On the heels of the announcement that Botswana would send 20,000 elephants to Germany so they can see what it’s like to live alongside elephants, an NGO based in the African country released a report studying population trends based on aerial elephant surveys. The report by Elephants Without Borders suggested, among many other findings, that allowing hunting on a quota basis to reduce human-elephant conflict could backfire. Specifically, the solitary male bull elephants that trophy hunters are after may be leaving areas where hunting is allowed, perhaps because they feel threatened. Thus hunters will not want to pay to hunt in those areas because of a lack of bull elephants.
“It’s a bit of a troubling pattern in that if you want to produce trophy-quality animals, that’s really big older bulls, then you need to have a sufficient population to do that. If the biggest bulls in the area get killed, then new bulls need to come in to replace them — you see the opposite happening.”
Scott Schlossberg, Elephants Without Borders
This is in addition to the fact that if bull elephants are hunted, there are no males to mate with the females. Instead of keeping the population stable, then, trophy hunting could actually decimate it.
There are other issues with trophy hunting, the most significant being the lack of transparency of how money changes hands and the possibility of rogue activity where hunters don’t follow the rules. Though human-elephant conflict is a complex issue that must be addressed, trophy hunting is a short-term band-aid on a global problem that needs a complete overhaul. And it may even make things worse.
That humans are willing to pay thousands of dollars to kill an animal for sport is antithetical to the purpose of the hunting quotas in the first place–finding a way for elephants and humans to co-exist. That we will let elephants be murdered for this purpose suggests it isn’t about co-existence at all. It is about humans wanting to exploit animals and being willing to go as far as possible to rationalize it.
Non-Violent Alternatives
Friendlier measures are being taken in other areas of Africa with elephant populations. Beehive projects give economic opportunities to villages while deterring elephants from the areas, because elephants hate bees. Electric fencing can keep elephants out of fields where crops are growing. Ceasing deforestation leaves elephant habitats intact so they are less likely to invade human habitats. If folks are willing to spend thousands to hunt elephants in the name of conservation, why not just invest that money without insisting on taking the ivory of an elephant back home to display?
Further Research Required
Still, more research can and should be done to learn more about why elephants migrate in the patterns they do. The findings on the effects of trophy hunting were extrapolated from a technical report released by Elephants Without Borders. The analysis studied population trends from two large elephant surveys.
Elephants Without Borders undertook the Great Elephant Census in 2014 and 2015, one of the two largest aerial elephant surveys ever completed. The other survey was undertaken by the KAZA Secretariat, and included information from another survey by EWB in 2018 in Botswana. Because assumptions about growth and distribution are made without concrete evidence, more time, money, and resources are needed to get accurate numbers.
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Elephant Advocate 