Killing elephants in Botswana is a catchment of voices that co …

Elephants have become a hot political issue in Botswana, with President Mokgweetsi Masisi beating the hunting drum, a true vote-preacher in rural communities. But the country, which has the largest and safest elephant population in the world – more than 130,000 – may be watching in the barrels of poachers' cannons.

For small farmers, elephants can be a danger and a nuisance. For example, when Botswana's new president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, sought rural votes to strengthen his weakening party in the next election, it was easy to use guns. For rural communities, crop hunters, jobs for hawks and a bunch of elephant-sized meat were very appealing.

Politically, it was a smart move that caught everyone's attention. Obviously, Masisi was not just the successor to outgoing President Ian Khama, but his own man. In all other respects, however, the timing was terrible and the unintended consequences are still having an impact.

Masisi's decision to end the hunting ban coincidentally coincided with a report by the NGO Elephants Without Borders (EWB), which denounced serious poaching in the north of the country. Given the massive poaching in Africa, an escalation in Botswana, with 130,000 elephants, was likely.

This story thwarted the president's mission to lift the ban, which was not aided by a cabinet report that included the suggestion of boxing elephant meat for dog food on which the international press s is precipitated.

Mike Chase, President of ISF, was attacked personally by the government and a docile press. The investigation was described as false news and conspiracy by foreign housing owners to undermine the new president.

ISF found itself under tremendous pressure and its only defense was to make science unassailable. His last report in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Current biology did exactly that – Botswana undoubtedly has a growing poaching problem.

Hunt

But first, consider what happens when you reintroduce hunting on a continent where poachers kill a large number of elephants.

Organizations like Safari Club International, pro-hunting propagandists and elephant killings like Ron Thomson claim that the presence of hunters reduces poaching. This is not proven and the opposite seems to be true.

In the huge Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania, where legal hunting is widespread, the number of elephants has increased from 70,000 in 2005 to 10,000 in 2016 through poaching. Once illegal logging is incorporated, the hunt will not stop it. The scent of hunting attracts unscrupulous human predators, just as blood in the water attracts sharks and the legal-illegal boundary is changing, as the South African experience with rhinoceros.

In 2010, Dawie Groenewald and 10 others, including his wife, veterinarians and professional hunters, were arrested and charged with 1,872 offenses, including illegal hunting, rhinoceros horn trading, money laundering and fraud. The charge sheet was 637 pages long.

Groenewald and another co-defendant allegedly encouraged other farmers to decorate rhinoceroses and sell their horns. Some of the rhinos were not killed, but were dehorned after being tranquilized. The killed rhinos would first have been sold to a local butcher, but when this arrangement failed, they were buried and burned in Groenewald's farm.

The "Groenewald Gang" reportedly earned about 62.6 million rupees through the illegal sale of rhinoceros horns. Seven years and endless postponements later, the case was mysteriously postponed to 2021.

Fast forward. On Friday, June 7, 2019, late in the afternoon, a man made a reservation at the Thobololo Bush Lodge in northern Botswana. He was driving the latest VX-L Land Cruiser Prado and was accompanied by a very young woman with black hair. They kept for themselves, had the food sent to their room and left the next morning before breakfast. The lodge's owner, Mike Gunn, hired the man to the exit. Was he on vacation? Where was he going?

He said he was coming from Polokwane and was heading to Botswana to explore the CH1 and CH2 hunting concession areas. (There are many old hunting concessions that were not used during the ban but that could quickly become active.)

When Gunn expressed his disgust for the hunt, the man said, "All of this will change soon. I have political relations. I will have 14 bulls in each grant. Gunn then checked the name of the man in the register: Dawie Groenewald. Alarmed, he immediately contacted the competent authorities.

Of course, poachers take many more elephants than hunters and also attack bulls with larger tusks. But this does not exempt the damage hunters. Here is a calculation from environmentalist Colin Bell.

Botswana has set the hunting quota at 400 bulls. According to the latest census of ISF, the country has about 130,000 elephants, with about 20,600 independent mature bulls. At best, between 2,060 and 4,130 of them will be over 35 years old (according to the population figures of this age group belonging to others). populations), and these are what hunters usually target as trophies.

The ISF report estimates that there are 385 broken carcasses per year. Each person found was an adult bull over 35 years old, but let's be conservative: suppose that only 200 of them were trophy bulls, which represents 400 legally hunted (hunters are also looking for great defenders), that is, to say the 600 best male elephants. This means that if this level of hunting and poaching were maintained, in less than seven years, Botswana's biggest defenders could have died.

Men only start to reproduce at the age of 40, while 75% of them died. It would be a genetic disaster and obviously totally unsustainable – and that's what tourists pay to see.

It could be worse. According to Mike Gunn, "I think the number of remaining trophy bulls in Botswana is down. I see several hundred elephant troughs at Thobolo Lodge and in the last few years I may have seen a bull that could vaguely be considered a trophy. "

Strangely, the local hunting industry in Botswana does not see this as a threat – and its photo-tourism sector has not questioned this quota, even though it is at the heart of its sector. One has to wonder why, but with the government controlling the allocation of their leases, one understands their reluctance to lift their heads in the line of fire.

Human conflict / wildlife

Much of the reasoning of the Government of Botswana and the justification by hunters to open the hunt are the problems that elephants pose to farmers that need to be protected. The hunt has nothing to do with it. Elephant trophy shooting does nothing to reduce the number of elephants or prevent conflicts between humans and wildlife.

According to Gunn, the few remaining large tuskers tend to live far from human dwellings and have little or nothing to do with wildlife conflicts. The few elephants that raid are not the ones that trophy hunters want to capture. So the government is really talking about picking. There are other ways.

"Crop damage reduction can be achieved at lower cost with simple and powerful electric fencing requiring little or no maintenance, as well as other proven methods.

"Funds for this purpose could easily be obtained from the international community without Botswana being obliged to pay for it if the competent authorities were willing to do so. "

Poaching

Let's go back to poaching. As noted earlier, Botswana is home to one-third of Africa's 130,000 savannah elephants, making them an essential component for their conservation. Fly more than 94,000 km² In fixed wing planes and thousands of others by helicopter in northern Botswana, EWB found 156 elephants with the skull open and defenses defeated, a considerable increase over the previous survey. The actual number of poachers is undoubtedly higher than those observed. All were in the five "hot spots".

"According to ISF, this evidence suggests that ivory poaching on the scale of hundreds of elephants each year is taking place in northern Botswana since 2017 or perhaps even earlier. "

The increase in the number of carcasses is worrying as it may indicate a future increase in poaching. In the Sebungwe ecosystem in Zimbabwe, the number of carcasses increased in the early 2000s. Poaching and the collapse of the population followed, with the number of elephants in 2014 having decreased by 76% per year. report in the early 2000s.

In the Niassa National Reserve in Mozambique, the increase in the carcass rate (percentage of dead elephants observed during the enumeration) since 2009 preceded a 78% decrease in the elephant population in just five years. The ecosystem of Tsavo in Kenya has had the same pattern: a drop in the number of elephants following a surge in poaching. A large number of elephants have also been poached in Angola and Zambia, not far from there.

According to the ISF report, between 2014 and 2018, carcass ratios in Botswana increased from 5% to 16% in hotspots. "This change," says the report, "could indicate that Botswana's elephant population could be threatened in the near future."

Tourism

Predation by poachers will have a negative impact on tourism, which accounts for one-fifth of the country's economy. Foreign safari operators also fear that hunting and slaughter will damage Botswana's reputation as a refuge for wildlife. Visits are already canceled.

In one American survey According to the Remington Research Group, three out of four respondents felt it was important to protect elephants from trophy hunting, 78% did not agree with the proposed slaughter, and 73% felt that if trophy hunting and hunting were the order of the day. 39, slaughter of elephants were launched, the image of Botswana as a leader of wildlife conservation would be hurt. Tourists do not travel blindly.

Early warning

The investigation and research of ISF constitute an important early warning or even a national tragedy in Botswana.

"Publishing new discoveries in a peer-reviewed journal is a matter of justification, "said Mike Chase, of ISF. National Geographic. "To question your scientific reputation is to destroy the soul.

"I hope our[[[[Current biology]The paper will restore my reputation as a recognized elephant protection advocate and, more importantly, help us deal with the tragic plight of elephants in our country and restore our legacy of refuge to the world's largest elephant population. world. "

Chase remains optimistic – as long as everyone cooperates and the mud race ends. "The evidence in the document is indisputable and corroborates our warnings that elephants are killed by poaching gangs. We must stop them before they become bolder.

"I am convinced that stakeholders can work together to implement the necessary measures to reduce poaching. In the end, Botswana will be judged not for poaching, but for the way it treats it. " DM

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