About a week ago, a disturbing story emerged from Botswana regarding the mysterious deaths of over 300 elephants. An autopsy was conducted on the elephants and now the truth has come out, the elephants appear to have been poisoned. It's being reported that the motives for poisoning the elephants were the local community's crops being destroyed, leading the locals to resort to poisoning the elephants.
The blame does not fall solely on the government, these communities are also to blame for their part. While the destruction of crops is devastating, poisoning innocent, endangered animals is far from acceptable regardless of the reasoning. Elephants are constantly losing their habitat to the continued growth of human settlements. This leaves them with less area to roam freely in search of food and water which ultimately pushes them towards human settlements in search of nourishment. Crops are easy food for elephants who are starving and poisoning them for simply trying to survive is unacceptable.
There has to be other ways to manage these conflicts that don't result in the murder of elephants. In almost every case of human / animal conflict, the animals are killed. Killing animals is often seen as the easiest solution regardless of underlying factors like an animal facing extinction. When there's an overpopulation of deer for example, the government shuts down a park and culls. When there are too many cats on the streets, governments turn to euthanizing them to manage the population. Unfortunately, it seems like every government on this planet only knows how to kill to solve problems. This needs to change! The Botswana Government must be held accountable for their negligence and the local communities should also be punished for resorting to poisoning endangered animals for trying to survive. We cannot continue to take their land without a plan in place on how we can coexist. If we continue down this path, we will push elephants to extinction in the wild and there is simply no excuse for that. HAPPY VEG
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