EFFORTPOST Botswana's Elephant Overpopulation and Hunting Drama.

Greetings Dramatards

Today I wanna talk about Elephants. Specifically those of Botswana. Botswana has been the home of the largest concentration of Elephant herds on earth for a several decades. As recently as 2020, they were recorded as having 130 000 elephants, half of all elephants in the entirety of the African continent is to be found in Botswana. In fact they literally have way too many elephants, and have suffered an overpopulation problem for the past decade.

https://ourworldindata.org/elephant-populations

One of Botswana's conservation initiatives involved repatriating amounts of their Elephants to their neighbouring country of Angola, whom is much poorer and has suffered great environmental destruction because of their Civil War which had ended as recently as 2002. Like Mozambique's cataclysmic Civil War, Angola was also devastated by violent conflict between communist and capitalist factions vying for power during the Cold War, and ended up destroying their Portuguese colonial infrastructures, and debilitating much of their natural habitats. Many Angolans suffered the same fate as that of their Mozambique peers, in that famine raged the country during war, and farmers could not work their lands. People desperately turned to hunting the wildlife for food just to survive, and that had included Elephants. The violence also quite literally "pushed" the frightened animals to free and migrate South to Botswana away from human activity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angolan_Civil_War

Anyways, Angola used to be one of the most populous natural habitats for Elephants in Africa, but colonial overhunting by the Portuguese trophy hunters, and the genuinely apocalyptic hellstorm of the Angolan Civil War, which was intertwined with the Congo Civil War, meant that the Elephant habitats were just as ravaged and reduced as the poor people of Angola. Botswana and Angolan leaders have gotten well together these past 20 years, and have gone to lengths to improve their conservation efforts together against Chinese Elephant poaching, for for environmental concerns, and to boost Tourism in both countries.

The big problem is that catching, sedating, transporting and releasing just a single elephant takes a shitload of time, money, fuel, expertise and effort. And compared to South Africa, where hunters, game reserve owners, and National Park wardens can just funnel together a herd of blesboks into a tram or truck, the act of trying to move an elephant is much more challenging and dangerous. A 5 ton Elephant bull doesn't exactly take kindly to being approached by humanoids.

Botswana has also opened their border fences with Angola, so that the Elephant herds might migrate naturally from Bots to Angola by their own volition, and the previously scared animals hopefully will return.

\https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/world/africa/2020-11-04-botswana-elephants-are-moving-to-angola/

WILDLIFE CORRIDORS:

Anyways, I'm mentioning these events to make dramatards understand that Botswana takes conservation seriously, and that they had taken steps to uphold habitat conservation as much as their small but growing economy might allow. Their main objective up until now had been to encourage and enable migration away from Botswana and towards its neighbours, mainly Angola and Zambia, Zimbabwe, but that tactic has been sub-optimal. The elephants are migrating way too slowly, and physically corralling Elephants is not a tactic that has ever worked. Also again using vets to sedate and manually transport Elephants via large trucks is way too slow and expensive to do thousands of times to make a dent in the vast 130 000 strong Bots elephant population.

Conservationists have elected to create "Wildlife Corridors" which are unfenced open highways for wild game to move between nations like Bots and Angola. But, there's also other problems, like minefields still unmoved since the end of the Angolan Civil war. And elephants seem to have an uncanny ability to know not to cross danger zones. Conservationists believe some elephant hers can still remember when members of the herd got wounded crossing the minefields even 20 years later, and refuse to move across certain landscapes between Angola and Botswana, even after Angolans had removed the mines on that specific zones.

https://www.voanews.com/a/africa_botswana-repatriate-elephants-angola-reduce-overpopulation/6198901.html

ELEPHANT PESTELENCE:

Long story short, the depopulation initiatives by conservationists are working way too slow, and Elephants in the meantime have caused havoc on the Botswana natural environment. Botswana's strong conservation efforts have been TOO successful.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0006320793900578

If you guys know anything about Elephants, you'll know they are pretty naughty creatures, and can throw humanlike temper tantrums while under duress. Elephants can end up deforesting entire localities when they crush trees, shrubs, and bushes into matchwood. 6 ton fully grown Elephant bulls can bulldoze all but the most largest and ancient Marula trees. Elephants often scratch themselves against trees just like horses and cows, but as creatures 10 times the weight of horses, they end up destroying the vegetation in the process. Elephants are a part of the Savanna and highlands of the African balanced habitat. And environmentalists have noted that Elephants help keep regions balanced by stopping overgrowth of alien trees, and keeping forrests in check, while also allowing fallen trees to be digested by other herbivores, ect. But when there's an overpopulation, then this naturally occurring destructive force of Elephants can end up destabilizing the environment, and outright dessertification can take place.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1708/elephant-damage-to-vegetation-in-botswana

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26393296

Elephants also can cause harm to human infrastructure, destroy Botswana farm crops, and even kill humans when under stress. As the Jstor research article denotes, Elephants will come and eat human cross, as it's easier to obtain food, while trampling the rest into dust. Elephants are too powerful to be kept out of human farmlands via fencing. And the overpopulation of Elephants, as well as the expansion of people of Botswana have made these occurences more and more common.

PREZ IAN KHAMA BANS ELEPHANT HUNTING:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Khama#cite_note-44

So that brings us to the actual drama. In 2014 Ian Khama won his second term for the Botswana presidency. He was the son of the famous Seretse Khama whom had spearheaded the freedom movement in Botswana, and had become its 1st President way back in 1966. Ian Khama, his son, would carry on his legacy by winning two terms from 2009 - 2018. Ian Khama would place a ban on Elephant hunting in 2014, and had widely opposed trophy hunting his entire career; he was a staunch conservationist, ect.

With these good intentions, Ian Khama, caused the Botswana elephant populations to not just recover, but explode in overpopulation depending on the region. Many Bots peeps supported this, and felt white hunters, and trophy hunter aught to GTFO from further harming their environment.

Elephant hunting or culling would remain a controversial political matter in Botswana politics, with certain politicians wanting to reinstate trophy hunting to pull in money from fat rich yanks, while other Bots politicians, whom were "Green Party" equivalents went full vegan and said NOOOOO.

Of course, as Elephants just kept breeding, the problem of overpopulated herds encroaching upon human settlements began to be a political dispute between factions. With certain liberal Botswana people saying that Bots doen't have an overpopulation problem, and instead that elephants were being poached left and right. Here is a liberal magazine called the conversation, and drama in the comments!

https://theconversation.com/botswana-has-an-elephant-poaching-problem-not-an-overpopulation-problem-119366

Basically the political slapfight here is a microcosm reflection of Botswana politics against hunting, especially trophy hunting. The libtards deny that overpopulation doesn't real and supports Ian Khamas memorandum against hunting Elephants. The liberals do have a point in that Trophy hunting can reduce the genetic strength of a herd, since trophy hunters tend to keep going insustainably only hunting the largest horns or tusks or hooves of an animal. And thus unintentionally causing the genetic median strength of a herd or wild game population to fall. So that a generation later the median tusk size of an Elephant herd had been reduced drastically, since all the biggest tusks had been weeded, out thus causing artificial natural selection, but making the animal adapted worse to its environment.

In RSA game ranched go to extreme lengths to ensure that the genetic strength of antelope/buck herds are upkept, so that not all of the largest horned bucks are all eliminated from a herd. Game ranch owners will even trade male bucks to ensure genetic diversity in separate herds are high. There are protocals and hunting organizations regulating the health of all RSA game ect. But this genetic regulation only works in closed camps, and with animals you can catch. With the ever untamable Elephant, you cant keep the frickers locked up, and they weave in and out of specific locations at will. Thus you cant ensure their genetics are kept strong, and liberals fear that Rich fat burgers who trophy hunt specifically the largest tusked elephants wills have long term survival effects upon the heneral Elephant populations.

Of course, the local populations of Botswana have been caught culling or shooting elephants destroying their crops in secret, and the Bots Government have misattributed much of these local culling as poaching. As more and more local Bots residents complain to their local leaders, the controversial issue kept getting back to the forefront, and the very Bots locals now desperately wanted culling of Elephants to be reintroduced legally, and Ian Khama's Hunting Ban memorandum to be lifted. Ian Khama remained stubborn up until the end of his presidency in 2018. The liberals wanted to champion the Migration Corridors approach, and the non-libtards wanted to reintroduce necessary culling to stop the now continiously growing threat of overpopulated elephants destroying commercial and living crops!

BOTSWANA LIFTS HUNTING BAN:

Finally Ian Khama retires, being already over 60 in 2018. The very next year, his successor prez Mokgweetsi, immediately overturns the hunting ban, with a few caveats of course to placate both sides of this controversial issue. At 1st only old Bulls of over 35 years were allowed to be hunted, meaning after they are pass their prime and had already mated and transferred their genetic values to the next generation, and thus culling them would not seriously harm the genetic strength of the Bots general herds.

There was much bitching and slapfighting of every faction involved

Other caveats involved that culled Elephants by foreign trophy hunters were to give their carcass to the locals for food, but the hunter may keep the horns and shit. Vegans, libs and people who hated hunting in general, were never satisfied by these measures, but then again they lived in enclosed suburbs, were stupid foreigners, and weren't the dirt poor Botswana locals whom had their livelyhood destroyed overnight, by an elephant eating all their crops, and which 6 tones of muscle couldn't be chased away so easily. Or one of the 40 individuals trampled to death yearly since 2012.

https://www.reuters.com/article/botswana-elephants/botswana-auctions-permits-to-hunt-elephants-to-ease-human-wildlife-conflict-idUSL8N2A72I9

Yeah that's right ,for the cheap price of 18 000$, fat yanks could come and chase elies on their lard scooters.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/2/8/botswana-auctions-elephant-hunting-licenses-after-lifting-ban

In 2020 Bots would sell packages to hunting companies, so that they could get foreign hunters from Europe and burgerland Basically average mortals will never afford this, even middle class yanks cheaply hunting in RSA are completely locked out of these milionare class hunts.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48374880

AFTERMATH:

Anyways, that's where we are today, on the ground level most Bots peeps know that there are too many Elephants encroaching on farmlands today, and desperately need to be culled for safety, and saving of human infratsructure, as well as maintaining balance on the natural environment as a resource for tourism. The hunting still remains controversial.

Prez Mokgweetsi keeps the Elephant hunting permits mega expensive so that he can sell for profit for his country to foreigners, which is a good income for the vibrant, but not super rich Botswana nation. This however pisses off many Bots peeps, as they are excluded from these exorbitant prices. Libs, Vegans and Ian Khama supporters hate and oppose the lifting of the Hunting ban, and continuously screetch on whatever is Bots social media whenever a yank Elephant hunter poses in a trophy picture.

Black Botswana peeps living next to Elephants hate them, and dont like vegan libtards, and are for culling of elephants. Other factions like wardens whom oppose poaching also are split on what to do, as when Chinese poachers kill elephants for their horns, they sometimes use machine guns and other gruesome methods like fricking rocked propelled grenades to kill the animals, as only the Ivory is what they want, and they wanna kill the animal quickly and GTFO before Botswana border gaurds come and literally kill the Chinese or mercenary poachers. These violent poaching causes herds to scatter in fright, and invade human settlements and cause harm in fright and stress. This is in contrast to hunters whom use single shot rifles to kill Elephants instantly through the brain, sometimes even with sound dampening high caliber rifles, which doesn't frighten of herds.

Anyways, that's all I have, GOOD DAY!