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Commentary

Uproar over plan to litter Botswana’s Chobe National Park with lodges

Uproar over plan to litter Botswana’s Chobe National Park with lodges

By Don Pinnock - Daily Maverick Chobe National Park’s goose that lays the golden egg of Botswana tourism is under threat of being killed by eight 75-bed lodges planned for its prime riverfront. If it goes ahead, wildlife people pay to see will most likely have fled. After entering Chobe National Park from nearby Kasane, you’re soon in one of the most iconic places in Africa — a wide, lazy river lined by classic savanna woodland. Towards evening, the elephants arrive without fail, sometimes hundreds at a time, to drink and frolic in the cool water. It’s a 50km wildlife corridor of viewing...

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Export of elephants to UAE drags Namibia wildlife policy into the spotlight

Export of elephants to UAE drags Namibia wildlife policy into the spotlight

By  Ryan Truscott - Mongabay Conservation groups have slammed the Namibian government’s decision to capture 22 wild elephants and export them to zoos in the United Arab Emirates.They contend the animals were taken from a fragile, desert-adapted population herd, and that splitting up the group this way affects the welfare of both the captured elephants and those left behind.The government denies this, and has justified the export as a solution to the human-wildlife conflict that’s the flip side of decades of successful conservation policy.One of the recipients of the elephants in the...

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Trophy hunting in South Africa is not economically justified

Trophy hunting in South Africa is not economically justified

By Ross Harvey - Good Governance Africa (GGA) On Friday 25 February 2022, Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment (FFE), Barbara Creecy announced that a trophy hunting quota had been set for 10 black rhinos, 10 leopards and 150 elephants for 2022. In other words, hunters are now at liberty to apply for licences to shoot imperilled animals that will literally be reduced to wall trophies. The statement claimed that trophy hunting creates economic incentives that promote conservation. It went on to state that: “It also provides a useful wildlife management tool and is used as a means to...

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Whose elephants are they, anyway? Lessons from an Angolan manatee hunter

Whose elephants are they, anyway? Lessons from an Angolan manatee hunter

By Tamar Ron - Daily Maverick The Covid-19 crisis has taught us that not opting for wildlife conservation at local level can have a huge global cost. If indeed the pandemic all started from one local wet market, it is clear nothing in this world is happening far away. We are all shareholders and responsible for conservation, everywhere. My previous article in Daily Maverick advocated the need for a global joint responsibility fund for wildlife and communities, to locally back and enable global hunting trophy bans, such as the UK’s proposed legislation. In response to this...

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