By Onuwa Lucky Joseph
Having lost the dodo and a few other species to extinction, not to mention other prehistoric species like dinosaurs and wooly mammoths, among others, it makes sense for the world to be apprehensive about a total loss of any specie and with it their important role in the world’s ecosystem.
African societies are acknowledged, however, to have built in conservation systems that enabled them coexist with wildlife, killing only what was needed for meat, garment or medication while leaving the vast majority to procreate and replenish in their numbers. The only other thing that makes Africans bring down wild animals is when those animals, for any reason, become a danger to human existence in a specific location. For instance, every once in a while, a man-eater big cat appears which is of necessity put out before it takes out more people in its thirst for human blood.
But of course, Africa has experienced a bulge in its population and with this has come a greater need for space for its humans to dwell. This eats into the habitats of both plants and animals. The growing population also demands greater supply of food and meat. But so far, African wildlife still procreates prolifically enough to meet up with the nourishment needs of man while as well maintaining the desired ecological balance.
It should also be noted that men, for aeons, have domesticated sundry animals, fish and birds to help meet the ongoing need for meat and this without too much disruption of the balance. However, the taste for the exotic and the wild does exist and people will go out of their way to pay more for the more expensive ‘bush meat’, something that local hunters help make supply possible.
For the really big ‘wildies’ like lions, tigers, leopards, elephants, they are hardly ever specifically targeted for meat. When they are brought down, it’s more for status purposes where their skin, horn or tusk adorned on a man signifies an uncommon level of accomplishment. But the number is self-regulatory. Not many make it to those coveted positions in society where they are identified with leopard skin, rhino horn, elephant tusk, etc. However, the world had long been aware of Africa’s biodiversity bounty. From colonial times, Europeans have descended on Africa regularly for game and trophy hunting. This has not abated despite the political independence of virtually every African nation.
The Chinese have energetically joined the fray in order to have a dependable base from which to source ingredients for their exotic potions produced so their men can boast endless virility more than for anything else. This has further compounded the woes of African wildlife and produced heart rending graphics of elephants and rhinos rotting on the ground, the only thing missing from their bodies, their horns and tusks, cut out to be shipped out.
This state of things is clearly not sustainable.
Botswana has however been a remarkable success story as far as its elephant population is concerned. Reportedly fewer than 10,000 in the 1960S, and this after it had been a record somewhere between 200,000 to 400,000 in the early 19th century according to a doctoral study done by Jessica Junker, the elephant population is today a contentious one: 130,000 according to conservationists, and higher than 237,000 according to the government of Botswana. The numbers are deemed to have ballooned considerably after former president Ian Khama banned poaching for trophy in 2014.
Botswana, with a climate, vegetation and government policy that elephants find conducive is now crying out about its unsustainably booming elephant population. What seemed the right thing to do at one point does not seem so anymore. This has resulted in an uptick in man/elephant conflicts with the hard charging elephants barging into homes, destroying farms with their outsized appetite, and sometimes trampling on poor citizens who can’t get out of their way quickly enough.
To manage this situation, Botswana had had to offer 8,000 elephants to Angola and another 500 to Mozambique. The laws are much laxer in those countries and poaching, legal and illegal, happens on a more frequent basis.
Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi Botswana’s is piqued that despite the country’s laudatory efforts at coping with the distress the elephants are causing his people, the German Environment Ministry has raised the spectre of even stricter limits on Germany’s import of hunting trophies. As a general rule, Botswana has no issues with that. However, as it concerns elephant tusks for this period, Mr. Masisi, would like to draw the line.
He believes his country needs to relieve itself of some of those elephants that are wreaking havoc all over the place. Not to forget, for hardcore conservationists, elephants, with their ravenous appetites can’t seem to have enough of flora as they are herbivores. So, thinking conservation only in terms of the graphic headline friendly megafauna is doing damage to the flora of Botswana, with its baobab trees amongst others especially at risk.
It is for this reason that good old Mr. Mokgweetsi is offering to ship 20,000 of the elephants to Germany where as they procreate and increase in numbers the joke would be on Germans to see how they cope with the burgeoning elephantine population. But that, to be sure, was said in anger and would be difficult to implement as the German weather, not being tropical, can hardly sustain the pachyderms which are known to flourish under warmer conditions.
At the heart of this incipient row, it seems, is the age-old mindset that Africa is known more for its wildlife than for its humans. No, it is not. Humans live here as well, as they live everywhere else. Humans, Africans, manage the space, and like humans everywhere else, manage the space to ensure that humans are not torpedoed as the apex specie. And for this to happen, populations of other species must be managed by man to ensure balance in the ecosystem, which if successful, will help every specie live and thrive better.
Elephants are a resource, first and foremost, for Botswana. They are only secondarily a world resource. The trophy licences therefore need reflect the current reality of Botswana and the sacrifice it has made over the years to bring this about. Only when man/elephant equilibrium is attained should Europe start thinking of stricter limits on its import of hunting trophies. If China wasn’t so close to India, (which has its own elephants), maybe China would be the immediate resort for Botswana.
If Botswana cannot now reap the benefits of its conservation efforts, what would be the motivation for staying on track? The country says its ‘carrying capacity’, (the number of elephants it can comfortably accommodate at any given time) is 50,000. This should be taken into consideration and the tight measures put in place to allow Botswanans breathe easier.
