Botswana vows to ship 20,000 elephants to Germany amid trophy hunting dispute

Angered by a proposal in Berlin to restrict the import of hunting trophies, Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany, claiming that, contrary to some misconceptions in Europe, an explosion in the number of the mammals roaming his country has produced a “plague”.
In comments published by German tabloid Bild on Wednesday (3 April), Botswana’s president offered to send the animals as a ‘gift’ to Berlin, saying Germans should try to “live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to.” The African leader’s comments came in response to a proposal earlier this year by Germany’s environment ministry, headed up by Steffi Lemke of the Green party, which raised the possibility of stricter limits on the import of hunting trophies due to poaching concerns. President Masisi thus criticized the German government for seeking to ban the import of trophies despite Botswana’s ”overpopulation” of elephants.
To tackle the country’s ”overpopulation” of the elephants whose population has grown to some 130,000 animals due to successful conservation efforts, Botswana has already offered 8,000 elephants to Angola and another 500 to Mozambique, Masisi noted. ”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 – and even for Lemke’s (Green) party,” the president said, adding that the latter could learn to cohabitate with elephants without hunting them. The southern African nation banned trophy hunting in 2014 to help declining elephant numbers recover from poaching and shrinking habitats, but the ban was scrapped in 2019 after pressure from local communities, and Botswana now issues annual hunting quotas.