Abigail Shimniok

President of Botswana Mokgweetsi Masisi threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany after the German government threatened to ban the importation of hunting trophies.
“This is not a joke,” Masisi said to German outlet Bild, adding that it was “very easy to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in Botswana,” and that Botswana was “paying the price for preserving these animals for the world.”
The two countries have been at odds over how to handle Botswana’s elephant population for years. Conservation efforts in the country have raised the population of elephants to a dangerous level. The 130,000 elephants in Botswana are a growing concern for the human population; they are a threat to the country’s villages, food supplies and civilians.
Culling the elephant population is not an ideal solution. Elephants are very intelligent; if some of their family members are killed, they are likely to become extremely aggressive towards humans. Botswana would need to eliminate entire herds to keep their civilians safe.
Germany’s ban on elephant trophies would exacerbate Botswana’s elephant problem. Hunting, particularly for trophy purposes, can be a tool for population management. However, Germany does not plan to back down, stating trophy hunting would cause bigger problems for both countries.
The restriction of trophies that can be imported into Germany will lead to a significant decline in Botswana’s revenue as well as making their elephant population problem even worse.
To mitigate the problem, Botswana has sent 8,000 elephants to neighboring Angola and has offered 500 to Mozambique. But even as the Botswanan president says he is not joking about sending Germany elephants, it is unlikely to pan out, as “transporting tens of thousands of the giant animals to the other side of the world would be a tall order,” Politico said.
Botswana’s elephant problem is so “big and complex that Mr. Masisi is upset — for good reasons — about the Western simplification of possible solutions,” Nuremberg Zoo director Dag Encke said to Politico. Encke noted that even if Germany agreed to take the elephants, there is nowhere in the country to accommodate that many animals at once.