Botswana threatens to offer 20,000 elephants to Germany to illustrate the difficulty of cohabiting with the pachyderm

While Germany wants to fight against poaching and ban the importation of hunting trophies, Mokgweetsi Masisi, the Botswanan head of state, replies that the German population must understand what life is like in the presence of elephants.

It’s a bit of a crazy form of pressure, but it’s not just a whim. Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi has chosen BildGermany’s most widely read tabloid, to explain its approach. “The German climate, although execrable”will suit “perfectly for elephants”he told the German daily on April 3. “They will be able to roam as they want in the great plains of the east of the country. The Germans will begin to understand what the Batswana” live every day. Moreover, warns Mokgweetsi Masisi, “since Germany seems to love elephants so much”, there is no question of her refusing.

Botswana, in Southern Africa, is barely larger than France. It has 2.5 million inhabitants and 130,000 elephants. This is a third of the world’s pachyderm population and has more than doubled in 30 years. Cohabitation with humans becomes more difficult every day, herd attacks on villages and crops are increasing. In 2019, the country therefore decided to reinstate elephant hunting. Firstly to regulate their numbers, but also to bring back the currencies of wealthy tourists who pay tens of thousands of euros for a safari and support entire communities.

London already threatened by the sending of 10,000 elephants

This decision is causing a scandal, as an ever-increasing number of countries, sensitive to the animal cause, are seriously considering banning the importation of hunting trophies. The Netherlands, France and Belgium have already taken the plunge. Berlin should follow, hence the annoyance of the president of Botswana.

Moreover, this is not a first, already in March, when British MPs voted to ban the importation of trophies (the legislative process is not finished), Mokgweetsi Masisi had threatened to send 10 000 pachyderms in London by offering to store them in Hyde Park. He has not yet carried out his threat. On the other hand, it has already given 8,000 elephants to its Angolan neighbor and several hundred to Mozambique.

Germany, the largest importer of hunting trophies in Europe

But tomorrow if the Germans no longer come hunting because they can no longer bring back trophies to decorate their living room, even though they are the biggest importers of these exotic pieces in Europe, Botswana will lose a comfortable source of income without having resolved its elephantine overpopulation.

Very bluntly, the German Ministry of the Environment announced that it had not received any offers of elephant donations, but that it “will happily accept an invitation from Botswana to inspect its wildlife protection policies”.