German government for a proposed ban<\/a> on the import of elephant parts.<\/p>\nMany other countries, including Australia, Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands, have also imposed restrictions on the import of parts of endangered species, including elephants, lions, hippopotamuses and rhinos.<\/p>\n
Masisi said Germans should \u201ctry living among elephants\u201d. He claimed that an explosion in the number of the mammals roaming his country had produced a \u201cplague\u201d.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the Botswanan government says regulated hunting provides a highly valuable revenue stream. Earlier this year, Minister of Environment Wynter Mmolotsi said the country earned more than $4m from the sale of hunting licences in 2024, compared with $2.7m in 2023, and that this money was used to support conservation and community-led projects.<\/p>\n
Depending on the animal being hunted, hunting licences can cost up to $10,000.<\/p>\n
Is trophy hunting a serious threat to elephants?<\/p>\n
Amy Dickman, a professor of wildlife conservation and director of WildCRU at the University of Oxford, said, while trophy hunting may be \u201ccontentious\u201d, it is not a key threat to any species, including elephants, and that \u201crevenue from legal hunting helps maintain large areas of wildlife habitat and can be very important for local people\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBotswana \u2013 the leading country in the world for large mammal conservation \u2013 has a thriving elephant population, and both the government and local communities need to see financial benefits from that presence,\u201d she told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have long used trophy hunting to generate some of those benefits, and their sovereign decisions should be trusted and respected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera contacted Botswana\u2019s Department of Wildlife and National Parks and the Ministry of Environment for comment, but received no reply.<\/p>\n
What do critics of the trophy hunting quota system say?<\/p>\n
According to Will Travers, cofounder and executive president of Born Free, a wildlife charity, Botswana\u2019s expanded elephant trophy hunting quota \u201craises deep biological concerns\u201d, however.<\/p>\n
\u201cBiological, because, as the name suggests, trophy hunters target individual animals they regard as \u2018trophies\u2019 \u2026 in the case of elephants, those with the largest tusks, the mature males,\u201d he told Al Jazeera in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese long-lived \u2018elders\u2019 are repositories of vital survival knowledge within elephant society, are desired by female elephants, and can successfully reproduce, passing on their genes well into old age. They are targets for poachers and trophy hunters, adding even more pressure on this tiny demographic of animals, which some estimate may represent just 1 percent of Botswana\u2019s national elephant herd.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreover, experts also say that removing elephants changes how they behave, which can actually exacerbate, rather than reduce, conflict with nearby human communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the community lives within the same environment as these animals, they often encounter wildlife that can be provoked or become aggressive,\u201d EPS\u2019s Nawa told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people go to the fields or search for their cattle, they may come across breeding herds of elephants, and that\u2019s where problems begin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe elephants may run up and down, destroying crops as they flee for their lives \u2013 after all, they are living creatures, and if they feel threatened, they must escape,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
What are the alternatives?<\/p>\n
Nawa said authorities should take a community-based approach to controlling interaction with elephants by equipping residents with the knowledge and skills to live alongside wildlife.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe community need to be trained since they live with these animals,\u201d he said, about what to do \u201cif they encounter an elephant\u201d.<\/p>\n
Nawa also said communities in Botswana could benefit from living alongside elephants if the government adopts a policy that links water boreholes to tourism. \u201cWe can have lots of boreholes and tourism facilities around those boreholes, whereby the community can benefit directly from the funds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Citing the example of one local elephant resort, he explained that they drilled a lot of boreholes around the area, attracting elephants, and many people come to watch the elephants \u201cat a very close range\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe community needs to be educated to understand the role of elephants, especially in the ecosystem, and how they can benefit directly from elephants without killing them or obstructing them,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conservationists have raised the alarm about the Botswana government\u2019s decision to increase its annual trophy-hunting quota for elephants,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[273],"tags":[4204,20152,3898,20269,18,440,3427,19,17,5,133,461],"class_list":{"0":"post-227301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-botswana","10":"tag-climate","11":"tag-climate-crisis","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-environment","14":"tag-explainer","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115700690051450110","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}