Elephant problem?
Pay me money, else I will kill you!
No, no, this is not good. This is cliché. Let’s try something new.
Pay me money, else I will send you 20,000 elephants!
Well! that’s roughly what the President of Botswana told to Germany.
Botswana is home to about 130,000 elephants, and some 6,000 are born every year. It’s lovely isn’t it! It’s a land of elephants, they live in about 40% of the country’s land.
But there is a problem. The human population of Botswana is about 2.5 million and wherever there is a habitat overlap, tensions are increasing – they are destroying property, agriculture fields and farms, and even killing people (of course, accidentally not deliberately).
Botswana has responded to this issue by gifting elephants to other countries and allowing controlled poaching (yes! you read it correctly, poaching elephants is legal in Botswana). Recently, they gifted 8,000 elephants to Angola and Mozambique; they are willing to give more if any country wishes to take them. They legalized poaching in a controlled way to manage elephant population, and this is good business. Rich Europeans and people from other countries do come to Botswana and enjoy “Trophy Elephant Hunting”. There are companies which are offering this activity as a part of their African Safari tours. Check the link below to see one such advertisement.
Well! Trophy Hunting is popular and legal in many countries such as for bears in Canada, for ducks and deer in USA, and hares in Australia. Elephant hunting is a new addition to this list and the first of the kind in the world.
Wildlife conservationists have raised alarm about this practice as elephants are different. Animals such as hares and ducks are in abundance in many parts of the world, but elephants are not; they are only abundant in Botswana. In rest of Africa, elephant population is on a decline due to illegal poaching and habitat loss.
The Germany government recently announced that they would impose import restrictions on trophy hunting. This means Germans may engage in trophy hunting but they would not be allowed to get the killed animal parts as trophies back home. This is meant to discourage trophy hunting.
Botswana does not like this to be implemented. It thinks that trophy hunting is a way to control elephant population. It also gives them revenue from tourism, which is the second largest revenue earning sector after mining. Hence, its president has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany so that Germans would understand what it means to live with elephants.
I would love to see the visuals of thousands of elephants roaming around on the streets of Munich and participating in Oktober Fest.