Africa-Press – Botswana. In April 2024, Botswana’s then-president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, made headlines for his government’s threat to send 30,000 elephants to Germany and the United Kingdom so that Europeans could try living alongside the creatures.
“This is not a joke,” he said.
The bizarre proposal was a response to proposed legislation in the U.K. and Germany that would ban trophy hunting, making it illegal for their citizens to kill elephants and other wild animals abroad and bring their remains back home to display. Polls show that 85 percent of the German and British publics support trophy import bans. In 2019, when Botswana lifted its own wildlife hunting ban, which had been in place since 2014, there was vocal opposition from Western celebrities and activists, with some even calling for boycotts of the country. Trophy hunters make easy villains, and African elephants are easy to love. The world’s largest land animals, they stick together in multi-generational matriarchal herds. They call each other by names, and when one dies, they linger over their bodies, seeming to mourn each other.
But in Botswana, home to more elephants than any country in the world, the picture is more complicated. The herbivores, which can weigh up to 15,000 pounds, are wreaking havoc—destroying centuries-old forests, stealing farmers’ crops, and, according to local sources I spoke with, killing people in the most affected areas at a rate as deadly as car accidents in the United States. As celebrities and powerful NGOs campaign against trophy hunting, many locals see it as a lifeline.
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