OP-ED: Killing elephants in Botswana is a vote-catcher that could go badly wrong By Don Pinnock DonPinnock
For small-scale farmers, elephants can be a danger and a damn nuisance. So when Botswana’s new president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, was looking for rural votes to boost his flagging party in the upcoming elections, calling in the guns was low-hanging fruit. For rural communities, shooting crop raiders, jobs for skinners and a pile of meat the size of an elephant was very attractive.
EWB’s head, Dr Mike Chase, came under personal attack from the government and a compliant press. The survey was dubbed fake news and a plot by foreign lodge owners to undermine the new president. In 2010 Dawie Groenewald and 10 others, including his wife, veterinarians and professional hunters were arrested and charged with 1,872 crimes, including illegal hunting, dealing in rhino horns, money laundering and fraud. The charge sheet ran to 637 pages.
He said he was from Polokwane and was heading into Botswana to scope out hunting concession areas CH1 and CH2. The EWB report estimated 385 carcasses poached within a year. Every one they found was a mature bull over 35 years of age, but let’s be conservative and say only 200 of them were trophy bulls, adding to 400 legally hunted – that’s 600 prime male elephants. It means that if this level of hunting and poaching was sustained, within less than seven years, Botswana’s current biggest tuskers could be dead.
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