BY JOHN NASH
This week, I have been remembering a silly school joke:
One evening, a policeman came across a strange fellow who was walking down the street in
Penzance, throwing, in all directions, handfuls of white powder from a cloth bag.
“Allo, ‘allo” enquired plod, “And what are we doing, Sir?
“This here be elephant repellent, constable. Good stuff. It keeps elephants away”, slurred the man, flinging another handful, obviously either neurodivergent or substance-affected in modern parlance.
“Let’s not be a stupid fellow, Sir,” sniffed the policeman, reaching for his pencil and notebook,
“There are no elephants for thousands of miles from here”.
“There you are,” replied the man, “I told you it was blerry good stuff”.
Apart from hailing from a time, long ago, before PC’s went PC, when British policemen were helpful, respectful and sane, I hope the joke sounds better in German. Our Teutonic neighbours are going to need the powder because last week, after the German government announced it would seek to ban the importation of hunting trophies, Botswana’s President Masisi threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Berlin so that Germans could learn what it is like to live with real ones. As they don’t say in Penzance, “Verdammter Scheiß!”
People like Townies who don’t actually live with them often have a fascination with wild animals, especially charismatic megafauna they don’t encounter in their everyday lives. They are so easily led astray by animal rights (AR) souls, vegans and other jelly-heads with vegetables to grind. Foreigners and even urban Africans have been raised on elephant documentaries, nature programmes, and media coverage that highlights the lives and behaviour of wild elephants, showcasing their intelligence, social dynamics and family bonds. These portrayals humanise elephants and foster empathy and admiration for them. Our own Parliament’s demented AR souls are no different, recently leading the House astray with two hours of blatant porkies in the 2nd reading of the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Private Member’s drivel.
MP’s lead the House astray with sentimentality because elephants are large, visually striking animals that capture the public’s imagination and evoke strong emotional responses.
This charisma contributes to their popularity and positive perception among the public in the UK and elsewhere, but the debate isn’t really about real elephants. It’s about the vote attracting charisma.
Last March, Botswana’s Minister for Wildlife threatened to send 10,000 elephants to London’s Hyde Park so that the UK could “taste life alongside them”, such a novel and squeaky-bum event, parts would have to be re-named Squeaker’s Corner.
The elephant claptrap is exactly the same as the ignorance shown over rural life in the UK. Green and pleasant “Nature” is so very charismatic to Townie romantics but rural people have to deal with the mud, s**t and blood of nature’s reality. Townies’ romanticism shows up in their hypocrisy – they eat well and buy all kinds of indulgent consumer goods, then they accuse the people who grow the food and supply the raw materials of wrecking “nature”.
Their accusations are based on their own post-modern false admiration, not about reality. UK MP’s exploit that hypocrisy for votes. Others are like bird-sniffing extinctionist Chris Packham CBE, the multi-millionaire eco-entertainer with a posh house carved out of the New Forest yet he campaigns publicly in support of the middle-class bobble hat environmental-angst brigade whose holidays and consumption are the source of the problem. No wonder it’s all falling apart outside of bureaucracy’s fat-cat, gold plated, untouchable blob.
Like long-suffering rural Britain, the same problems beset rural Botswana. Far from almost extinct, Botswana is up to its fundament in bloody elephants. While our TV sets blare out the message that “we can’t say goodbye to the last one (donate here)” the reality is that we won’t be saying any goodbyes just yet because the world population of elephants is stable and unless someone goes and mows down the 400,000 left, including 130,000 or more rampaging about in the northern rural areas of Botswana, they’ll be around for a while yet.
How do you fancy 130,000 five ton rabbits running loose in your area?
Too many elephants are wrecking the environment and are forced by hunger and thirst into invading villages, eating people’s vital crops, destroying life-or-death water pumps and tanks, inflicting a curfew at night, preventing children from walking to school and, not least of all, killing 200 Motswana in the last five years, so something has to be done.
The President has allowed, on scientific advice and at the request of local villages, very conservative and limited trophy hunting of post-breeding bulls to take place. Because they have already bred, hunting old bulls doesn’t affect the gene pool. Basically, the villages can sell one or two to outfitters who market them globally. For villagers, the hunts bring in money and jobs, but more important, lets them participate in something that is being done. The cash can be used to reimburse those widowed or affected by elephants. The hunters take home the inedible bits and the villagers get the meat. The meat in turn decreases the demand for bushmeat that usually falls on often rarer smaller animals and birds.
The total number made available for hunting is tiny (0.03%) compared to the number born, and there is some evidence that suggests elephants move well clear of hunters, so hunting might reduce the conflicts in remote areas.
Without doubt, trophy hunting helps both elephants and villagers. Standing up in the UK Parliament spouting on about how wonderful elephants are, or how cruel evil hunters are, or posing outside Parliament with a big orange blow-up elephant, totally misses the point.
It is blatantly unfair to ban imports of trophies while in Botswana, people are getting stamped into the ground by the damn things, just for trying to defend their family’s vital food and water.
In the last five years, there have been some 32 fatal dog attacks in the UK and you know the fuss that has caused. Had it been 200 fatal attacks (the number of elephant fatalities in Botswana) you can imagine the fuss. Are black lives somehow worth less in the UK?
Why are our MPs trying to deny Botswana the only viable solution to their problem?
John Nash grew up in West Cornwall and was a £10 pom to Johannesburg in the early 1960’s. He started well in construction project management, mainly high-rise buildings but it wasn’t really Africa, so he went bush, prospecting and trading around the murkier bits of the bottom half of the continent. Now retired back in Cornwall among all the other evil old pirates. His interests are still sustainable resources, wildlife management and the utilitarian needs of rural Africa.