Botswana Lifting Ban on Hunting Elephants

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Botswana has come to the decision that they are going to lift a nearly 5 year ban on hunting elephants citing issues with farmers and elephants interrupting their livelihoods. On top of the farming industry, Botswana aims to promote and increase their Safari Hunting industry while maintaining the elephant population within its historic range. Basically, they are concerned more with profit than the livelihood of an entire species' survival, shocking.

Claiming to have consulted tourism organizations, conservationists, affected communities, and researchers, it was apparently agreed that lifting the ban and ensuring that the hunting of elephants was done responsibly and within appropriate targets was a reasonable thing to do. Interestingly, it's conservationists that are fighting every single day to protect elephants from going extinct as their numbers have plummeted in Africa to approximately 135, 000 so I'm curious if perhaps these very same conservationists consulted on this matter were perhaps paid to agree in some way or another because any level headed person, conservationist or not, would tell you that 135, 000 elephants is an alarmingly low population and allowing regulated hunts will only dwindle those numbers further.

What I can see here is once again, profits trump survival of an entire species. Africa has seen some of its most recognized and respected wildlife end up on the endangered species act because of poaching and illegal hunting. In fact, animal like leopards, lions, elephants, and rhinos, are all in danger of going extinct if proper conservation efforts are not put in to place. It's bad enough that illegal poaching is wiping these animals out, but then to allow regulated hunting of elephants on top of it? It sickens me to the core to try and understand the logic or lack thereof behind this decision.

To put things into perspective, the city I live in back in Ontario Canada has less than 250, 000 people and we are considered a very small city. Now, there is approximately 100, 000 less elephants on the entire continent of Africa, can you imagine? There is absolutely no justification for allowing these beautiful animals to be legally hunted. Allowing such an atrocity will undoubtedly work against years of conservation efforts to repopulate the elephants and will likely push them much closer to extinction.