ELEPHANTS WITHOUT BORDERS. The carcas of a poached elephant photographed by Elephants Without Borders during its recent census of the animals in Botswana.
SEPTEMBER 5th, 2018
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily
Botswana Elephant Slaughter, 90 Killed
Over the course of the last 2 months, 90 elephant corpses have been discovered, butchered and voided of their tusks. The events had led to the macabre conclusion that poaching had arisen in the country, despite its original reputation as a generally safe and friendly environment for 130,000 elephants, almost a third of Africa’s entire elephant population.
The poaching had been occurring since July, surprisingly enough, what with Botswana’s strict environmental laws, recently altered, that allowed the proper authorities to shoot suspected poachers on sight. The findings had been made by the environment protection group Elephants Without Borders (EWB).
Mike Chase, of EWB, said that the poachers “appear to be targeting elephant bulls when they come down to drink at seasonal pans,” and that all of the beset elephants so far have been ones over the age of 35, likely due to larger tusk volumes. Chase mentioned that some of the poached elephants were “presumably carrying the heaviest tusks in the region of 60-70 pounds or even larger.”
“A clear order has been put out for tusks of a specific weight, and I suspect such large ivory is in heavy demand, considering that there are few large tuskers left in Africa,” Chase went on, taking further note that the amount of recent poachings are “by far the largest I have seen or read about in Africa to date.”
The main cause of these recent issues may have had something to do with the government’s baffling decision earlier this year to disarm the authorities with the jurisdiction to shoot the poachers on sight, which had, according to The Southern Times, led to the execution of at least 52 poachers over the last 20 years. “People did warn us of an impending poaching problem and we thought we were prepared for it,” Chase went on.
The government of Botswana posted on its Facebook page earlier stating that; “The Government of Botswana wishes to state that it is unfortunate that some media reports attribute the rise in elephant poaching primarily to the withdrawal of weapons from the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) anti-poaching unit. The fact of the matter is that the withdrawal of such weapons from DWNP, did not in any way affect the effectiveness and operations of the anti-poaching units.”
According to National Geographic, the program manager for EWB; Kelly Landen, had agreeably been contracted to conduct surveys regarding the Botswanan elephant population every four years, and is considering greater precautions to stop said poachers, despite the government’s insistence that the surveys are “false and misleading”.
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily
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