What to do about the 5-ton walking “vermin” plaguing Botswana | Foreign Correspondent
you're looking at a conservation Triumph and you'd think these endangered elephants are universally loved but not here in Botswana Jesus Christ elephant are terrorists are terrorizing us elephant are verman they cut down the fan they find a tab they can break it and have water there sometimes they can even kill people in southern Africa they are absolutely not vulnerable extinct or endangered there's a growing abundant population bana has the largest number of elephants anywhere on the planet but hosting such an enormous population comes with big problems we're basically going to be making a Do It Yourself to your guas yep I can see how that could work yep trophy hunting is being used as part of the solution but there's Global pressure to shut it down I don't know why we looked down upon as Africa that we can't look after our own resources what hunting does is it it creates tolerance especially for the people on the ground we are pissed off auntie is waste of time it's only two or three people that are benefiting we're traveling across Northern Botswana to see how this competition for space and resources is affecting humans and these amazing animals we see who's benefiting from and who's paying the price for this conservation success story [Music] this National Park in Botswana is home to one of the largest game concentrations in Africa it's easy to Envy Koto melo's job as a safari guide welcome to Cha National Park CH National Park covers about 11,7 00 Square kilm do you ever get tired of coming into the park every day for work oh no every day it's new for me I've been doing this for more than 10 years but every single day it's new for me I my office is a holiday office there are animals around every turn and unlike a zoo you have no idea what's coming up next we have buffalos we have Impalas we have kudus we have zebras we have giraffes we have scavengers and lions but they're not the main attraction why we are here is because of the elephants when you come to CH National Park you come for the [Music] elephant it's 31° and ch's elephants are looking for rest bite they put the mud into their body for cooling and also to protect their skin from the sunburn it's more like a sunscreen to them and also as soon as they go up to the forest there will be a lot of mosquitoes they also put some mud so that the skin gets protected they're very clever very clever animals the sheer number of babies is a sign of the population's strength that one would be less than 4 months old the Savannah elephant is listed as endangered but many decades of anti- poaching efforts have made Botswana a haven over 30 years the elephant population here has doubled to reach 130,000 do you feel like there's more around than when you were younger yes yes yes there's more elephants they're not only adorable they're valuable the tourism Industries it's growing we find even the locals are having some tourist [Music] companies tourism's a key industry for botswana's 2.6 million people yeah that's nice you see there all movement of boats they're following that matriarchal unit of elephants there's Wildlife so close around you I'm coming from Europe and we don't really have that so you just leave the the town or the city and you take a couple of steps and there could be elephants just around the corner and that's quite unique tourism accounts for about 10% of botswana's GDP it creates tens of thousands of jobs but living with so many elephants isn't [Music] easy while the elephant population has doubled so too has the number of people elephant habitat often intersects with human infrastructure like houses and Roads I'm leaving the National Park to see this problem firsthand one of the frustrations people have is the destruction they cause on farms when they're looking for food and water just south of the river keil and kenosi moo work hard to farm this small plot I found maze watermelon butternuts bananas and mango trees is a source of income for ourself they're surrounded by wildlife in the evening we just put our chest here and watch and then we say wow the the goodness and the greatness of God he he is a giraffe wow who needs to visit the national park I don't need to go to National Park just wait stop but it's the elephants Cafe worries about now when it's time for Harvest they come to destroy the crops they don't even leave even one cup for you to eat they just take the whole five this is the fence that has been destroyed by elephants the elephants now is their corriddor which where it's their entrance now enter here and go to our Farms it is very very painful the elephant just destroy it in in a minute in a day now if an elephant comes to raid their crops this is their best defense this is my gun when I hit this elephant when it hear the noise it go back people they fed up they've given up as you see they no longer Farm it's just me it's scary but you need to Brave with elephants they kill the chob region is a busy part of Botswana the biggest town kasan is a Transit Hub bordering three countries the National Park is unfenced so animals move freely in and out in this region elephants outnumber people almost 2 to one the relationship between animals and humans in kasani is one which I can say it's a tricky one Doras shakuni knows the price of living alongside elephants um my brother was killed just around here this is the area and as you can see these are houses behind there you can see that he wasn't in the bush he was just within an area that people are staying in dorcas's older brother maraf was walking at night when he met with a herd of elephants from the police statement it was clear that the elephants were on both sides so they actually sort of closed on him and he was trying to run away to save himself and they showed as um the tracks where he was running around the postmortem showed that um his ribs were broken his uh leg was broken and an AM yeah and it's difficult to forget because whenever we see elephants whether it's on TV or you just pass by you see an elephant we remember in just over a decade around 100 people have been killed K or injured by elephants in Botswana people have different ideas on how to deal with the elephant human conflict possibly the most controversial is trophy hunting the idea is that the money foreign tourist spend to shoot and kill elephants offsets some of the hardship communities experience by living alongside them whether or not it's working however is the source of furious debate [Music] 300 kilm South of kasane is the tourist town of [Music] M it's also trophy hunting [Music] territory so how many would you have here Debbie Peak is a trophy dealer certainly 150 Plus from piles of elephant skins to clusters of skulls and row after row of jawbones her Workshop is eye opening we offer two Services the first one being a raw processed trophy it's part of an animal it can be just the tusks it can be the skull it can be the whole thing but we also offer a taxidi and tning process preparing these trophies can be painstaking work but customers are clearly willing to pay a pair of Representative tusks they weigh about 25 kilos each which is pretty pretty good so these are what the the Trophy Hunters are after yes why is it the ivory and the tusks that they that they go for well I mean Ivory you know is is that's the elephant foreign clients can pay up to $1,000 Australian dollars to stalk and shoot an elephant up to 400 can be killed each year so we have a population of 130,000 elephant plus and our quoter is 400 do the math it's not going to control the population that's absolutely fundamental didn't Debbie says hunting happens on land that isn't good for photo tourism or farming what it does do is give people work that wouldn't have that work if it wasn't for hunting so current employment numbers are about 2 and a half thousand for the hunting sector as well as Jobs some here say killing elephants for sport actually helps with conservation if communities don't want to live with Wildlife they have that finaly they will simply demolish it it's as simple as that but if they see benefits from it and it creates a livelihood for them and it creates the the the the means for them to be able to keep that traditional lifestyle that's what it should be when an elephant's killed Hunters let the locals take the meat from the carcass revenue from the hunt also goes towards conservation and Community projects we as an indust have have been really bad about PR but we know in our hearts that what we do is valuable and it contributes and it is a good conservation tool but not everyone agrees for years trophy hunting has faced Global criticism I want to talk about the elephant in the room literally I want to talk about elephants Jeremy Corin I'm totally opposed to trophy hunting why do British people need to go over to places like batswana wherever it may be and hunt and and shoot dead or bow and arrow Dead uh wild Elephants or lions and bring back these great beasts to this country put them on their walls because they are Hunters that's not hunting is it it's not conservation it's Rich psychos who like killing things in 2024 botswana's then president mwiti masisi hit back at moves from the UK and EU to ban the import of hunting trophies I honestly think it's condenscending really a Resurgence of colonial Conquest his government threatened to flood London and Berlin with elephants just to be clear you're not really sending 20,000 elephants to Germany are you I might well be [Music] I'm going to see what it's like to track one of these Giants professional Hunter Leon kelhoffer takes clients on weeks long hunts to stalk and kill elephants he spent his whole life in Botswana is a citizen and speaks the local language I yeah Leon and tracker strongo have found some elephant Footprints do what I do no more talking no stepping and making loud noises and if we get up to the elephant or suddenly come on the elephant I'll I'll stop but don't don't run nobody run just stand dead dead still um and just follow my Follow My Lead let's follow this bull and see if we can we can get up to the hunters Target Old Bulls male elephants they think are past their breeding Prime so you can see the track and that's a back foot the back foot is oval shaped almost egg shaped for a really big old bull if I can fit both of my feet in it it's enormous but that doesn't give an indication of the I that just gives it an indication of the size it's always fascinating that the biggest animal on Earth moves the quietest out of the lot if a buffalo runs off you can hear like a cow or a horse you hear but an elephant is silent silent we can see where the elephant has been and as you can see he's ripped this Branch off and and kept going why would they do that idiots idiots is the only thing Leon believes botswana's elephants are environmentally damaging in their current numbers my gripe and a lot of other people agree we think of an elephant we look at the bigger picture an elephant lives to 50 60 years of age but they're destroying trees that are hundreds of years old and then what impact does that have on that habitat we follow the footprints for more than an hour stay [Music] close the footprints we're following are quite big and it's just dawned on me this is the first time we've been around elephants without being in a car or on a boat and you feel quite exposed so we got the ball up ahead you the wind's going like this let's walk slowly SC we find two elephants at a mud [Music] pool suddenly one looks like it might charge hey hey hey hey hey [Music] hey being this close to an angry elephant is confronting and I let him know that we're here but imagine that bull coming at it's huge yeah coming when it and now we stand here with video cameras and a high caliber rifle imagine a villager that's walking around looking for lot cattle know or at night trying to keep these elephants out of their fields at night and they've got nothing theyve got a stick maybe a drum and that's it they're completely defenseless wow completely defenseless he thinks foreigners who want to ban trophy hunting Imports don't understand the reality of living here what perplexes me is countries like the US in the UK you can pheasant shoot and you can deer shoot you can go and hunt Moose and things like that but we can't hunt our Wildlife why not I don't know why we looked down upon as Africa that we can't look after our own [Music] resources while some communities May benefit from trophy hunting that's not always the case I'm on the edge of the world heritage listed okavango Delta this Oasis in the desert is where oawa grew up it's nice to be out here I feel much better when I'm here because I connect with my ancestors that's where my soul below yeah for locals traditional makoro canoe is one of the best ways to get around these vast waterways these rivers are huge draw cards for Elephants too that is the the ending point of the Delta so that's the reason why we are receiving so much uh elephant coming down here because this is the last um water source that the elephant they can get oy founded an NGO called The Elephant protection Society advocating for animals and communities one the thing is this for keeping animals keep animals dur night time they close he's taking me to meet some locals you can see the life standard of people living how they live and the suffering that they go through or the hardship that they go through there no electricity no running water our transport as well is a challenge more so that they are living within lots of resources but they are not able to benefit from those resources for liongo meso elephants make it hard for him to provide for his little family we are surrounded by elephants every day we don't benefit anything from them they are the ones benefiting from them from us they come even into our farm Fields but during the night they break they eat sometimes we wake up in the morning and find nothing elephants are terrorists terrorizing us he says they don't see any of the money that comes in from trophy hunting trophy hunting doesn't benefit the community right it's not benefiting us not at all he has no idea how much money is available let alone how to access it it's only those who are who are in the offices who knows what what is happening so you don't even know how much people are paying to hunt elephant here how much government's taking and how much should be coming to you you don't even know how many elephants are supposed to be killed in your area how would you know about the money failing to know the numbers of the elephants being being killed for try Hunters tout that villagers receive meat from the elephant's carcass but for these men that's deeply insulting they they hunt elephant for for their for tasks and uh the meat it's only left for the scavengers as we are part of the Scavengers we are scavengers how do you feel about that that they give you the meat after the Hunt is over it's not okay [Music] always listen to my command without hesitation if you are say JUMP don't ask me how high just jump today oi is training the next generation of safari guides so it's very important for the student to understand the behavior of the elephant within the area the elephant are huge but but very friendly the only problem is that we don't understand them that's why they have to defend you know they have to defend himself cuz they are living creatures as well he believes these young men and their communities can make more money from running tours than trophy hunting after people understand like we can benefit from this living or life Elephant for some days for some years then they wouldn't kill the elephant and then they'll start to respect the elephant it's going to change their [Music] [Music] life southeast of the Delta next to the extremely dry bet river is the makuti national [Music] park elephants have only arrived in this part of Botswana in recent decades and no one quite knows why we're with wona suaro from the NGO elephants for Africa are you getting a ping they're tracking several elephants to learn more about them in the hope of reducing Animal Human [Music] conflict where's our friendo where's our friendo he's a majestic lad wow that is a big elephant just a few weeks ago a woman was killed by an elephant in a nearby Village what do incidents like that do for Community attitudes towards elephants and towards coexistence so it raises the fear in the community and it drives people to whatever we fear and don't fully understand we want to push away and it drives a wedge in getting people towards the the con the the conservation table cuz not many people want to conserve what they fear your ideas he worries that trophy hunting might actually be making elephants more aggressive it's not fun seeing your brother your sister your mother relative getting shot and that leaves you with lifelong trauma and some of this trauma can lead you to being either deathly afraid of people or turning to be more aggressive towards people then leads to a cycle of violence where people are like elephants are aggressive at us W owners trying to teach people like Rebecca gaka Chell how to avoid conflict in the first place she owns this Dusty plot which becomes fertile Farmland when the rain comes we're basically going to be making a Do It Yourself tear gas we're going to be mixing some elephant dung with chili pepper and then setting that bit on fire to create a smoke [Music] barrier that really does start to burn your throat as soon as you start smelling that smoke yep I can see how that could work yep using that tear gas the the chili pepper it helps keep the elephants away from the farmers field so the farmers can be happy and the elephants can continue eating their normal natural diet it's a novel idea but very labor intensive so for how many days or weeks would this need to happen all day every day so sometimes up to a month wow that's if you meet an elephant and it ears are will owner conscious that this problem is not going away anytime soon spell the word elephant elephants are something these school kids and the generations after them will have to learn to live with with why is he making noise to scare me away get some of the children will have grown up in an environment where they only ever see elephants or lions uh you know being an attacking Force onto their family and their property and so they would grow up with a lot of fear and even potentially hate towards Wildlife you're supposed to run when an elephant's ears are what open or closed closed when his head is up or down down when so our aim is to reduce that fear in it remove the hate and hopefully bring about space in which they can not only tolerate but potentially fall in love again with [Music] Wildlife I empathize quite a lot with the fear it comes from not understanding them not knowing them and for me I would say it's not that I love elephants like that you know I'm a dieh hard elephant fan over a and above any everything but I'm rooting for them [Music]
2025-04-06 00:49
