Staff Writer

27,500 elephants, or 5% of Africa’s total, live in Botswana's farming areas. This is more than Namibia and Zambia’s total population. In Ngamiland, in the North-West district alone, there are around 160,000 people, an estimated 238,000 cattle, and about 9,000 agricultural fields.

By Prof Brian Child The spread of Western civilization was synonymous with the spread of domestic species and the domination of nature, often with deleterious consequences (Monbiot 2022). Importantly, the economic superiority of domestic species did not drive this, but because, for deep historical reasons, farmers owned livestock but were

Trade bans don't stop poaching. The issue is that a powerful NGO anti-use lobby comprising many interest groups generates funding from these trade bans. They campaign to raise money to "save the elephant" by ensuring a ban on the ivory trade remains. Their narrative is that

Mark Haldane from Zambeze Delta Safaris (ZDS) has sage advice for anybody starting in the hunting industry. Winning the local community over. The job will get much easier when they feel the absolute benefits of living alongside wildlife. The most important step was probably the community meat drop. A small

By Douglas Wise I was stimulated to write this review as a consequence of reading Part 2 of Dick Laws’ autobiography, entitled “Hippos’ Tears and Elephants’ Tusks.”  I hadn’t realised that the battle between “preservationists” and “sustainable users” was raging over 50 years ago.  I didn’t know Dr

Erik Verreynne, based in Botswana, is a wildlife and livestock veterinarian with a master’s in wildlife management. He believes that wildlife management must include the coexistence between people and wildlife, and in Botswana, human-elephant conflict is a thorny issue. Does Botswana have too many elephants? To answer the question,