20 Apr 2022

Work to translocate 500 elephants from Botswana to Mozambique will start as soon as all necessary logistics are in place.

Mozambique’s Ambassador, Mr Domingos  Ferendas said in an interview yesterday that officials from Botswana and his country would be meeting to finalise  the process.

 “I need to affirm that the embassy will soon meet with Botswana’s Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism and Senior Government Officials to address all issues  pertaining to the translocation, henceforth the  process will resume  immediately,” he said.

The interview followed a recent reaffirmation by President Mokgweetsi Masisi during his Mozambique    counterpart Mr Filipe Nyusi three day state visit of Botswana donation of the elephants.

 “I wish to reiterate Botswana’s donation of 500 elephants to Mozambique, we look forward to their subsequent translocation to Mozambique in the near future, and are very keen to see  them finally roaming their new  habitant,” President Masisi said then. Botswana made the pledge in 2018. The pledge is symbolic of the excellent, and long standing relations that subsist between the two countries, said the President.

A recent report of the National Administration of Conservation areas indicates that Mozambique has lost nearly 10 000 elephants  since 2009 to various reasons, including poaching.

Botswana’s gesture to donate the elephants to Mozambique has largely been seen as a welcome development towards reducing the country’s massive elephant population. With over 130 000 elephants, Botswana is home to nearly half of Africa’s elephant population and the world largest wild elephant population.  There have been numerous reports where the animals destroyed crops, damaged property and even killed people. 

While translocation of elephants is preferred over culling, the process itself demands a lot of meticulous planning and comes with huge budgetary and human resource implications. 

At the same time Government is seeking to relocate some of the elephants it has also announced on various occasions its efforts, as a member of the Kavango-Zambezi Trans-frontier Conservation Area (KAZA), a five-country partnership to conserve shared natural resources, its willingness to work with other member countries towards finding a way to ease elephant migration, which it hopes will help to spread the animal’s population across a bigger area. ends