Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany
Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany
Germany wants tougher limits on hunting the animals, but Botswana says it has too many of them.
cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/10012136
Earlier this year, Germany's environment ministry suggested there should be stricter limits on importing trophies from hunting animals.
Botswana's President Mokgweetsi Masisi told German media this would only impoverish people in his country.
He said elephant numbers had exploded as a result of conservation efforts, and hunting helped keep them in check.
Germans should "live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to", Mr Masisi told German newspaper Bild. "This is no joke."
Botswana is home to about a third of the world's elephant population - over 130,000 - more than it has space for.
Herds were causing damage to property, eating crops and trampling residents, Mr Masisi said.
Botswana has previously given 8,000 elephants to neighbouring Angola, and has offered hundreds more to Mozambique, as a means of bringing the population down.
"We would like to offer such a gift to Germany," Mr Masisi said, adding that he would not take no for an answer.
Botswana's Wildlife Minister Dumezweni Mthimkhulu last month threatened to send 10,000 elephants to London's Hyde Park so British people could "have a taste of living alongside" them.
In March, UK MPs voted to support a ban on importing hunting trophies, but the legislation has further scrutiny to pass before becoming law.
"there are too many elephants" was not on my 2024 bingo
There are too many elephants in Botswana, not worldwide.
I don't think we actually have "too many elephants" but I imagine they would be very difficult to live around.
Simple solution:
- Send the elephants to the uk
- Sunak pays to have them sent on to Rwanda.
Botswana has fewer elephants.
Sunak can claim to have deported 20000 imaphants.
Rwanda gets a truckload of money from the UK.This guy geopolitics!
Right wing german yellow press printed: "Africa-State threatens to send 20000 elephants TO GERMANY", probably because their audience doesn't know what a Botswana is.
Iz zhat were zhe bots are caming from?
Clearly it's next to Andorra... /s
This is a problem of left-wing Germany trying to lecture African countries in a colonial way.
The new legislation isn't even about elephants. Hunting trophy bans are the wrong lever for dealing with megafauna ecology anyway - I know to little about Botswana's biogeography, but if colonial conservationism is the problem here, then it could be benificial to talk about the issue with the SADC or another format for example to have better leverage while preserving natural resources.
The local radio station jokingly asked people to "adopt an elephant".
One boy wanted to have an elephant and asked for tips how to hide it from his parents, as they would not approve, and one guy asked for an elephant with a shoulder height of 45cm max, because that is the biggest pet size he is allowed to keep in his rental flat...
Hannibal in the afterlife watching 20000 elephants cross the alps
Botswana has a point. If a German went to Sweden to hunt moose and brought back the head, nobody would flinch.
If hunting is cruel ban import of moose products first and see how the debate goes.
That's a very weak point.
A foreign country doesn't want to import animals, and you get mad at them? Get your domestic shit together!
That's like saying that NYC resents Argentina for not taking any of its city rats.
No. It would be if Argentina told NYC that putting out rat traps is cruel and Argentina will block important NYC trade because of this.
NYC would then rightfully ask Argentina if they would like some of their fucking rats because there sure are a lot of them and they provide very little to the NYC economy outside of selling rat traps.
It's not a country not wanting to, it's the government. Clearly Germans do want to go there, kill an elephant and take a trophy, if not the whole ban is pointless
I mean, we shouldn't be hunting them at all. They are a very intelligent species that we should study more and not just kill because they are big.
As mentioned in the article, the numbers of elephants in botswana are growing. And the large number of elephants are causing problems with the human population. You need to do something with the situation.
And you think killing a highly intelligent animal is the only solution or do you just have a boner for killing innocent animals?
Sure, but why would the UK be blamed for it? I don't like the UK for many reasons, but blaming it for the elephant population in some other country is ridiculous.
Ignoring any of the (very complicated) issues around human/elephant interactions there's a strictly ecological reason for limited hunting.
Herds have an issue where males past breeding age still try to edge out younger males. These older males can be destructive and violent and it's better for the health of the herd if they're out of the picture when they can't breed anymore.
Those are the elephants that hunting licences are issued for.
I fully understand the logic behind this, but as a very, very flawed human, I still hate the idea of hunting and killing very intelligent and potentially sapient/sentient animal because it's more convenient for us. It just feels wrong, especially given that we have documented proof of them in mourning after finding one of their own dead.
Nice...avoid the ban on importing trophies, hunt them locally instead!
Send them to California. They can help us rake the forest.
Mr Masisi told German newspaper Bild. "This is no joke."
Ironic, considering that the Bild very much is a joke
Hannibal, is that you?
If Taylor Swift got one then everyone else would too
Elephants are a pest, they need to be extinct
Actually how?