Botswana Is Irked by Germany's Elephant Suggestion

It offers to ship 20K animals to Germany so it can see what it's like living among them
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 3, 2024 11:50 AM CDT
Botswana Takes Offense at Germany's Elephant Suggestion
Stock photo.   (Getty Images/Leamus)

A suggestion from Germany's Environment Ministry didn't go over so well in Botswana. President Mokgweetsi Masisi took issue with the ministry's recommendation that tighter limits be put in place on importing hunting trophies, saying that conservation efforts had led to a surging elephant population that hunting helped rein in. Germans should "live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to," Masisi told German newspaper Bild. "This is no joke."

He suggested sending 20,000 of the country's elephants as "a gift" to Germany so its residents could do that very thing. "It is very easy to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in Botswana. We are paying the price for preserving these animals for the world," Masisi added, per the Guardian. The BBC reports Botswana is home to roughly one in three elephants on the planet, and that the population has grown beyond what the country can bear.

Neighboring Angola has taken in 8,000 elephants. "We would also like to make such an offer to the Federal Republic of Germany," said Masisi per Politico. "We won't take no for an answer." Masisi said Botswana's 130,000 elephants are too many and causing damage to property, crops, and even human life, insisting that hunting helps tamp down the numbers, while the associated permits bring in needed revenue. (He has in the past suggested that their meat be used as pet food.)

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The threat to send a mass of elephants Germany's way isn't the first one Botswana has made. The BBC reports Wildlife Minister Dumezweni Mthimkhulu in March proposed sending 10,000 elephants to London's Hyde Park after UK MPs voted in favor of a ban on the import of hunting trophies. The Humane Society International in 2021 ranked Germany as the EU's top importer of both African elephant trophies and hunting trophies overall. (Botswana put an elephant hunting ban in place in 2014, only to lift it five years later.)

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