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Germany is at odds with Botswana over a unique resource — Botswana’s elephant population. After the German government announced it would seek to ban the importation of hunting trophies, Botswanan President Mokgweetsi Masisi threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany. “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 his country was “paying the price for preserving these animals for the world.”

The two countries have been embroiled in a dispute over how to handle Botswana’s surging elephant population, which Masisi said to Bild numbers around 130,000. This growth in Botswana’s elephant population is a net positive for the species’ conservation efforts, but is also proving problematic for Botswana — elephants often damage the country’s villages, destroy food supplies and sometimes kill humans. Allowing elephants to be hunted is an “important means to keep them in check,” Masisi said, arguing that Germany’s attempt to ban hunting trophies would cause Botswana further harm and claiming that sending 20,000 elephants to Germany would alleviate the pressure. 

Botswana banned trophy hunting in 2014 but reversed this decision in 2019 amid the skyrocketing elephant population. Germany doesn’t appear to be backing down, though, and officials have claimed that trophy hunting of elephants causes wider issues for both countries.  

What is causing the rift? 

The root of the feud is the “long-running tension between those morally opposed to the lucrative business of big-game hunting and the impoverished countries that benefit from it,” said The Washington Post. This is especially pertinent for Botswana given that the nation’s 130,000 elephants represent a third of the world’s population. 

While Germany remains one of the largest importers of hunting trophies, animal rights advocates “reject the concept of killing animals for sport and say hunting by tourists will result in the extinction of even more animal species,” said the Post. Those on the opposite side of the argument say trophy hunting is “controlled, unlike poaching, and has more financial benefits for local communities and for conservation.”

This type of feud is not new — African nations “have long accused Western governments and organizations of campaigning and forcing policies that, in the name of conservation, curb the ability of nations with large elephant populations from using effective means such as culling to control animal numbers,” CBS News said. Beyond the population control, countries with wild animal populations “see the native species as resources that can bring in much-needed money,” and trophy hunting “makes up a significant proportion of the national income for a number of African nations,” said CBS. As talks of banning trophy hunts continue, these countries are expressing concerns that this revenue could disappear. 

Botswana has also looked to profit off its elephant population in other ways. Alongside its neighbors Zimbabwe and Namibia, Botswana has “also argued that it should be allowed to sell [its] stockpiles of ivory so it can earn money from its huge numbers of elephants,” the BBC said. 

How serious is Botswana being? 

Despite Botswana’s threat, there is “currently no formal request of a transfer of 20,000 elephants from Botswana to Germany,” a spokesperson for Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation said to NBC News. And while German officials are continuing to push for the ban on trophy hunting, the practice itself is not “threatening the survival of species as a whole,” Dilys Roe, the chair of the IUCN’s Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group, said to NBC. 

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’s 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.