Nearly 300 Elephants To Be Shot By Poachers, As Botswana Begins Hunting Season
The news comes as a desperate blow to conservationists, in a country once described as the last sanctuary for elephants in Africa.
Botswana is now selling licenses for poachers to shoot 287 elephants, as the hunting season begins on April 6.
Licenses are also on sale for tourists to kill zebras, leopards, and buffaloes, with many hunters expected to arrive from the U.S.
Botswana was once described as “the last sanctuary for elephants in Africa”, after former President Ian Khama imposed a hunting ban in 2014.
The ban sought to halt the rapid decline in elephants, whose population plummeted at the hands of poachers. Indeed, the first Great Elephant Census found that the number of African elephants had dropped by a staggering 30% (or 144,000) in just seven years, from 2007 to 2014.
Many elephants sought refuge in Botswana from neighboring countries, where poaching is big business.
However, the ban was overturned in 2019 by Khama’s predecessor, Mokgweetsi Masisi, who received widespread international condemnation.
Masisi argued that hunting was necessary, since elephants were increasingly destroying crops and encroaching on rural villages, with 36 people trampled to death between 2009 and 2018.
But according to conservationists, hunters often target the biggest elephants, who roam in the deep bush far away from villages.
In 2019, the charity Elephants Without Borders reported a 500% increase in fresh carcasses strewn across the country, with the majority of them violently killed by poachers.
“The sad thing is that when you see the population of elephants is reducing at a drastic rate in much of Africa and could go extinct in the years to come. We shouldn't be killing elephants in Botswana. We should be setting the example", said Khama.
Khama had previously criticized the Trump Administration for allowing the import of tusks and skins of elephants killed in Botswana, even though the country’s hunting ban was still in place.
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