Botswana President threatens to give Germany 20 thousand elephants if the country prohibits the import of hunting trophies from Africa

Selling licenses for hunting foreigners is an important article of the country's economy. In this case, the elephant belongs to the endangered species

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The President of Botswane Mokgvetsi Masisi threatened to send 20 thousand wild elephants to Germany. So he reacted to the proposal of the German party Die Grünen, which controls 118 of 736 seats in the Bundestag, on the ban on the import of trophies, including as a result of elephant hunting in Africa.

“If representatives of the Green understand everything better than the rest, they, together with the [Minister of the Environment of Steffi] Lemke should show how to live with elephants without hunting. We are ready to give Germany 20 thousand wild elephants. This is not a joke. [...] We want our elephants to move freely. If you like them so much, then please accept this gift from us. You must live with animals as you say to do this to us, ”Masisi reacted in an interview with Bild.

According to the president, for Botswana, hunting for elephants is the norm. Large herds of elephants, he claims, destroy crops, trample people and devastate villages. Without the right to legal hunt for them in Botswana, poaching will blossom.

Selling licenses for hunting foreigners is an important article of the country's economy. About 20% of total GDP is on tourism. Only in 2020, as a result of the sale of licenses for shooting elephants, Botswana received about $ 2.58 million.

The African elephant is listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade of Ending Views of the Wild Fauna and Flora ( CITES ). At the beginning of the twentieth century, about 20 million elephants lived in Africa. By 1980, their number was reduced to 1.2 million, largely due to hunting for them for the sake of ivory. Now in Botswan there are more than 130 thousand elephants, and in total on the continent - 415 thousand. The total number of animals is currently a tendency to reduce, the causes are an increase in the population of Africa, poaching, the removal of natural land under pastures and crops. Licensed sports hunting is allowed in a number of countries - Botswana, Gabon, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, South Africa.

The reaction of Mokgvetsya Masisi is not the first condemnation of the initiative of the German “green”. Thus, the Minister of the Environment of Namibia, the former colony of Germany, accused his German colleague of neocolonialism due to the initiative to ban the import of trophies from Africa countries into the country.

In January, the Parliament of Belgium unanimously voted for a bill prohibiting the import of hunting trophies of disappearing species: not only elephants, but also jaguars, cheetahs, leopards, chimpanzees and other animals from the European regulation 338/97 of protecting the species of wild fauna and flora.