21 Jun 2018

Parliament has adopted a motion tabled by Maun East MP Mr Kostantinos Markus requesting government to consider lifting the ban on the hunting of elephants in areas that are not designated as game reserves and national parks.  

Debating the motion, the Vice President and Boteti West MP, Mr Slumber Tsogwane said the human/wildlife conflict had over the years been on a rife, primarily due to an overlap between human population and wildlife.

He said such conflicts   occurred  when  either the need or behaviour of wildlife impacts negatively on human  livelihoods  or  when  the  humans  pursue  goals  that  impact  negatively  on  the  needs  of  wildlife.

The human/wildlife conflicts,  he said, had been prevalent in the Boteti constituency, where large numbers of elephants  roamed freely in marginal range lands. The increase  in  human  population had also resulted  in the encroachment  into  more  marginal  lands  inhabited  by  wildlife.

 The Vice President said conflicts  between  people  and  wildlife currently  ranked among  the  main  threats  to  conservation countrywide, adding that with much of  the wildlife living outside  protected  areas,  one of  the  real  challenges  to  conservation  is  how  to  enhance  and  sustain  coexistence  between  people  and  wild  animals.

 He said the increase of elephant population had also affected the land conservation plans as they turn to over graze and destroy the natural landscape.

“Given the economic and social importance of both wildlife-related activities and agriculture, balancing the relationship between wildlife species and agricultural production is critical if the needs of all of the respective interest groups involved with these commodities are to be met,” he said.

He emphasised that the motion should not be regarded as a leeway to promoting poaching of elephants as government would implement stringent measures to protect elephants and other wildlife spies.

Mr Tsogwane said an understanding  of  how   people  and  conservation  agents  dealt  with  the  problem  of  wild animals was  critical  in  evolving  and  establishing  sustainable  conservation  systems.

He said that government would consult with all the relevant stakeholders to facilitate human/wildlife coexistence.

Tati East MP, Mr Samson Guma argued that it was undoubtedly  evident  that  the  expansion  of  the  human  society  had  forced people  to  infringe  into  wildlife  habitats and convert  land  to  other  uses  incompatible  with  wildlife.

Mr Guma said smallholder farmers living along the Botswana/Zimbabwe border fence had struggled for years with elephants that regularly invaded their land and destroyed their crops.

The majority of those farmers, he said, settled along the border line to benefit from rivers that do not only act as demarcation boundaries between the two countries, but also have water in abundance all year round.

Mr Guma said that the story of elephants farm invasion in his constituency was heartbreaking as a week hardly passed without elephants raiding on farms and ploughing fields alike.

“Elephants inhabiting the nearby parks easily stray outside its perimeters in search of forage, water and a place to breed, thereby destroying everything on their path,” he said.

He said both elephants and human population density in the area had become high and as a result the competition for resources between the two had intensified, hence efforts of many  subsistence farmers in the area to become commercial were more like a lottery than a livelihood.

Mr Guma therefore said government should swiftly act on how best to resolve the human/wildlife conflict and the lift on the hunting ban and shooting of elephants in areas that were not designated as game reserves could be remedial to the crisis. ENDS