The fact that the minister wants to ban the import of hunting trophies promotes poverty and poaching in Botswana and harms the country, said Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi to “Bild” (Wednesday). The Germans should “live with the animals the way you try to tell us,” said Masisi.
“We don’t take no for an answer”
The gift was “not a joke.” Thanks to successful species protection, his country now has more than 130,000 elephants, more than any other African country, said the president. There is an “overpopulation” with constant growth. That’s why Botswana has already given 8,000 elephants to neighboring Angola. “And that’s exactly how we would like to offer such a gift to the Federal Republic of Germany,” said Masisi. “We don’t take no for an answer.”
In his country, people are attacked and trampled to death by elephants, villages are devastated and crops are destroyed, said Masisi. Hunting is an important means of regulating the population. The condition for the move is that the elephants live in the wild in Germany and that they are picked up. The president said he wanted to “find out how Ms. Lemke is doing with it.”
