Addis Ababa, April 4, 2024(Addis Walta) The president of Botswana has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in a dispute over conservation.
Earlier this year, Germany’s environment ministry suggested there should be stricter limits on importing trophies from hunting animals.
Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi told German media this would only impoverish people in his country.
He said elephant numbers had exploded as a result of conservation efforts, and hunting helped keep them in check.
Germans should “live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to”, Masisi told the German newspaper Bild. “This is no joke.”
Botswana is home to about a third of the world’s elephant population – over 130,000 – more than it has space for.
Herds were causing property damage, eating crops, and trampling residents, Masisi said.
Botswana has previously given 8,000 elephants to neighboring Angola and offered hundreds more to Mozambique, as a means of bringing the population down.
“We would like to offer such a gift to Germany,” Mr Masisi said, adding that he would not take no for an answer.