The Botswana Predicament: From Conservation To Carnage?

An already difficult place to access, Botswana may take a further hit to its tourism industry if the country goes back to being a killing ground for its elephants.

- Ashok Mahindra

Botswana is a flat, sparsely populated, land-bound country in southern Africa — sustained by diamond mining, beef exports and high-end tourism. Since it gained independence from Britain in 1966, it has been the continent’s leader in matters of conservation.

When I visited Botswana in April and in August 2019, I arrived in the middle of a huge controversial debate about restarting the hunting of elephants, banned in 2014 by the previous President Ian Khama. This ban had helped Botswana emerge as a “conservation success story” and home to more than 1,30,000 elephants.

Where ever I visited, I heard arguments for and against hunting.

The owner of a private lodge at Chobe National Park explained to me that it was not an issue of conflict but an issue of money. Prior to 2014, a portion of the funds collected from hunting went to the villages, while after the ban all this dried up without any compensation. The Government should have made alternate sources of income available for villages impacted by the ban. “This is a political move and not in the best interests of conservation in Botswana”, he concluded. Alternately, a level-3 guide at one of the camps explained that Chobe was surrounded by villages and conflicts had started with elephants as their population had expanded to over 1,00,000 elephants -- well beyond the carrying capacity of the park. Many environmentalists fear that the lifted ban will simply be a precursor to renewed efforts aimed at legalizing the ivory trade. If this were to happen, many expect a catastrophic effect on elephants across Africa.