed the ban as locals protested the loss of income,
damaged crops and elephants killing livestock.
Masisi said Botswana already provides 40% of its land for wildlife and
people are being trampled to death by elephants. He had earlier said the
elephant population had almost tripled since 1984.
“We are in a biodiversity crisis, and we certainly need better solutions,”
Adam Hart, professor of Science Communication at the University of
Gloucestershire in the U.K. and co-author of the book "Trophy Hunting."
“We have nothing that has been shown to work at the scale at which hunting
tourism currently works,” he said, adding, “We have to follow the evidence.
Botswana leads the way in terms of conservation success.”
Experts say hunting tourism brings in much more money for conservation,
which in some cases, could be the only viable source of income.
“We currently have a huge funding gap for conservation — taking away one of
the existing sources of funding can only make matters worse, not better,”
said Roe.
Hart said it would be “grossly irresponsible at best” to remove a proven
conservation method with no proper alternative. “The bigger picture seems
to be driven by a dislike or disgust of trophy hunting,” he said.
Neither Germany nor the U.K. have banned trophy hunting domestically.
While experts say the suggestion to send thousands of elephants is probably
rhetoric, the point made is a real one.
“We in London, Berlin, New York or elsewhere have no idea what it’s like to
live alongside dangerous animals and simply be expected to put up with
them," Roe said, adding " We wouldn’t want elephants in our back gardens.”
While it is unclear how tens of thousands of elephants could clear U.K. or
E.U. borders, President Masisi is digging in this heels: “We won’t take no
for an answer.”