Westerners see elephants as pets, said Mokgweetsi Masisi, whose government threatened to send 30,000 elephants to Germany and the UK to demonstrate their dangers
Yeah, this is definitely a "he's making a point, just not the point he wants to make" kinda thing. Maybe if he said that Europeans care more about elephants than they do about Africans, it would have been a little clearer.
i mean of course a poacher and authoritarian would think that
Masisi has been accused by some of having authoritarian views, and contributing to undermining democracy in Botswana.[29] > Former President Ian Khama, who has fallen out with Masisi since his election, alleged that Masisi "stifled dissent" in an interview with the Financial Times, and added that Botswana's reputation was being undermined locally and internationally, and that democracy was in decline.[30]
Masisi is in support of elephant hunting in Botswana, and believes that allowing some ivory trading would allow more funding for conservation. In 2019, he presented stools made from elephant feet to the national leaders of Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, a move that received some criticism from international media outlets.[31][32][33] Masisi reversed the ban on elephant hunting put in place by his predecessor, and removed Botswana's "Shoot to Kill" anti-poaching policy.[34]
Oh, they DO exist... Herd of juvenile males with no adult supervision were running riot. Solution? Bring in some bull males to knock some sense into them. Just like with kids, worked great!
"No Mercy" has a great bit where Redmond O'Hanlon wants to try to rescue an orphaned baby gorilla, and his guide absolutely loses his shit about it. He says I do not fucking understand white people. Anywhere we've been, I can take you a mile in any direction and find actual human being people many of them children who need a fuck of a lot of help. If you want to help them, you could always do that, or maybe your government could stop shooting them or taking all their stuff and leaving them starving. But no: You see one gorilla and you're all sentimental and so all a sudden that becomes the overriding priority of this previously non humanitarian mission when all the rest of it you didn't give a fuck about.
(In Redmond's defense, they did also do a certain amount for the people also; he talks elsewhere about it being an actual problem because they kept giving their medicine away to people who needed it, leaving them potentially in a really really bad spot if they wound up needing it later on.)
I think a lot of animal suffering has come from humans. Humans really need to fix this.
In that other case you know it would be seen as the white man coming in to try "fix" the black community. It's been tried many times, even now charities where white people go to Africa and donate time is not allowed on TV used to be a big thing but people cried racism. People are going to complain either way.
Botswana government also does this, but for different people. Probably most people have some other group or groups they don’t regard as having full value as humans.
Anyway, I thought the suggestion to export the elephants was a good one. I’ll take a herd in my local area.