The societal reverence around elephants requires an unbiased examination of the data and an open discussion among all parties as it relates to their management, especially in countries such as Botswana with large elephant populations that significantly affect human livelihoods. In the past several weeks, there have been many discussions around elephants in Botswana. The first discussion point wasthe Elephant Without Borders (EWB) reportby Scott Schlossberg and Mike Chase, in which a new population modelling exercise was undertaken that considered new elements of density dependence and external variables of drought and poaching to provide a new suggested quota limit for the hunting of elephants.
That report was followed by several articles by DrAdam CruiseandDon Pinnockin Daily Maverick that suggest current hunting quotas in Botswana will “turn a conservation success story into a global controversy” andhigher hunting quotas are “bad news for the future of Botswana’s elephant population”. When one examines the report on the surface, everything makes sense. The numbers make sense.
The ideas make sense, hunting at current levels, plus poaching of big bulls and drought, will reduce the numbers of big elephants in the future. I think if you asked the general hunting fraternity: should we be limiting the take of older, big bulls in the population? You’d be surprised when most would agree with that notion.
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However, that answer would be quickly followed by an additional belief that elephants in Botswana should have their value increased – that would show the belief in the conservation success story, benefit the Botswana government, and most importantly, funnel more funds back to the communities interacting with elephants daily. The current Botswana elephant issue fits the idiom that you can’t see the forest through the trees. The forest in this analogy is the Botswana elephant population.
At 140,000, it’s the largest elephant population in the world. Additionally, there has been no scientific report, nor scientist, nor operator who believes Botswana has too few elephants; in fact, the opposite is true. Most would agree that there are probably too many elephants for the habitat currently available, given the growing human population in Botswana.
One only needs to look at the bombed-out landscape of Chobe to understand that there may be an elephant density problem. With the largest elephant population in the world comes significant consequences for humans, communities, and increased human-elephant conflict. Increased human-elephant conflict has not been linked to hunting (as suggested by a recently dismissed court filing), but rather a factor of an increasing human and elephant population existing in the overlapping landscapes.
Given the human component of this issue, the driver of any action as it relates to elephants must come from the communities, and their voice must come first. So what is actually happening on the ground with regard to elephants in Botswana? In this world, words matter, and it’s important to ensure that when you’re articulating a point that everybody understands the difference between different terms. For example, the term “quota”.
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